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Reading the article, it seems more about programming your sketches to react as you draw, than using sketches for programming. I think both directions are intere

Reading the article, it seems more about programming your sketches to react as you draw, than using sketches for programming. I think both directions are interesting, but actually the latter catches my imagination more. Visual scripting could be a good start. Unreal's Blueprints are really good with their UI and they provide plenty of usability. Perhaps if you could draw your own nodes with the properties you want, this could create the missing link for a truly hand drawn visual programming language.

abdullahkhalids 4y ago
On the other hand, can one just scribble code with hand and use OCR to get it right?
- bogwog 4y ago
  Programming languages require a lot of precision (one missing symbol, improperly capitalized letter, etc will break the entire thing), whereas even the best OCR is very imprecise. That sounds like a really bad combination. On the other hand, maybe a specialized programming language optimized for that could work. The blueprints idea seems like a good concept to start with.
  - abdullahkhalids 4y ago
    That was definitely in my mind. There are dyslexic fonts to help people not confuse letters. We want a programming language whose structure is fairly immune to small mistakes. This is helped by the fact that inkbase has a domain-specific language, which does not have to be generally expressive, and where often short snippets are to be written.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    It would be nice to be able to basically write an equation and have it evaluate. Even a pretty complicated one… A full programming language would be interesting but pretty alien. As someone who for whatever reason tends to end up with lots of super/sub/subsubscripts (sometimes with multiple dimensions in each!) — variables with, like, more than 6 letters are basically a nightmare when writing by hand. I can’t imagine writing at least with typical variable names, by hand. Although maybe a programming language that looked more like prose would be possible.
    - amatic 4y ago
      >It would be nice to be able to basically write an equation and have it evaluate. Even a pretty complicated one… I heard mathpix is basically that, math via ocr to solution (haven't used it personally).
pvh 4y ago
For one exploration of that direction, please see our paper Crosscut: https://www.inkandswitch.com/crosscut/ https://www.inkandswitch.com/crosscut/
fatso784 4y ago
We did this with notational programming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpbOyBqLORU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpbOyBqLORU Paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3526113.3545619 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3526113.3545619

abdullahkhalids 4y ago

On the other hand, can one just scribble code with hand and use OCR to get it right?

bogwog 4y ago
Programming languages require a lot of precision (one missing symbol, improperly capitalized letter, etc will break the entire thing), whereas even the best OCR is very imprecise. That sounds like a really bad combination. On the other hand, maybe a specialized programming language optimized for that could work. The blueprints idea seems like a good concept to start with.
- abdullahkhalids 4y ago
  That was definitely in my mind. There are dyslexic fonts to help people not confuse letters. We want a programming language whose structure is fairly immune to small mistakes. This is helped by the fact that inkbase has a domain-specific language, which does not have to be generally expressive, and where often short snippets are to be written.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  It would be nice to be able to basically write an equation and have it evaluate. Even a pretty complicated one… A full programming language would be interesting but pretty alien. As someone who for whatever reason tends to end up with lots of super/sub/subsubscripts (sometimes with multiple dimensions in each!) — variables with, like, more than 6 letters are basically a nightmare when writing by hand. I can’t imagine writing at least with typical variable names, by hand. Although maybe a programming language that looked more like prose would be possible.
  - amatic 4y ago
    >It would be nice to be able to basically write an equation and have it evaluate. Even a pretty complicated one… I heard mathpix is basically that, math via ocr to solution (haven't used it personally).

pvh 4y ago

For one exploration of that direction, please see our paper Crosscut: https://www.inkandswitch.com/crosscut/ https://www.inkandswitch.com/crosscut/

fatso784 4y ago

We did this with notational programming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpbOyBqLORU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpbOyBqLORU Paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3526113.3545619 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3526113.3545619