Unless somebody wants to give a better executive summary, there's no way I'm weeding through an hour of video. Do they have any idea how many hours there are of "the one video you must see this year" on YouTube?
Okay, let's give this a go, well the first 25 minutes anyway. He's talking about seeing the effects of programming not after compiling and running, but while you're actually *typing*.
The first example (with the fractal tree) is interesting. He changes a number in the code, and the trunk gets taller, or the number of leaves grow. He then adjusts the variable in the code as if it were a slider, and the picture updates accordingly in realtime.
Second example is a platform game. He is able to user a slider to go back and forwards throughout time, and change certain parameters such as the gravity, or speed of the enemy turtle. To solve a problem at the end where he wants the character to jump at a very particular height, he employs a 'trail' of the character over time (so you can see all of 'time at once'). Adjusting the variable he can get that perfect jump height more intuitively. The 'character trail' changes in realtime as he adjusts the variable.
The third example is where he talks through a binary search algorithm. Usually, you're blind as you have to figure out what the computer is doing behind the scenes. But let's say you can see the output as you're typing. The numbers of variables are drawn to the right as you're typing. If there's a loop, then there will be more than one value. In this case, the values are segmented horizontally in the output.
I've thought of a lot of the things that this guy has said (and even semi-planned to incorporate his third idea into my OpalCalc program shown in my sig), but a couple of things were moderately surprising, and it's nice to see it all in action.
The fourth example is a dynamic circuit diagram that displays voltage and amperage over time. I'm not an electrical engineer so I don't know much about it, but it seems to me that this has already been done [advsys.net] at least once. (I'm sure there are more mainstream examples than KCIRC, but it's one I've run into.)
The fifth example is exactly like the iPad version of Garage Band, except with animation tweens instead of musical instruments: you play back the tracks that have already been performe
I think you've answered my question the best so far.
It sounds like GUI builders genaralized to other problems, to the maximum extent that's possible. Believe it or not, I actually did something like that eons ago with a VRML editor I worked on. You could change the colors and shapes of objects while they whirled around under the direction of a very simple scripting language. My scripting language only had basic math and a few trigonometric functions.
Of course in order for this to work the language has to
I think we might even be able to call this setting oriented programming. You change the settings in the program, and the settings become a part of the program. Carried out to the logical extreme, you load and run "nothing", and change the settings on it until it does what you want. Then you export your.conf,.INI, or registry from the session of "nothing" that you ran. The.conf file is the program.
Ssssh! I know people who have been using this technique for over a decade to sell scripting to their overly-conservative management. "It's all a compiled program, it just loads a few settings from a text file so that we can customize a few bits at the last minute." (Sure, those settings just happen to be an honest computer program, but that's strictly a matter for techies only...)
Sounds like they have a GUI REPL (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless somebody wants to give a better executive summary, there's no way I'm weeding through an hour of video. Do they have any idea how many hours there are of "the one video you must see this year" on YouTube?
Re:Sounds like they have a GUI REPL (Score:5, Insightful)
The first example (with the fractal tree) is interesting. He changes a number in the code, and the trunk gets taller, or the number of leaves grow. He then adjusts the variable in the code as if it were a slider, and the picture updates accordingly in realtime.
Second example is a platform game. He is able to user a slider to go back and forwards throughout time, and change certain parameters such as the gravity, or speed of the enemy turtle. To solve a problem at the end where he wants the character to jump at a very particular height, he employs a 'trail' of the character over time (so you can see all of 'time at once'). Adjusting the variable he can get that perfect jump height more intuitively. The 'character trail' changes in realtime as he adjusts the variable.
The third example is where he talks through a binary search algorithm. Usually, you're blind as you have to figure out what the computer is doing behind the scenes. But let's say you can see the output as you're typing. The numbers of variables are drawn to the right as you're typing. If there's a loop, then there will be more than one value. In this case, the values are segmented horizontally in the output.
I've thought of a lot of the things that this guy has said (and even semi-planned to incorporate his third idea into my OpalCalc program shown in my sig), but a couple of things were moderately surprising, and it's nice to see it all in action.
Re: (Score:2)
Continuing your post:
The fourth example is a dynamic circuit diagram that displays voltage and amperage over time. I'm not an electrical engineer so I don't know much about it, but it seems to me that this has already been done [advsys.net] at least once. (I'm sure there are more mainstream examples than KCIRC, but it's one I've run into.)
The fifth example is exactly like the iPad version of Garage Band, except with animation tweens instead of musical instruments: you play back the tracks that have already been performe
Re: (Score:2)
I think you've answered my question the best so far.
It sounds like GUI builders genaralized to other problems, to the maximum extent that's possible. Believe it or not, I actually did something like that eons ago with a VRML editor I worked on. You could change the colors and shapes of objects while they whirled around under the direction of a very simple scripting language. My scripting language only had basic math and a few trigonometric functions.
Of course in order for this to work the language has to
Re: (Score:2)
I think we might even be able to call this setting oriented programming. You change the settings in the program, and the settings become a part of the program. Carried out to the logical extreme, you load and run "nothing", and change the settings on it until it does what you want. Then you export your .conf, .INI, or registry from the session of "nothing" that you ran. The .conf file is the program.
Ssssh! I know people who have been using this technique for over a decade to sell scripting to their overly-conservative management. "It's all a compiled program, it just loads a few settings from a text file so that we can customize a few bits at the last minute." (Sure, those settings just happen to be an honest computer program, but that's strictly a matter for techies only...)