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I am working (with a grant) on 2 different concepts of visual programming; one is kind of more traditional wires/boxes dataflow type but with some novel twists
by tluyben2 6y ago
I am working (with a grant) on 2 different concepts of visual programming; one is kind of more traditional wires/boxes dataflow type but with some novel twists and the other is something completely new. I have built many of these in the past (some of them ran production for years before getting phased out in favour of a 'normal' PL) and it never felt right, but I keep trying. Normally I started top-down; first visual tooling then, as an afterthought, the storage of the language (xml for instance, jikes). Now I started with the language in textual form (not meant to program in directly but readable) and that works much better; so there is a language, runtime, debugger and introspection tooling all done and now we are putting 2 different visual frontends on top to see if it works. So far the results have been good; our sponsor is looking to launch something as a product and it's quite cool work.
- imvetri 6y agoIs there any demo to look at ?
- tluyben2 6y agoNot yet, unfortunately (and again) I went for money so i'm under NDA etc. But there will be before the summer ends (deadline is end of august).
- w_t_payne 6y agoI'm taking a very very similar approach -- starting off with a computational model driven by an easy-to-diff data structure that can be serialised to YAML/JSON/XML and then looking for ways of building a UI on top of that. I'd love to share experiences with you -- NDA permitting, of course.
- tluyben2 6y agoCan you drop me an email ? It's in my HN profile. It sounds we are indeed doing similar things.
- divan 6y agoLame question: how do you find such grants?
- tluyben2 6y agoI am not very silent about what I think is broken about programming and sometimes I find people with the same feeling. This one is from a company I bumped into; they have a db/codeless type of thing and they want to make it easier for people to use. It is particularly not an investment; maybe that comes after if it works; it is money to play around with different ideas which they give out for this type of purpose.
- divan 6y agoGot it, thanks! It's just struck me that my project about visual programming have stallen exactly due to the lack of vision how to find time/money for it, and I've never thought about grants possibility.
- gnulinux 6y agoIf you don't mind sharing some of your papers/opinions here, what do you think is broken about programming?