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processing is a framework for creating graphics and visualization. i am sure this is a good way to write the graphical language container, but i was looking mo

by jdavid 17y ago

processing is a framework for creating graphics and visualization. i am sure this is a good way to write the graphical language container, but i was looking more for what graphical metaphors should exist if we wanted to solve problems using a graphical layout.

silentbicycle 17y ago
All right, for starters: Most algorithms can be decomposed into graph problems. (Trees are a subset of graphs.) Set operations, as you noted, can usually be visualized with venn diagrams. Multiple inheritance may make more sense as a tree growing together. A garbage collector's arena could show its data fading away when it hasn't been accessed for a while. I like the idea of a hash of a variable affecting its color, making structurally equal items easier to spot. Have you ever seen lavaps (http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/SOFTWARE/LAVAPS/index.html http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/SOFTWARE/LAVAPS/index.html), by the way? To turn the question on its head, I wonder what concepts remain undiscovered because people tend to brainstorm visually (on whiteboards, etc.), but some ideas are intrinsically hard to depict visually. (Speaking as somebody who is more textually-minded, but has become good at spatial thinking because of 3D programming.) Brainstorming in terms of sound (harmonic scales or rhythms) could bring out different solutions, for example. I find anthropomorphizing components of a problem (like the actor model) helpful, too.
- jdavid 17y ago
  i like the idea of any vr, or augmented reality components being brought into the programing language environment. the way i see it, text based languages lend them selves well to linear thinking and linear processing. i think we are moving to a place where we need to move passed linear thinking and move more towards networked processes. it seems to me that on large sites, you might want to do A/B testing on a number of features to see which ones work better, this means staged deployment, testing and programing are done in a really complex way. we should accept this as part of the pattern and design environments and tools to make this easier to debug, without a whole bunch of "if" statements cluttering the code to determine the configuration state. i also see writing functions now as part of the design process, and i always like some of the metaphors in UML, but UML also always lacked into translating directly into code.

by jdavid 17y ago

silentbicycle 17y ago

All right, for starters: Most algorithms can be decomposed into graph problems. (Trees are a subset of graphs.) Set operations, as you noted, can usually be visualized with venn diagrams. Multiple inheritance may make more sense as a tree growing together. A garbage collector's arena could show its data fading away when it hasn't been accessed for a while. I like the idea of a hash of a variable affecting its color, making structurally equal items easier to spot. Have you ever seen lavaps (http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/SOFTWARE/LAVAPS/index.html http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/SOFTWARE/LAVAPS/index.html), by the way? To turn the question on its head, I wonder what concepts remain undiscovered because people tend to brainstorm visually (on whiteboards, etc.), but some ideas are intrinsically hard to depict visually. (Speaking as somebody who is more textually-minded, but has become good at spatial thinking because of 3D programming.) Brainstorming in terms of sound (harmonic scales or rhythms) could bring out different solutions, for example. I find anthropomorphizing components of a problem (like the actor model) helpful, too.

jdavid 17y ago
i like the idea of any vr, or augmented reality components being brought into the programing language environment. the way i see it, text based languages lend them selves well to linear thinking and linear processing. i think we are moving to a place where we need to move passed linear thinking and move more towards networked processes. it seems to me that on large sites, you might want to do A/B testing on a number of features to see which ones work better, this means staged deployment, testing and programing are done in a really complex way. we should accept this as part of the pattern and design environments and tools to make this easier to debug, without a whole bunch of "if" statements cluttering the code to determine the configuration state. i also see writing functions now as part of the design process, and i always like some of the metaphors in UML, but UML also always lacked into translating directly into code.