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Atlas, a hopefully better engineering IDE
- throwaway888abc 5y agoJoined, looks promising
- haolez 5y agoI hope it's open source!
- analog31 5y agoLooks like fun. I like it. Right now my tool of choice for calculation is Jupyter/Python, and it would be interesting to try both alongside one another on a moderately difficult problem.
- javajosh 5y agoYou lost me at "driving progress in the world of atoms." But seriously, it looks lovely.
- caymanjim 5y agoThis looks neat. Writing tip for the person speaking (or captioning): starting a sentence with "so" makes you come off like...something I don't have the word for, but it's bad. Don't do it. Condescending? Demeaning? It's like you don't think your audience is capable of following. I had to stop watching after four sentences in a row started that way.
- andrewzah 5y agoOr we could not police people's language. "So" is a way to start sentences; like anything else, it can be overused. Just like "like", etc. There's a good podcast episode from John Mcwhorter on this "So" phenomenon. [0] TL;DL It has some interesting applications (including functioning as a discourse marker), and isn't going away anytime soon. [0]: https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/10/john-mcwhorter-on-starting-sentences-with-so.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/10/john-mcwhorter-on-s...
- chrismorgan 5y agoLike it or not, perception matters. Take accents as a similar and more obvious case: rural accents will often cause you to be looked down on, and so some find it extremely valuable to deliberately adjust their accent (in some lines of work, it’s pretty much essential to hone a certain accent). So it’s often worth at least contemplating such feedback, if you care about being taken seriously. (But don’t get too hung up on it if you’re just a normal person, either.) Just to emphasise this the more clearly: I’m talking about facts of life here, not ideals.
- jchw 5y agoWell, I think that starting a sentence with “So” is pretty natural and common. Indeed: > So it’s often worth at least contemplating such feedback, if you care about being taken seriously. (Maybe you were intending to joke here, but it still came off as “pretty natural.”)
- chrismorgan 5y agoMy use of the word “so” there occurred naturally and I deliberately left it there. However, it’s a different sense of the word “so”: it’s concretely meaning therefore, rather than just being a meaningless filler.
- messe 5y ago> My use of the word “so” there occurred naturally What was unnatural about the original use? English isn't exactly standardized, there are plenty of dialects in which "so" is a common way to start a sentence. It might not be part of what you perceive as the prestige[1] dialect, but it's still natural. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_(sociolinguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_(sociolinguistics)
- chrismorgan 5y agoNothing. jchw was just querying whether I’d put it in deliberately. I didn’t; it was the wording that flowed out of my fingers (and then I decided to keep it).
- chrismorgan 5y agoThe way it’s used in that video is not uncommon in at least Australian English. It’s largely just a filler when used in this sense.
- lolinder 5y agoIt's very common in American English as well, and it functions the same way, as a filler. I'm not sure where the OP got the sense that it was condescending.
- renewiltord 5y agoIt's common in the Northern California tech industry. People will prefix questions by saying "Question" or statements with "So". It's sort of phatic, like a header that prepares the listener for what's coming. No one would take offence at it there. However, I agree that it is out of place in a demonstration video since people are looking for the info in the first place and already know what's coming. Would you mind sharing where you're from so I know which region I should be careful to not offend people by speaking like this?
- ZephyrBlu 5y agoIt's kind of annoying and bad English, but I don't think it's condescending.
- gravypod 5y agoI've done a lot of napkin math in NaSC [0]. Unfortunately it was buggy and often crashed so I had to stop using it. I'd love for something like this that could also be checked into repo and used to "compile" into constants that can be used in code. For example: plan the resources required to run for `demand(requests)` and load that into code and run that to scale up/down replicas or something. [0] - https://appcenter.elementary.io/com.github.parnold-x.nasc/ https://appcenter.elementary.io/com.github.parnold-x.nasc/
- elcritch 5y agoI’m using NaSC and it’s not too bad. Though not as good as Calca, but Calca isn’t available for purchase on Linux. :/ I’m curious about this one. Though I’d prefer a plain text storage format but otherwise it’d need to be cross platform.
- fish45 5y agoPlugging, my own site, https://calcula.tech https://calcula.tech. It's not meant to compete with something like Atlas but I like to think it's great for napkin math, even though it's still quite early in development.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rmujica 5y agoIt seems kind of MathCAD
- ibraheemdev 5y agoLooks really nice! Btw, the thumbnail on the homepage is a bit fuzzy, although the video itself is good quality.
- nXqd 5y agothis looks really awesome. I don't know about engineering IDE, but i definitely see how useful it is. Congrats
- 1cvmask 5y agoWill this be a SaaS offering?
- woggy 5y agoIs this meant to compete with MathCAD and MapleFlow?
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y agoThis "Atlas Engineering" is an unfortunate name conflict with the developers of the Nyxt browser: https://atlas.engineer https://atlas.engineer
- ppsreejith 5y agoSeems like they're associated with the development of Nyxt since they link to Nyxt here -> https://source.atlas.engineer/ https://source.atlas.engineer/
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y agoSorry, I phrased it badly: the OP links to http://atlasengineering.io http://atlasengineering.io and when I see "Atlass Engineering" I think of this: https://atlas.engineer https://atlas.engineer
- avery-dawn 5y agoWhat do you think the headline should've been?
- forgotpwd16 5y agoI initially thought Nyxt devs were building this when I saw the name/domain.
- jmercouris 5y agoIndeed, that is exactly what I thought as well :-)
- mvzvm 5y ago> Write equations; not code This is a little odd to me - I generally prefer to write my math in code if its going to be executed. I find my preferences to be pen and paper (or whiteboard)> latex, so perhaps I am not the target demographic here.
- gmiller123456 5y agoWe must be evil twins in opposite universes. I've always wanted to be able to code the equations the way they look on paper. I actually am quite annoyed that most languages won't let you use Greek characters as variables. To me, it just makes it easier to spot errors.
- anon_tor_12345 5y agoyou can get pretty close with mathematica using the notation package e.g. these three defines compute euler-lagrange equations given a lagrangian. https://imgur.com/aMfdYQy https://imgur.com/aMfdYQy
- ShamelessC 5y agoI mean I guess that makes sense for a mathematics-oriented language. Generally, literate coding would encourage you to come up with friendlier variable names as software engineers aren't mathematicians per se and code is meant to be accessible to more than just academics/mathematicians. In particular, I see a lot of this done in machine learning python code. Lots of "z", not "zeta", etc. Pretty tough to understand as a non-researcher.
- threatofrain 5y agoIt seems backward to try and understand a known math technique or fact from code when there are likely pedagogical presentations of the same material. And if we're talking about novel math, it seems more than fair to ask that the reader is comfortable with the domain. Can you imagine someone learning math by contemplating the sum of effects in a program? Heaven forbid there's any emphasis on performance whatsoever.
- 5y ago
- burke 5y agoTracking units is a thing that I rarely have a use for (as a non-engineer), but when I do, I’m totally mystified by how bad almost every language is at it. F# is the only actual programming language I found that even tries. It does a pretty decent job, but even it has some disappointing holes (e.g. not being able to understand g and kg as scaled versions of the same dimension). I guess the overlap between physicists/engineers and type system/PLT people isn’t large enough.
- g_delgado14 5y agoIsn't the "newtype" pattern something that addresses this issue elegantly? Is there something that I'm missing here?
- burke 5y agoYep, it allows you to tag something a metres per second, but it doesn’t automatically make multiplying it by a duration yield a distance without writing any custom code. F# can do that, and it’s rather cool. There are dimensional analysis libraries for other languages, but none that I’m aware of baked in.
- heisenzombie 5y agoNot really, a units systems needs to be able to combine units in a useful way, like if I typed this: radius = 15 [mm] area = pi*radius^3 force = 100 [N] def will_i_blow_up(pressure [Pa]): if(pressure > 1 [Gpa]): return "Oh no it blew up" will_i_blow_up( force/area ) should raise an error like "UnitsException, [N/mm^3] is not compatible with [Pa]". I could then look over my code and realize I should have written: area = pi*radius^2
- cwhy 5y agoThis is rather a math-specific operation (type conversion on math operators), not the scope of general purpose language. A lot of dependent typed language can achieve this naturally and most languages with ADT can simulate this.
- R0b0t1 5y agoIf it's not OSS it is unlikely to succeed.
- sidpatil 5y agoThat's not true, in my experience. This tool reminds me of MathCAD, which is both moderately popular and proprietary. The most popular numerical computing environment for engineering is MATLAB, which is proprietary.
- R0b0t1 5y agoThe state of the art is done in other languages now, specifically Python with numpy and extensions, R, or Julia. There was a time for proprietary systems like this but I think it has passed.
- sidpatil 5y agoSure, in the fields of computer science, data science, etc. However, this is not the case in more traditional engineering fields (electrical, mechanical, etc.) which tend to teach MATLAB throughout undergraduate education and subsequently rely on it throughout graduate education, research, and industry. MATLAB has some significant benefits over the FOSS alternatives, such as its first-party commercially-supported extensions/libraries (known as "Toolboxes"), and commercial support for the core product itself.
- R0b0t1 5y agoYes and no. I work at an engineering/R&D firm. It's a mix. If you check research in those areas it tends to, at least by my estimation, newer software packages typically based on Python or C++. I'm aware there are existing tools that see heavy use but that does not make them state of the art or cutting edge, merely sufficient. And yes, that can be enough. But for new work? Why throw in behind these guys?
- LegitShady 5y agoI took civil engineering. Our introductory computer science course was in javascript, but course work later was in Fortran (which I didn't mind) and then python. There was also some matlab for labs but the programming was mostly fortran. One of my professors was doing some research in spring and dampener systems and the models were all in fortran as well.
- ampdepolymerase 5y agoReminds me of https://blockpad.net/ https://blockpad.net/
- navane 5y agothanks for the tip!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gnzoidberg 5y agoYet another engineering IDE. YAEIDE?
- PostHeat 5y agoThis is really cool. Is the main use case for something like this over wolfram alpha the use of writing the equations directly? Are there any other features that this has hidden that I can't get on wolfram alpha?
- benhurmarcel 5y agoWolframAlpha only works if you can write your calculation on one line, and without manipulating variables.
- francislavoie 5y agoI see your site isn't using HTTPS yet. Might I recommend trying https://caddyserver.com https://caddyserver.com to serve it? You'll get automatic HTTPS.
- markasoftware 5y agoHow's it going to beat Mathcad?
- guest34567891 5y agoI thought this was related to Mongo Atlas from the title.
- nl 5y agoWhy the editorial in the title (currently "Atlas, a (hopefully) better engineering IDE")? Page title is "A better engineering tool". Hard to say exactly what it is.. a competitor to Mathematica maybe? But it's not an IDE in the way most software developers would understand an IDE
- xdever 5y agoThis reminded me of http://engineerjs.com/ http://engineerjs.com/, a hobby project we did with some friends many years ago. One can write a JS code extended with unit support, linear algebra, complex numbers, create plots, share scripts, create libraries with interactive documentation support (this one never went public), etc. Everything runs in the browser on the user side. The test version (test.engineerjs.com) even has google drive support and can read/write files on it (although Google changed something in the meantime, and it started complaining about not being a verified application). The idea was that everyone could create libraries that others can import use directly. It doesn't have this nice GUI though.
- danellis 5y agoI think this kind of this is called a notebook, isn't it? Not an IDE, since it's not for development and doesn't seem to integrate anything. I can imagine it would make a nice plugin for an IDE, though, for people doing that kind of work.
- forgotpwd16 5y agoFrom its homepage this appears to be a Mathcad competitor. For a freeware yet very good imitator (not clone) check SMath Studio.
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- thecupisblue 5y agoI love this! Even tho I am not a engineer as such, when I develop or wonder something I have to use Numi, and visualisations are always DIY. Really excited about the Atlas block exchange part, I want a library of common math/physics functions & values so I dont have to google.
- gjm11 5y agoWhen I see this sort of thing I always want to know something that is seldom made clear: what is actually implemented so far?. The video begins "This is Atlas, a concept for a new engineering IDE". (To me, that strongly suggests that rather little is actually implemented yet, and that what we're about to see is a lot of canned demos, because otherwise it would be a new engineering IDE, not just a "concept" for one.) But then most of what follows, and pretty much everything on the webpage, says that Atlas does this or that, not "will do". And the trouble with "concepts" is that unlike actual implementations they aren't much of a guide to what you're ever actually going to get. It's easy to think "X would be cool" and say "Atlas does X", but some Xs are much more realistically implementable than others, and how interesting Atlas actually is depends on which of those Xs are ever actually going to be implemented. But reading the page and watching the video I have literally no idea where the project is on a scale from "we wrote down some things it would be cool to do and rigged up a demo that pretends to do them" to "everything here is already implemented, though there are a few gaps and bugs here and there".
- shireboy 5y agoSomething I think would be cool for a tool like this is to export code in various languages. Work out your algorithm in more "mathy" tool, but then spit out plain C#/F#/Python/Javascript to implement it in an app. Definitely a niche need, but I've had times where I think this would save a ton of time. This could also be useful where you have engineers who need to work similar to what the video shows, but then coders who need to implement in business software etc.
- jedimastert 5y agoThe problem here is that each language has different features and different strengths and weaknesses. For example, I would have very different implementations of, say, the A* algorithm in C++ vs Python, to the point that they would not translate into each other very well
- siproprio 5y agoAll those things, except units, can be done in Matlab. You can just drop a file into your workspace and they'll parse it! They also have fantastic code generation support, so your "data cleanup" is actually reproducible. And Mathematica is really good at typing equations. I'm interested in seeing how atlas works.