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Programming on a Piano Keyboard
- andreastt 12y agoI'm quite surprised Hello World in C# could ever sound so lovely.
- UrlichtZwei 12y agoAwesome hack. It'd be interesting to run the rules in reverse: i.e. take some code, run it backward through the mapping and see what music comes out. (P.S. you can't really call it C# minor if there are no cadences, ya know, in C# minor.)
- hellbreakslose 12y agoInteresting, but reminds me how weird people are.
- rch 12y agoThere's a lot of this sort of thing going on right now actually. I've been experimenting with dynamic interfaces on a tablet and found it to be strangely satisfying to have task-oriented controls come into view when they're likely to be needed.
- totoroisalive 12y agoRefreshing hack news, after all that startup BS.
- quarterto 12y agoMy God, you'd think this were a news site, run by a startup accelerator, that used to be called Startup News!
- NoodleIncident 12y agoWhat's your motivation for making this comment? Do you actually think that this approach will change anyone's opinion on a subject you (clearly) feel very strongly about? Or are you just trying to post what you think the most passers-by will agree with, as loudly and as noticeably as possible?
- liquidise 12y agoAs an aforementioned passerby, i laughed audibly when i read his comment. Then the irony of you calling out his sarcasm instead of the OP's comment slamming startup news was itself refreshing. Well done.
- thegeomaster 12y agoI imagine working in Emacs would sound like Mozart playing.
- totoroisalive 12y agoSo VI would be god hehe
- beeskneecaps 12y agovim would be like dubstep. vwwwwwww (drop the beat!) d.
- gcb0 12y agomost experienced vim users would type dt<letter> or d5wd2w (so you don't have to count everything you go in increments) and also by experience, one should know that everytime you press that many w, you WILL type a b or h :) vwwwwwwwwwwbbd.
- beeskneecaps 12y agoYou know, I typed it out in shorthand at first, but it didn't have the same visual effect. haha That's it, I'm writing a plugin that plays dubstep while you type.
- beeskneecaps 12y agoProbably requires the same amount of hand strength.
- mhd 12y agoFor Emacs, I'd recommend a full-fledged church organ setup.
- dllthomas 12y agoInteresting. I did something a little like this a while back. The way I worked it, it spanned two octaves, and chords in the lower octave determined a one-to-one mapping in the upper. It seemed about as usable as any unfamiliar keyboard, though I didn't play with it for more than about 20 minutes in total.
- JoshTriplett 12y agoFun idea! The note mappings shown at the end of the article seem quite specific to producing the code written for the demo, but I could imagine a more general mapping. Velocity also allows for some interesting possibilities, such as uppercase/lowercase. Rather than mapping chords to individual letters, notes could map to letters and chords involving those letters could map to common patterns with the letters as mnemonics.
- gcb0 12y agowatching it i thought the opposite would be better playing the piano i would often struggle with not enough finger opening/movement. i seeing how slow he 'typed' that code, i think the other way around would make more sense. i.e. learning the piano with a matrix keyboard. We just need pressure sensitive switches. but after that, you would get much more agility. not to mention be able to play pieces that are impossible without 4 hands.
- metaxy2 12y agoThere's actually a whole class of keyboards like this [1], the most popular being the Jankó keyboard [2]. Here's [3] a cool demo by a Jankó virtuoso. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphic_keyboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphic_keyboard [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK4REjqGc9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK4REjqGc9w
- yuriyguts 12y agoYou're right, those particular mappings were mainly for demo purposes. I guess it would be quite inefficient to use the approach from the video on a regular basis. If I used it in real life, I'd probably map the keys to complex macros, unmapped IDE commands, or other features that are hard to memorize on a regular keyboard. In addition to @JoshTriplett's idea about velocity, I guess knobs and faders might have some interesting applications too. P.S. Btw, it's a "she", it's my colleague performing :)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- auvi 12y agoone of the earliest typewriters had a piano type keyboard. [0] http://www.nytstore.com/Typewriter-Patent--1868_p_8837.html http://www.nytstore.com/Typewriter-Patent--1868_p_8837.html
- dspig 12y agoMy suggestion for the sustain pedal is enable/disable all breakpoints.
- elektronaut 12y agoSustain needs to be caps lock, obviously.
- nocman 12y agoThe old Styx song "Too Much Time on My Hands" comes to mind :-D Still looks like fun, though.
- fjcaetano 12y agoNice to see that the key mapping was projected to sound good, not only random notes being played.
- nullc 12y agoTyping via a mapping to the keys is a normal feature in some integrated synthesizers. E.g. the K2600 does it... certantly beats entering in labels for patches via a little wheel or 9-key.
- kylerosenberg 12y agoCheck out OSCulator if you're on a Mac. http://www.osculator.net/ http://www.osculator.net/ You can route MIDI, plus a number of other types of physical controllers like a Wii Remote to keyboard commands, mouse movements, AppleScripts, and more.
- grondilu 12y agoCan it make the opposite and turn code into music?
- lbruder 12y agohttp://thecodelesscode.com/case/132 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/132 ;)
- samweinberg 12y agoI like the idea of using a MIDI trigger pad for things like keyboard shortcuts or text snippets. I'm sure you could make something similar on the cheap with an arduino.
- fasteo 12y ago"How can you tell a programmer from a musician? Ask them what C# is." LOL
- eng_monkey 12y agoI guess this is as sensible as the author's master thesis titled 'Adaptive Object-Oriented Architecture of Information Systems Based on High-Level Petri Nets', where apparently he ran out of keywords to put together.
- yuriyguts 12y agoCounting the number of words is, no doubt, a sensible way to assess the academic value of something. Sure, REST may sound better than 'Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures', but let's stick to http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, section "In Comments".