Last year I used the advent of code to test the visual programming environment that I was building at that time.. and it helped me to come to the conclusion to start over.. which I did at the beginning of this year. So... the time has come to test my new environment and let advent of code help me improve and extend it. Hopefully this year I won't need to decide to start over😅. To finish the first challenge I needed to extend my vps with new node types or tweak some other stuff like be able to execute regex expressions and load external files as input to a flow. For the second part of day 1 a special node needed to be created to handle the sneaky replace string functionality that was needed. A very nice update that I made is the possibility to run parts of flow in parallel instead of sequential and use the results in the upstream nodes. And talking about upstream nodes... since last week it's also possible to drag all upstream or downstream nodes at once when reorganizing a flow using UI elements(it can be seen in the video). In the flow-engine I also use standalone nodes that represent global variables which can be used in other nodes. I'll definitely not make it to the AoC leaderboard (it's not a goal anyway).. however.. I think I am getting a lot of value out of this already..even on day 1.

The grouped move of all downstream or upstream nodes is a great mechanism. In our vpl we can connect wires "backwards" into upstream components, so any component can now be considered both downstream and upstream from a node. I wonder how this "smart selection" would work then. Are you identifying downstream by connections or by visual position?

I also check the position because I can have "loops" in some flows. It doesn't work perfectly but better then when I don't check the X position of nodes