Felix Kohlgrüber
05/27/2019, 6:15 PMDaniel Hines
05/27/2019, 6:30 PMKartik Agaram
Doug Moen
05/27/2019, 6:47 PMshalabh
05/27/2019, 7:08 PMshow all causality paths that connect event E to any effect on entity Y
(computer displays a text list)
You could use language to further edit the behavior via the projection
try remove path 3
(computer shows options that would do this, and a summary unrelated effects each option would have, including tests/constraints that would now fail)
apply option 2
(etc.)
Above is a text-only interaction example where there is the notion of 'stored text programs' doesn't exist. You just modify the stored behavior via some text query language. It could also be imagined as a hybrid text/graphical with button clicks instead of text queries, etc.
There's many different dimensions when discussing text. 'Interacting via text' doesn't have to imply 'store a large text expression as the program'. In fact many visual interaction mediums also use text in a bunch of places.Ivan Reese
Dan Cook
05/27/2019, 8:08 PMIvan Reese
For a program (or part of it) that draws shapes, that's better "programmed" by drawing shapes.I've heard this argument many times, and I agree the some facets of it, but... It suggests that a program that is about generating text is better programmed by writing text. It suggests that a program about making sound is better programmed by.. playing an instrument? The logic breaks down pretty quickly when you start looking at more wild examples. It puts visual languages into a box that they never seem to grow out of — "Sure, they're good when you're working with visual stuff — artsy stuff — but they aren't good when making an [ETL pipeline / SaaS app / PoS terminal / etc]." I think this is a bit of No True Scotsman. I'd argue that the reason many visual programming languages are made for artistic uses is not because VPLs are well suited to graphics, but rather because there's some classism going on — "real" text programming for real programmers, and "that VPL stuff" for non-programmers. After all, one of the richest VPLs is Max/MSP — a tool primarily for working with sound, not imagery. ---- Other than that one line, I agree with everything else you said, and I know that in general we're on the same page about all this stuff. I'm just trying to point out a weird critique that comes up pretty regularly that doesn't seem to hold water.
wtaysom
05/28/2019, 1:06 AMDan Cook
05/28/2019, 1:27 AMDoug Moen
05/28/2019, 2:09 AMwtaysom
05/28/2019, 2:19 AMcat
it, etc. However, a little experience has taught us all that there's nothing "just" about text encodings. So even the text itself (let alone programs written in text) require quite a bit of tooling.Doug Moen
05/28/2019, 2:56 AMjonathoda
05/28/2019, 2:55 PMDoug Moen
05/28/2019, 8:49 PMjonathoda
05/28/2019, 8:53 PMDoug Moen
05/28/2019, 9:15 PMKartik Agaram
cat
only exists because of syscalls built into Unix for working with ASCII. Rather surprisingly, I recently discovered that Unix was originally designed as a word-processing and type-setting system: https://web.archive.org/web/20190421021112/http://zge.us.to/txt/unix-harmful.html. A slightly different historical path may well have given us a very different set of primitive operations for text.shalabh
05/28/2019, 9:48 PMFelix Kohlgrüber
05/29/2019, 1:08 PMshalabh
05/29/2019, 4:50 PMDan Cook
05/29/2019, 7:58 PMwtaysom
05/31/2019, 2:46 AMIvan Reese
wtaysom
05/31/2019, 6:32 AMgman
05/31/2019, 9:18 AM