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imho we are still riding the peak of inflated expectations when it comes to Bret Victor stuff. I'd rather see focus in making our current batch of tools way be

imho we are still riding the peak of inflated expectations when it comes to Bret Victor stuff. I'd rather see focus in making our current batch of tools way better rather than looking for direct manipulation methods, A.I. assisted no-code environments, novel user interfaces, retro-futuristic hypercard-excel mashups, etc etc</grinch> :-p To be fair "seeing" doesn't necessarily mean drawing vector graphics, any advance helping reveal hidden structure of a codebase or generate better documentation would also allow us to better "see" the working of the code... I'm all for that! I hope things like model driven development get a second renaissance at some point, without the burden of UML, the sad XML reputation, "extreme programming" BS and such. One project I like that's futuristic, and yet has reasonable goals, is Unison [1]. 1: https://www.unisonweb.org/ https://www.unisonweb.org/

Kwantuum 6y ago
> To be fair "seeing" doesn't necessarily mean drawing vector graphics, any advance helping reveal hidden structure of a codebase or generate better documentation would also allow us to better "see" the working of the code... I'm all for that! This is basically what a good debugging environment is. Some of the best tooling out there is the dev-tools of modern browsers: you get a regular debugger where you can step through code and see the state, you also get some performance and memory visualization tools, you get an interactive html editor in which changes are reflected in real time, you get color pickers when modifying css colors, you can visualize the timing of requests, and you get autocomplete propositions all over the place.
- emmanueloga_ 6y ago
  100% agree, debuggers are often neglected. Chrome's debugger is one of the exceptions. Java has great debuggers too. Debuggers are about the dynamics of the program... I'm thinking more about the static structure of the codebase. Tools like sourcegraph [1] address some of that. The STEPS report [2] comes to mind for other cool ideas in this direction: it is easier to navigate the code if there's less of it! 1: https://about.sourcegraph.com/ https://about.sourcegraph.com/ 2: http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf

Kwantuum 6y ago

> To be fair "seeing" doesn't necessarily mean drawing vector graphics, any advance helping reveal hidden structure of a codebase or generate better documentation would also allow us to better "see" the working of the code... I'm all for that! This is basically what a good debugging environment is. Some of the best tooling out there is the dev-tools of modern browsers: you get a regular debugger where you can step through code and see the state, you also get some performance and memory visualization tools, you get an interactive html editor in which changes are reflected in real time, you get color pickers when modifying css colors, you can visualize the timing of requests, and you get autocomplete propositions all over the place.

emmanueloga_ 6y ago
100% agree, debuggers are often neglected. Chrome's debugger is one of the exceptions. Java has great debuggers too. Debuggers are about the dynamics of the program... I'm thinking more about the static structure of the codebase. Tools like sourcegraph [1] address some of that. The STEPS report [2] comes to mind for other cool ideas in this direction: it is easier to navigate the code if there's less of it! 1: https://about.sourcegraph.com/ https://about.sourcegraph.com/ 2: http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf