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Lately I've felt a lot of "big feelings” — pain, y...
# devlog-together
i
Lately I've felt a lot of "big feelings” — pain, yearning, confusion, frustration, desire — about computer programming. I can't quite explain how I feel. Certainly can't write it down. Most definitely not in brief. So I did the only thing that comes naturally: felt my way through it, out loud, exploratively. Titles are hard, so it's called "Live as in Alive”, perhaps glancing sideways at the recent d-d-discourse about live programming vs live coding. #40 —> https://ivanish.ca/hest-podcast/
j
That's a very helpful explanation of the why of hest, actually. I think I get it now, in a way that I didn't get it before. You don't want to rewind like scrubbing a video, for example. You want to sort of tilt the world, changing the direction of gravity's pull, and have the river of computation pour back up the hill. Because hell yeah.
i
Yes. It's not taking you back to an earlier state, it's executing things in reverse. And if you changed the data manually, executing in reverse takes you to a state you hadn't been in before. Just to double-check — did you listen to episode 40, or 38?
j
You could do some kinds of logic programming by designing molecules with two different types of binding sites, where each binding site has a graph diagram that represents a logical clause, variables on all binding sites are connected, you throw copies of these molecules into a solution, catalyse a query molecule type to do backward chaining, catalyse a fact molecule type to do forward chaining, catalyse a rule molecule type to do middle-out chaining, and agitate the solution so catalyzed molecules will be attracted to and bind to other molecules with a graph diagram that unifies on the opposite binding type. As you agitate, you get a preview of the new molecules being formed. When you remove or run out of catalyst, any newly formed molecules with empty binding sites dissolve, and the remaining new molecules represent answers to your query. "Stable model constrained answer set chemistry." 😅
m
Thanks for this episode @Ivan Reese .. I recognize the feeling of missing that liveness that you describe (I've very intensively played with ableton in the past and off course I recognize the experience of dealing with css .. which is much different then regular programming. My first paid project was a game actually .. in 1991 .. but in a pretty dead programming environment: 6510 assembler). When I see the dots moving in my own project (code flow canvas) and play around with the timeline slider and make changes I do get a bit of an "it's a live" feeling myself.. but I know it's far from that. I want more of that for sure 😊 . So I keep exploring as well 😄
j
It was 40! The reversing time thing is just an example of what I feel like I hadn't grokked before.
m
I've been thinking about this further and also which type of software would benefit most from this "ableton-liveness". Ableton itself is modeled on a hardware synthesizer/mixer/effect/controller setup combined with modern UI. So that is a perfect fit I think. In my day job I work with a bit boring (but valuable) business software for my day to day projects which needs to have constant results and no side effects that are random or "alive". So there it wouldn't be of help I think. But in much more creative domains or for exploring concepts (maybe even in business software).. I do think it helps and gives different perspectives
g
I listened to @Ivan Reese 's #40 and I feel compelled to ask "what is programming?". I think that there are several ways to answer this question, yet feel that the majority thinks that there is but only one way to answer this question (i.e. function-based design).
i
@Maikel — Yeah, I think the concerns about consistency and randomness are fair and well-meaning, but ultimately counterproductive — and you're certainly not alone in voicing them (@Kartik Agaram said something to the effect of "fucking mice, don't touch my damn cheese!" which is wildly out of character for him but yeah that guy never ceases to surprise me). I am not going to be able to do anything in my lifetime that stops anyone from writing business software, as much as I would love to. I'm also not, in a million years, going to try to design a programming system that stands up to the demands of having business software built in it. That camp is over there, and I'm over here, and never the two shall meet. But there's more possibility space here than just business software and research faff. One of the more serious domains that does seem to have some overlap with my desires for aliveness is electrical engineering. EEs bend physics, and physics is the biggest cheese-mover in the room. When they get deep enough in the sauce, EEs need to grapple with all sorts of wildness. I think it'd be possible to make something that feels alive while being truer to the laws of physics than most software is, in a way that'd make EEs feel at home. (I'm not interested in doing this, but it's worth thinking about.) @Dave Ackley is also a big proponent of getting away from worries about consistency and determinism, and I think his reasoning is rock solid — when you start doing things spread-out in space (or time), you need to deal with some inherent, inescapable nondeterminism, and the only scalable choice is to just lean into that and see what you can do with it, see if you can dance with it and bend it into a beautiful bow, weave it into your hair and come up with a meal plan where you balance nondeterminism with other kinds of fibre. (His exact words, of course — and totally in character at that!)
d
@Ivan Reese you may want to update the URL in the opening post to https://ivanish.ca/hest/podcast/ 😉
@Ivan Reese really interesting listening to your #40. A few things came up for me that may not even relate but hey! The itch? Everyone has a different itch they like to scratch. Be you a gamer or a coder. I'm wondering if it would be interesting to try to describe the itch. But in a way that could be discussed with others. What fires me up? What am I passionate about? What do I hate? I'm immediately questioning my own itch. Now I love computers and art and music. And I love creating in all those mediums. But when it comes down to it I love love more than anything else. I realise after 56 years (and counting) I'm using those mediums in service of that love. I want everyone to love themselves and each other. I was writing songs about world peace in my early teens. Sounds sickly, eh? ;-) I think the "alive" property is subjective. It depends on the person's itch. For example, using a DAW immerses us in a live audio environment with properties just like a physical recording studio of old (pre-digital). Is that the itch? But when I'm dreaming of world peace/love, I take delight in writing a song that'll get the message over or a bit of tech that might lead people to value their own power. I'm driven by the goal. So, it doesn't matter what I'm doing: the goal/itch provides the context for the medium I'm working in – it provides the "alive". Because I'm always imagining what the impact, of what I'm creating, will have on the people who will listen to it or will use it – or maybe I'm just liking how I might feel. And I admit it's total fantasy. But hey! Fantasy is powerful. While we're on it, personally, I'm a little bit creeped out by Dynamicland. I'm not sure I want all pervasive computing environments. I want to be able to switch off. Switch off everything. Detox. For days if necessary. I sometimes want my interface to real life to be just real life and nothing else. So, systems that are capable of being switched off and still allow humans to function as humans is a prerequisite to sane systems AFAIAC. I hope we keep the steering wheels in self driving cars – just in case. There's something about computers that I don't fully feel comfortable with – I think it's related to the fact that most computer systems reduce reality to a binary stream. And no matter the resolution of the AD conversion it leaves a metallic taste in my mouth. I want clear separation between my body and everything else. I'll take a deeper look into HEST. It may have answer to my desire to create apps just like I create spreadsheets with Excel. Thanks!
i
First, thanks for reporting the broken link. I had set up a redirect, and tested it, but I guess at some point it broke. Computers. Sigh. Second, I really enjoyed reading about your various feelings. They're quite different from mine, to the point that I bet if we dug into it, we'd find we're using words like "alive" in different senses. I think that's good! I like taking in your expression without needing to do anything with it… just taking it in. I have such a broken/tortured relationship with love, so it brings me joy to hear you so forthrightly shouting that out as your goal. Not sickly / saccharine at all — you're just saying what you want for yourself. That doesn't need to be judged. I just watched both Ghost in the Shell movies back-to-back. The new one uses these overwhelming holographic advertisements in all the shots of cityscapes and streets. That's definitely a manifested hellscape. I could imagine the perversion of Dynamicland accomplishing something like that too. But the version where it's a library? A physical place you can go to, and leave? That feels much more reasonable. So yes, I also like to unplug, can totally relate. Finally, don't go looking for anything substantial with respect to Hest. It's just a collection of ideas — or even reckons — about how to make node-wire programming a small amount better.
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