3 ms·

Yeah, that's why no-one uses Maya to edit 3d scenes. It lacks the finesse of text, like povray ;-)

by e12e 10y ago

munificent 10y ago
The difference there is that the thing you are authoring is itself visual. You can't be a skilled Maya user if you're not a good visual thinker/designer because that's the core competency of 3D design itself. Code is not inherently visual. If you made the editor visual, then it means people who are good at abstract reasoning and solving problems but don't have good aesthetic and spatial sense wouldn't be able to "write good code".
- justinpombrio 10y ago
  > Code is not inherently visual. Nor is it text. It is a tree (hence the term "abstract syntax tree"). We just save it in an awful serialized format.
- e12e 10y ago
  > The difference there is that the thing you are authoring is itself visual. Perhaps. Or it might be structural, an object to be 3d printed. It would have a physical appearance - but perhaps not be "inherently visual", any more than the algorithms for adjusting a quadcopter for autonomous hovering is "inherently aerial"? > people who are good at abstract reasoning and solving problems but don't have good aesthetic and spatial sense wouldn't be able to "write good code". Isn't that the case with textual representation of code too? Without a sense for aesthetics, one cannot create "beautiful code"? A chessboard/game can be represented in many ways in the form of code/syntax - even mathematical equations - and yet I would argue it is less accessible to learn and play chess going from just the standard textual representation, than from a board? How would you teach chess moves: by lifting a castle off the board, showing that it can move up-and-down and sideways, like so - or by saying that the piece-instances initialized to position a1,a8,h1 and h8 can move only be changing either of its two coordinates up and down?

3 ms·

Yeah, that's why no-one uses Maya to edit 3d scenes. It lacks the finesse of text, like povray ;-)

by e12e 10y ago

Yeah, that's why no-one uses Maya to edit 3d scenes. It lacks the finesse of text, like povray ;-)

munificent 10y ago
The difference there is that the thing you are authoring is itself visual. You can't be a skilled Maya user if you're not a good visual thinker/designer because that's the core competency of 3D design itself. Code is not inherently visual. If you made the editor visual, then it means people who are good at abstract reasoning and solving problems but don't have good aesthetic and spatial sense wouldn't be able to "write good code".
- justinpombrio 10y ago
  > Code is not inherently visual. Nor is it text. It is a tree (hence the term "abstract syntax tree"). We just save it in an awful serialized format.
- e12e 10y ago
  > The difference there is that the thing you are authoring is itself visual. Perhaps. Or it might be structural, an object to be 3d printed. It would have a physical appearance - but perhaps not be "inherently visual", any more than the algorithms for adjusting a quadcopter for autonomous hovering is "inherently aerial"? > people who are good at abstract reasoning and solving problems but don't have good aesthetic and spatial sense wouldn't be able to "write good code". Isn't that the case with textual representation of code too? Without a sense for aesthetics, one cannot create "beautiful code"? A chessboard/game can be represented in many ways in the form of code/syntax - even mathematical equations - and yet I would argue it is less accessible to learn and play chess going from just the standard textual representation, than from a board? How would you teach chess moves: by lifting a castle off the board, showing that it can move up-and-down and sideways, like so - or by saying that the piece-instances initialized to position a1,a8,h1 and h8 can move only be changing either of its two coordinates up and down?