4 ms·

> users typically keep a separate, erroneous mental model of all the Rube Goldberg machines in their short-term memory... the user keeps drawing and connecting

> users typically keep a separate, erroneous mental model of all the Rube Goldberg machines in their short-term memory... the user keeps drawing and connecting more Rube Goldberg machines atop one another until their short-term memory becomes the only private key that can decode them. It really was a cute rant (we've all been there where we've hated using something that much!), but honestly this bit describes every piece of sufficiently complex software I've worked on. Not sure about you, but I poke my coworkers all the time to ask "hey, can you explain what this bit of business logic does again? I think I need to reuse it for this new feature..." Maybe Max just needs a unit testing framework.

AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
lol unit testing? Max/MSP objects are just enormous json blobs. They have much bigger problems with that language than unit testing. People interested in musical programming should investigate SuperCollider and completely bypass Max/MSP. It’s terrible software.
- qmmmur 7y ago
  The object connections are described in json but the objects themselves are c++.
  - rectang 7y ago
    In Pure Data, the file format describes a directed graph of objects. It's not just freeform. Here's part of a presentation on "Dataflow Programming" talking through that graph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPh4Z3SioB8&t=29m25s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPh4Z3SioB8&t=29m25s Is Max/MSP different? Pure Data is Dataflow-ish programming language. It's fine for Dataflow nodes to be written in another language so long as the node is self contained — that's the essence of "Hybrid Dataflow". Pd has some global state so it's not pure Dataflow, but from what I can tell that state is not what the rant earlier is complaining about in the context of Max/MSP.
  - AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
    Yes, that is technically true. A more objectively correct statement on my part would have been, "Max patches are JSON blobs." But let's be real: it's highly dubious software, exploiting the tired and inefficient trope of the noodly "patch connections" approach made famous by modular synth folks. The sound engine sucks, even with the new updates made recently. The new versions are made using the JUCE framework, and yet it has no Linux support. WTF? Good luck doing anything low-latency, on any platform, using any kind of hardware. Seriously, last time I tried to agonize with Max/MSP, that shit would start crackling at 48k and a block size of 192, that's absurdly poor performance for any sort of "modern" audio software. Max/MSP is something made to take advantage of "computer musicians" and "audio engineers" who know very little about the actual computing platforms they continue to exploit. These people have become decidedly easy to trick, they simply don't approach their own so-called "craft" with the amount of skepticism they must have in order to continue to practice that craft.
    - qmmmur 7y ago
      > exploiting the tired and inefficient trope of the noodly "patch connections" That's the whole point. pd works the same way and so does vcvrack among more localised tools like Reaktor. > The new versions are made using the JUCE framework, and yet it has no Linux support. WTF? I don't have any love for JUCE but you are naive to think that its as easy as setting a new compile target and pressing go. Max is for profit and they need to target the most salient customers. Forget how little the percentage of people is that use Linux - you are aiming this product at a niche of niche people already. Be realistic here if you're own money was at stake. > Good luck doing anything low-latency, on any platform, using any kind of hardware. Seriously, last time I tried to agonize with Max/MSP, that shit would start crackling at 48k and a block size of 192, that's absurdly poor performance for any sort of "modern" audio software. I can't say I've had as much problems as you. I have a friend whose work has to be as low latency as possible (so that onset detectors are working really fast) and his system is running somewhere at 16/32 for vector size. The processing after this is non-trivial also. I'd be curious to know what your professional use of Max is as you seem to have an incredibly aggressive attitude to the software, how its made and the people that use it.
jancsika 7y ago
> but honestly this bit describes every piece of sufficiently complex software I've worked on. Just to be clear: the word "atop" is being used literally here in a way that doesn't hold for text-based languages. Your frustration: "What does z() do, and why is it calling flarg() twice?" My frustration v0.1: "What does z() do, and why is it calling flarg() twice?" clicks and drags an object to reveal another Fresco My frustration v0.2: "What does z() do, why is it calling flarg() twice, and why are there 7 instances of flarg pasted atop one another with internal non-local connections which trigger stack-overflow protection every time z gets called? Also, why is there a zero-width spacer between the 'z' and the '()' which, while somehow syntactically correct, causes 'z' not to get called? Also, why does the text editor require one to click and drag a line from 'z' to the '()' in order to get rid of the zero-width spacer in order to actually call the function?" Edit: I'm sure you can find similar weirdness in a text-based language. Perhaps if one made a contract that they're going to use a global setter variable in every function of a Javascript program which will mutate some global state. That would be bad. But you really have to work to do that whereas the natural tendency in Max is to wrap an object-chain back atop itself to create unreadable spaghetti as one builds a prototype.
qmmmur 7y ago
Not to mention, it doesn't have to work like this... There are people, and I say this unashamedely, like myself that are experts in how Max works from its lowest level systems such as the scheduler to basic concepts such as order of execution. It is a great language for putting together robust performance software as much as it is a playground for heinous DSP graphs which can break, splutter and fail. A lot of people here are complaining that Max is a bad language because you can't grep/sed/awk it or that it doesn't have unit testing but they're totally missing the point.

AndrewUnmuted 7y ago

lol unit testing? Max/MSP objects are just enormous json blobs. They have much bigger problems with that language than unit testing. People interested in musical programming should investigate SuperCollider and completely bypass Max/MSP. It’s terrible software.

qmmmur 7y ago
The object connections are described in json but the objects themselves are c++.
- rectang 7y ago
  In Pure Data, the file format describes a directed graph of objects. It's not just freeform. Here's part of a presentation on "Dataflow Programming" talking through that graph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPh4Z3SioB8&t=29m25s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPh4Z3SioB8&t=29m25s Is Max/MSP different? Pure Data is Dataflow-ish programming language. It's fine for Dataflow nodes to be written in another language so long as the node is self contained — that's the essence of "Hybrid Dataflow". Pd has some global state so it's not pure Dataflow, but from what I can tell that state is not what the rant earlier is complaining about in the context of Max/MSP.
- AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
  Yes, that is technically true. A more objectively correct statement on my part would have been, "Max patches are JSON blobs." But let's be real: it's highly dubious software, exploiting the tired and inefficient trope of the noodly "patch connections" approach made famous by modular synth folks. The sound engine sucks, even with the new updates made recently. The new versions are made using the JUCE framework, and yet it has no Linux support. WTF? Good luck doing anything low-latency, on any platform, using any kind of hardware. Seriously, last time I tried to agonize with Max/MSP, that shit would start crackling at 48k and a block size of 192, that's absurdly poor performance for any sort of "modern" audio software. Max/MSP is something made to take advantage of "computer musicians" and "audio engineers" who know very little about the actual computing platforms they continue to exploit. These people have become decidedly easy to trick, they simply don't approach their own so-called "craft" with the amount of skepticism they must have in order to continue to practice that craft.
  - qmmmur 7y ago
    > exploiting the tired and inefficient trope of the noodly "patch connections" That's the whole point. pd works the same way and so does vcvrack among more localised tools like Reaktor. > The new versions are made using the JUCE framework, and yet it has no Linux support. WTF? I don't have any love for JUCE but you are naive to think that its as easy as setting a new compile target and pressing go. Max is for profit and they need to target the most salient customers. Forget how little the percentage of people is that use Linux - you are aiming this product at a niche of niche people already. Be realistic here if you're own money was at stake. > Good luck doing anything low-latency, on any platform, using any kind of hardware. Seriously, last time I tried to agonize with Max/MSP, that shit would start crackling at 48k and a block size of 192, that's absurdly poor performance for any sort of "modern" audio software. I can't say I've had as much problems as you. I have a friend whose work has to be as low latency as possible (so that onset detectors are working really fast) and his system is running somewhere at 16/32 for vector size. The processing after this is non-trivial also. I'd be curious to know what your professional use of Max is as you seem to have an incredibly aggressive attitude to the software, how its made and the people that use it.

jancsika 7y ago

> but honestly this bit describes every piece of sufficiently complex software I've worked on. Just to be clear: the word "atop" is being used literally here in a way that doesn't hold for text-based languages. Your frustration: "What does z() do, and why is it calling flarg() twice?" My frustration v0.1: "What does z() do, and why is it calling flarg() twice?" clicks and drags an object to reveal another Fresco My frustration v0.2: "What does z() do, why is it calling flarg() twice, and why are there 7 instances of flarg pasted atop one another with internal non-local connections which trigger stack-overflow protection every time z gets called? Also, why is there a zero-width spacer between the 'z' and the '()' which, while somehow syntactically correct, causes 'z' not to get called? Also, why does the text editor require one to click and drag a line from 'z' to the '()' in order to get rid of the zero-width spacer in order to actually call the function?" Edit: I'm sure you can find similar weirdness in a text-based language. Perhaps if one made a contract that they're going to use a global setter variable in every function of a Javascript program which will mutate some global state. That would be bad. But you really have to work to do that whereas the natural tendency in Max is to wrap an object-chain back atop itself to create unreadable spaghetti as one builds a prototype.

qmmmur 7y ago

Not to mention, it doesn't have to work like this... There are people, and I say this unashamedely, like myself that are experts in how Max works from its lowest level systems such as the scheduler to basic concepts such as order of execution. It is a great language for putting together robust performance software as much as it is a playground for heinous DSP graphs which can break, splutter and fail. A lot of people here are complaining that Max is a bad language because you can't grep/sed/awk it or that it doesn't have unit testing but they're totally missing the point.