7 ms·

Vodka is a creative coding environment for creative writers (LISP)

104 points by tartoran 6y ago

badcircle 6y ago
This looks really interesting! What sort of outputs do you generally use it for?
suyash 6y ago
demo link / video?
- tartoran 6y ago
  This will probably give you some idea. I'm going to set it up give it a go. https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka/blob/main/GETTINGSTARTED.md https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka/blob/main/GETTINGSTARTED.m...
  - dash2 6y ago
    That tells people the things you can do, but not why you might want to do them. I think most people, especially writers, won't know what a creative coding environment is or why it might be right for them.
    - tartoran 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_coding Some things are made to experiment with, simply to play with. They may lead to different projects. I actually tried to get this going but I'm stuck after cloning the repo, there are some folders missing and the node server crashes. If anyone is able to get this running I'd appreciate if they told me how. I'm missing the /sounds folder
Naac 6y ago
When I first read the description I thought it was going to be something like processing[0] but in lisp. Turns out this is something completely different. [0] https://processing.org/ https://processing.org/
kossTKR 6y ago
There is no explanation of what this is on the page. The one sentence description is meaningless to newcomers. What is creative coding? What does it have to do with creative writing? You need a better explanation / demo.
- dkarl 6y ago
  There's a Getting Started page linked in the README that shows what the software does. Not sure it makes much of a case for it being useful. https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka/blob/main/GETTINGSTARTED.md https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka/blob/main/GETTINGSTARTED.m...
- owyn 6y ago
  Vodka is a Lisp, but instead of parentheses, it uses boxes. The yellow boxes around the words you typed before? Those are the equivalent of parentheses in Lisp. It's a lisp environment! But I agree there should probably be a demo or some kind of interactive example.
- thih9 6y ago
  > What is creative coding? The project's readme links to a wikipedia page that defines the term and provides examples. "Creative coding is a type of computer programming in which the goal is to create something expressive instead of something functional." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_coding
  - ericlewis 6y ago
    That definition irks me a bit because technically the creativity they have done is functional and it just makes me think they're talking about something even stranger.
- dang 6y ago
  Ok, we'll change the URL above, from https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka to the intro page.
marcodiego 6y ago
Title makes me think of the Ballmer peak: https://xkcd.com/323/ https://xkcd.com/323/
- ballmerspeak 6y ago
  It had to have started there right? But I think this could also be valuable before hitting the peak. But then again, unraveling a drunkenly produced chunk of LISP doesn't exactly sound fun either.
tsherr 6y ago
I'm not sure what the point is? Am I coding? Writing a novel? I can get the first letter of a word? Why do I want to, as a creative writer?
markmiro 6y ago
This looks like a text-first coding environment I like the idea of building websites and writing blog posts by starting with text and slowly taking different parts of it and adding dynamic functionality Maybe I want to embed the current date somewhere Maybe I want to embed a chart It's not exactly a new idea, but doing things with LISP might provide some useful invariants Hoping I understand this correctly
kleer001 6y ago
Uhhh, what problem does this solve?
- lambda_obrien 6y ago
  Not everything has to solve some problem, some things are for art, or love, or because you were bored.
  - throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
    ...or intoxicated. Hence the name.
    - kleer001 6y ago
      There's so many types of stories behind the naming of things, Vodka could be a backronym or a personal story or getting drunk.
  - kleer001 6y ago
    Art solves aesthetic problems, constraints drive creativity. Love solves the problem of reproduction, competition and evolution. Boredom solves the problem of creativity, it's the other side of the coin, a kind of destruction at the very least of time. What's the edge of that coin? Maintenance.
notjulianjaynes 6y ago
This looks interesting. Someone posted a link to that Hemingway writing app a few days ago, and I remember thinking that might be useful if there was a way to define your own rules. I could see this possibly being a good way to make "n+7" poems, other Oulipo styled stuff [1]. See example 16: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/bernstein/experiments.html http://www.writing.upenn.edu/bernstein/experiments.html
inetsee 6y ago
There was a suite of software developed for Unix in the late 80s called "The Writer's Workbench", described in Wikipedia as "perhaps the earliest grammar checker to receive wide usage on Unix systems." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer's_Workbench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer's_Workbench There is another program named "Writers Workbench" which is available as an online version and as a plugin for Microsoft Word. https://www.writersworkbench.com/ https://www.writersworkbench.com/ It wasn't clear to me whether the "Writer's Workbench" was derived from, or inspired by, the earlier Unix software.
O_H_E 6y ago
From the linked wiki about creative coding: > Creative coding is a type of computer programming in which the goal is to create something expressive instead of something functional. from the linked page: > Have you ever wanted to open up the hood of your word processor and tinker with what it's doing? Exploded mode in Vodka is how you do that. Exploded mode shows the guts of your Vodka doc -- the data structures and information that is underlying what you're seeing. .... > Vodka is a Lisp, but instead of parentheses, it uses boxes. ----- And maybe I will add, that instead of variables and data-structures, it operates on the prose you are writing. It is definitely hard to explain, but pretty cool nevertheless.
mjh2539 6y ago
If you can't think of a descriptive name for your tool or product, maybe you should pause, think on it, and resist the temptation to pick a completely irrelevant one-word noun. Call me a codger. I don't care. This crap was old ten years ago. It's still old.
- GauntletWizard 6y ago
  I would hardly call it irrelevant. The name means “Vodka helps you write creatively”, which is a sentiment Ernest Hemingway would have agreed with.
  - refulgentis 6y ago
    hunter thompson would agree with weed, or cocaine - all of these aren't the right choice for an app name, it's clever, but lacks enough context to require enough active thinking to be jarring
  - SBArbeit 6y ago
    I just assumed it was called Vodka because that's what I'd need to deal with anything Lisp-related. :-) I guess they could have called it "OG Kush" too...
  - sedatk 6y ago
    As a matter of fact, I first thought the title was a metaphor like "there is no lack of creativity, only lack of vodka".
- saeranv 6y ago
  It's smart to have an irrelevant one-word noun name, it gives you the flexibility to pivot your product over time, without being tied to an overly-specific name.
  - EpicEng 6y ago
    "It allows you to fail multiple times without changing the product name" Great.
splatzone 6y ago
This looks very interesting, but I think you need to give us some more examples of what you can do with it
tcbasche 6y ago
I love the commit messages ... > several changes > too many changes to list > did a bunch of updates to the test framework
- krageon 6y ago
  I like them too. Seeing commit messages like this makes me feel a bit better about publishing my own repositories (which are invariably full of cursing and commit messages which are not descriptive) without doing significant history edits and rewriting most of it. Having to sanitise everything to conform to the meme of perfect descriptiveness is about 40% of what stops me from doing so in most cases, with another 40% being the name.
georgeoliver 6y ago
I'll admit I don't know how the creator imagines this will be used, but it did suggest an interesting use case to me. Sometimes text adventure writers will write a full transcript of their game before they code it, but typically there is a large structural and semantic difference between a transcript and a program, so there are some barriers to the translation of transcript -> program. With a tool like this you possibly could remove and/or alter those barriers to enhance the programming process. I imagine the same method might apply to developing chat bots and the like as well.
- inbx0 6y ago
  There are a few DSLs for this purpose, like Ink [1]. [1]: https://github.com/inkle/ink https://github.com/inkle/ink
fctorial 6y ago
Crashes with this error when I visit the url: [$] ./runserver.sh Server running at http://127.0.0.1:3000/ http://127.0.0.1:3000/ internal/fs/utils.js:230 throw err; ^ Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir './sounds' at Object.readdirSync (fs.js:887:3) at getAudioFileIncludes (/mnt/DATA/src/vodka/server/webserver.js:104:17) at transformHost (/mnt/DATA/src/vodka/server/webserver.js:117:14) at /mnt/DATA/src/vodka/server/webserver.js:137:12 at FSReqCallback.readFileAfterClose [as oncomplete] (internal/fs/read_file_context.js:63:3) { errno: -2, syscall: 'scandir', code: 'ENOENT', path: './sounds' }
ngcc_hk 6y ago
Should it be more a text result and an underlying text based code (word perfect) And further a notebook like for the underlying (python and R notebook). 2 windows showed next to each other. Somehow this text is the program Then turn into box ... not sure.
jes5199 6y ago
for all those writers who find that the barrier to leaning programming is all that text editing

104 points by tartoran 6y ago

badcircle 6y ago

This looks really interesting! What sort of outputs do you generally use it for?

suyash 6y ago

demo link / video?

tartoran 6y ago
This will probably give you some idea. I'm going to set it up give it a go. https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka/blob/main/GETTINGSTARTED.md https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka/blob/main/GETTINGSTARTED.m...
- dash2 6y ago
  That tells people the things you can do, but not why you might want to do them. I think most people, especially writers, won't know what a creative coding environment is or why it might be right for them.
  - tartoran 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_coding Some things are made to experiment with, simply to play with. They may lead to different projects. I actually tried to get this going but I'm stuck after cloning the repo, there are some folders missing and the node server crashes. If anyone is able to get this running I'd appreciate if they told me how. I'm missing the /sounds folder

Naac 6y ago

When I first read the description I thought it was going to be something like processing[0] but in lisp. Turns out this is something completely different. [0] https://processing.org/ https://processing.org/

kossTKR 6y ago

There is no explanation of what this is on the page. The one sentence description is meaningless to newcomers. What is creative coding? What does it have to do with creative writing? You need a better explanation / demo.

dkarl 6y ago
There's a Getting Started page linked in the README that shows what the software does. Not sure it makes much of a case for it being useful. https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka/blob/main/GETTINGSTARTED.md https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka/blob/main/GETTINGSTARTED.m...
owyn 6y ago
Vodka is a Lisp, but instead of parentheses, it uses boxes. The yellow boxes around the words you typed before? Those are the equivalent of parentheses in Lisp. It's a lisp environment! But I agree there should probably be a demo or some kind of interactive example.
thih9 6y ago
> What is creative coding? The project's readme links to a wikipedia page that defines the term and provides examples. "Creative coding is a type of computer programming in which the goal is to create something expressive instead of something functional." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_coding
- ericlewis 6y ago
  That definition irks me a bit because technically the creativity they have done is functional and it just makes me think they're talking about something even stranger.
dang 6y ago
Ok, we'll change the URL above, from https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka https://github.com/eeeeaaii/vodka to the intro page.

marcodiego 6y ago

Title makes me think of the Ballmer peak: https://xkcd.com/323/ https://xkcd.com/323/

ballmerspeak 6y ago
It had to have started there right? But I think this could also be valuable before hitting the peak. But then again, unraveling a drunkenly produced chunk of LISP doesn't exactly sound fun either.

tsherr 6y ago

I'm not sure what the point is? Am I coding? Writing a novel? I can get the first letter of a word? Why do I want to, as a creative writer?

markmiro 6y ago

This looks like a text-first coding environment I like the idea of building websites and writing blog posts by starting with text and slowly taking different parts of it and adding dynamic functionality Maybe I want to embed the current date somewhere Maybe I want to embed a chart It's not exactly a new idea, but doing things with LISP might provide some useful invariants Hoping I understand this correctly

kleer001 6y ago

Uhhh, what problem does this solve?

lambda_obrien 6y ago
Not everything has to solve some problem, some things are for art, or love, or because you were bored.
- throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
  ...or intoxicated. Hence the name.
  - kleer001 6y ago
    There's so many types of stories behind the naming of things, Vodka could be a backronym or a personal story or getting drunk.
- kleer001 6y ago
  Art solves aesthetic problems, constraints drive creativity. Love solves the problem of reproduction, competition and evolution. Boredom solves the problem of creativity, it's the other side of the coin, a kind of destruction at the very least of time. What's the edge of that coin? Maintenance.

notjulianjaynes 6y ago

This looks interesting. Someone posted a link to that Hemingway writing app a few days ago, and I remember thinking that might be useful if there was a way to define your own rules. I could see this possibly being a good way to make "n+7" poems, other Oulipo styled stuff [1]. See example 16: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/bernstein/experiments.html http://www.writing.upenn.edu/bernstein/experiments.html

inetsee 6y ago

There was a suite of software developed for Unix in the late 80s called "The Writer's Workbench", described in Wikipedia as "perhaps the earliest grammar checker to receive wide usage on Unix systems." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer's_Workbench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer's_Workbench There is another program named "Writers Workbench" which is available as an online version and as a plugin for Microsoft Word. https://www.writersworkbench.com/ https://www.writersworkbench.com/ It wasn't clear to me whether the "Writer's Workbench" was derived from, or inspired by, the earlier Unix software.

O_H_E 6y ago

From the linked wiki about creative coding: > Creative coding is a type of computer programming in which the goal is to create something expressive instead of something functional. from the linked page: > Have you ever wanted to open up the hood of your word processor and tinker with what it's doing? Exploded mode in Vodka is how you do that. Exploded mode shows the guts of your Vodka doc -- the data structures and information that is underlying what you're seeing. .... > Vodka is a Lisp, but instead of parentheses, it uses boxes. ----- And maybe I will add, that instead of variables and data-structures, it operates on the prose you are writing. It is definitely hard to explain, but pretty cool nevertheless.

mjh2539 6y ago

If you can't think of a descriptive name for your tool or product, maybe you should pause, think on it, and resist the temptation to pick a completely irrelevant one-word noun. Call me a codger. I don't care. This crap was old ten years ago. It's still old.

GauntletWizard 6y ago
I would hardly call it irrelevant. The name means “Vodka helps you write creatively”, which is a sentiment Ernest Hemingway would have agreed with.
- refulgentis 6y ago
  hunter thompson would agree with weed, or cocaine - all of these aren't the right choice for an app name, it's clever, but lacks enough context to require enough active thinking to be jarring
- SBArbeit 6y ago
  I just assumed it was called Vodka because that's what I'd need to deal with anything Lisp-related. :-) I guess they could have called it "OG Kush" too...
- sedatk 6y ago
  As a matter of fact, I first thought the title was a metaphor like "there is no lack of creativity, only lack of vodka".
saeranv 6y ago
It's smart to have an irrelevant one-word noun name, it gives you the flexibility to pivot your product over time, without being tied to an overly-specific name.
- EpicEng 6y ago
  "It allows you to fail multiple times without changing the product name" Great.

splatzone 6y ago

This looks very interesting, but I think you need to give us some more examples of what you can do with it

tcbasche 6y ago

I love the commit messages ... > several changes > too many changes to list > did a bunch of updates to the test framework

krageon 6y ago
I like them too. Seeing commit messages like this makes me feel a bit better about publishing my own repositories (which are invariably full of cursing and commit messages which are not descriptive) without doing significant history edits and rewriting most of it. Having to sanitise everything to conform to the meme of perfect descriptiveness is about 40% of what stops me from doing so in most cases, with another 40% being the name.

georgeoliver 6y ago

I'll admit I don't know how the creator imagines this will be used, but it did suggest an interesting use case to me. Sometimes text adventure writers will write a full transcript of their game before they code it, but typically there is a large structural and semantic difference between a transcript and a program, so there are some barriers to the translation of transcript -> program. With a tool like this you possibly could remove and/or alter those barriers to enhance the programming process. I imagine the same method might apply to developing chat bots and the like as well.

inbx0 6y ago
There are a few DSLs for this purpose, like Ink [1]. [1]: https://github.com/inkle/ink https://github.com/inkle/ink

fctorial 6y ago

Crashes with this error when I visit the url: [$] ./runserver.sh Server running at http://127.0.0.1:3000/ http://127.0.0.1:3000/ internal/fs/utils.js:230 throw err; ^ Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir './sounds' at Object.readdirSync (fs.js:887:3) at getAudioFileIncludes (/mnt/DATA/src/vodka/server/webserver.js:104:17) at transformHost (/mnt/DATA/src/vodka/server/webserver.js:117:14) at /mnt/DATA/src/vodka/server/webserver.js:137:12 at FSReqCallback.readFileAfterClose [as oncomplete] (internal/fs/read_file_context.js:63:3) { errno: -2, syscall: 'scandir', code: 'ENOENT', path: './sounds' }

ngcc_hk 6y ago

Should it be more a text result and an underlying text based code (word perfect) And further a notebook like for the underlying (python and R notebook). 2 windows showed next to each other. Somehow this text is the program Then turn into box ... not sure.

jes5199 6y ago

for all those writers who find that the barrier to leaning programming is all that text editing