<http://mesh-spreadsheet.com/> - this part in part...
# thinking-together
s
http://mesh-spreadsheet.com/ - this part in particular:
A ‘real’ programming language?
You can write real programs in a spreadsheet! For example, here’s what Mesh’s own code looks like.
Writing code in a spreadsheet format provides you with immediate feedback and lets you lay out your program on a 2D canvas. I highly recommend trying it.
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m
I think Eve went this way and failed.
s
Did Eve fail because of the spreadsheet choice in particular?
d
Lots of people went the "programming language" route, and failed. Lots of people named Joe, failed
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i
Define "fail" - we chose not continue down the 2d grid route because that level of rigidity in structure isn't a good fit for larger, higher dimensional systems. That doesn't mean there's not a great tool for a different purpose down that avenue 🙂
@Corey was particularly excited about "Grid Eve" and I think there's a lot of fruitful territory to explore there.
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m
@ibdknox By fail I mean exactly that. “Programming” with tables is not sustainable. Real programmers will demand more flexibility, while “tinkerers” will demand less complexity. It is definitely an interesting thing to investigate, but so far I did not see real-world applications for this approach that really fly. Maybe for some specific tasks/domain it will. But not for general programming IMHO. BTW, Eve history is fascinating. I personally learned a lot. Thanks for documenting your passionate path.
d
IDK, I think a combination of SK's functional+streams approach, and whichever table-based functional model built on python that he called "an ideal way to code" (anyone knows which that was?) ... I think there's some promise on there for general programming, at least in the pure-functional side if things
e
i added 1234 + a string and got garbage, it is as expected, but it is garbage because it should have been caught as an error...
I highly recommend you reconsider using conventional JS arithmetic in your spreadsheet. One of the absolute best things about spreadsheets is the protected arithmetic, whereby you cannot make a dumb mistakes. You sure as hell don't want to adopt the JS madness of overloading the + operator for concatenation. The users rely on these protections. JS programmers seem to not mind that some tiny subroutine deep in the call chain suddenly converts a number into a string which cause crazy behavior.
s
This is not my project by the way, I just thought it looked interesting.
d
I think a good compromise would be to generate some "error" token in cases like that. That way you don't get nonsense results, but it also doesn't make the whole program blow up in your face. I also like giving null for a.b.c.d... when anything in that chain is null
c
(It is my project.) Shallow tables can represent trees of data, so that won’t be an issue for Mesh. See, eg: http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10500340 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hzPd3umu78g