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> Languages like these also don't have the almost hundred years of research and effort in to creating an ecosystem around them like text-based languages do. c'

> Languages like these also don't have the almost hundred years of research and effort in to creating an ecosystem around them like text-based languages do. c'mon, the first dataflow languages date from the 60s, that's barely after the first textual PLs - see eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQhVQ1UG6aM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQhVQ1UG6aM > There's no way to harness the incredible power of text editors like vim or emacs. have fun showing most art students how to use vim or emacs :p just typing a few commands in a console to build a project is already a galore from past teaching experience.

dhosek 7y ago
> have fun showing most art students how to use vim or emacs :p just typing a few commands in a console to build a project is already a galore from past teaching experience. Back in the 80s, I used to teach LaTeX workshops, primarily to math department secretaries. These were usually given in a university's computer lab. At one such lab, the staff had decided that the students should use vi. The problem was that the terminals were such that hitting any of the arrow keys would be interpreted by vi as delete the current paragraph irrevocably. After one morning of frustrated students, I switched everyone to emacs. We didn't use a fraction of emacs's power, but at least the arrow keys worked.
DonHopkins 7y ago
Thanks for that link to the wonderful video of Alan Kay showing a demo of GRaIL recorded in 1968! Here's a film of another early system called "PIXIE" for editing graphs and circuit diagrams by Neil Wiseman, Lemke and Hiles from 1969, showing the first know implementation of what I call "pie menus". The librarian David Chapman at the Cambridge University was quite helpful and generous enough to arrange for that film to be transferred to video and posted on their site. (Librarians rock, and Cambridge University has an excellent library! ;) It hasn't widely seen, and was only recently published online! https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/library/archives.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/library/archives.html >This film demonstrates an early graphical user interface in use. It was made in 1969 to accompany a paper entitled “PIXIE: a new approach to graphical man-machine communication” presented at the 1969 CAD Conference held in Southampton. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menus-936fed383ff1#8546 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menus-936fed383ff1#8546 >History of Pie Menus >The classic 1969 “PIXIE” paper by Neil Wiseman, Lemke, and Hiles had the first mention of circular menus, which was referenced in Newman and Sproull’s 1979 seminal book “Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics”. The “lightbuttons” were apparently target area based (selected “by pointing at one of them”), unlike pie menus which are based purely on the direction of the gesture, resulting in a large wedge shaped target area extending to the screen edge, not just the small rectangular area of the “lightbutton” label: >PIXIE: A New Approach to Graphical Man-Machine Communication >Wiseman, N.E., Lemke, H.U. & Hiles, J.O. (1969) PIXIE: A New Approach to Graphical Man-Machine Communication, Proceedings of 1969 CAD Conference Southampton, IEEE Conference Publication 51, 463–471. >"The control lightbuttons which are used frequently within a mode to carry out a sequence of operations. These buttons are displayed around the tracking cross and move about with it so that the user’s hand is always close to these buttons when he needs them. To avoid clustering a large number of control buttons around the tracking cross, it is arranged that only buttons for those actions which are legal at any given time are displayed and also that the user may select different sets of legal buttons by pointing at one of them (which acts as a sort of rotating switch for the rest)."
DonHopkins 7y ago
I hate to be the one to say it, but vim and emacs are basically just programmable card punch machine emulators. Of course Emacs is obviously the best card punch machine emulator, by far, though. ;)

dhosek 7y ago

> have fun showing most art students how to use vim or emacs :p just typing a few commands in a console to build a project is already a galore from past teaching experience. Back in the 80s, I used to teach LaTeX workshops, primarily to math department secretaries. These were usually given in a university's computer lab. At one such lab, the staff had decided that the students should use vi. The problem was that the terminals were such that hitting any of the arrow keys would be interpreted by vi as delete the current paragraph irrevocably. After one morning of frustrated students, I switched everyone to emacs. We didn't use a fraction of emacs's power, but at least the arrow keys worked.

DonHopkins 7y ago

Thanks for that link to the wonderful video of Alan Kay showing a demo of GRaIL recorded in 1968! Here's a film of another early system called "PIXIE" for editing graphs and circuit diagrams by Neil Wiseman, Lemke and Hiles from 1969, showing the first know implementation of what I call "pie menus". The librarian David Chapman at the Cambridge University was quite helpful and generous enough to arrange for that film to be transferred to video and posted on their site. (Librarians rock, and Cambridge University has an excellent library! ;) It hasn't widely seen, and was only recently published online! https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/library/archives.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/library/archives.html >This film demonstrates an early graphical user interface in use. It was made in 1969 to accompany a paper entitled “PIXIE: a new approach to graphical man-machine communication” presented at the 1969 CAD Conference held in Southampton. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menus-936fed383ff1#8546 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menus-936fed383ff1#8546 >History of Pie Menus >The classic 1969 “PIXIE” paper by Neil Wiseman, Lemke, and Hiles had the first mention of circular menus, which was referenced in Newman and Sproull’s 1979 seminal book “Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics”. The “lightbuttons” were apparently target area based (selected “by pointing at one of them”), unlike pie menus which are based purely on the direction of the gesture, resulting in a large wedge shaped target area extending to the screen edge, not just the small rectangular area of the “lightbutton” label: >PIXIE: A New Approach to Graphical Man-Machine Communication >Wiseman, N.E., Lemke, H.U. & Hiles, J.O. (1969) PIXIE: A New Approach to Graphical Man-Machine Communication, Proceedings of 1969 CAD Conference Southampton, IEEE Conference Publication 51, 463–471. >"The control lightbuttons which are used frequently within a mode to carry out a sequence of operations. These buttons are displayed around the tracking cross and move about with it so that the user’s hand is always close to these buttons when he needs them. To avoid clustering a large number of control buttons around the tracking cross, it is arranged that only buttons for those actions which are legal at any given time are displayed and also that the user may select different sets of legal buttons by pointing at one of them (which acts as a sort of rotating switch for the rest)."

DonHopkins 7y ago

I hate to be the one to say it, but vim and emacs are basically just programmable card punch machine emulators. Of course Emacs is obviously the best card punch machine emulator, by far, though. ;)