[HN Gopher] Nodes.io - A new way to create with code
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       Nodes.io - A new way to create with code
        
       Author : triptych
       Score  : 338 points
       Date   : 2021-03-07 00:16 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nodes.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nodes.io)
        
       | coolgeek wrote:
       | This seems interesting. It would be really cool to rapidly
       | prototype and modify/refactor apps using this.
       | 
       | But it seems to me like the _much harder_ part of this problem is
       | 1) developing the nodes, and 2) ensuring that the nodes have the
       | appropriate (sufficiently flexible /extensible) API for
       | connections.
       | 
       | I guess what I'm saying is that this needs a "standard library"
       | of nodes - at multiple layers of abstraction - if it is to gain
       | traction. This is especially true, given that there are several
       | other projects that are at least functionally equivalent.
        
       | Hnaomyiph wrote:
       | Seems cool and very interesting. I don't have too much to add
       | beyond giving praise due to the sheer number of low-quality
       | replies on this submission. If the people who made this are
       | reading; don't let an off-day on hn discourage you.
        
       | notdan wrote:
       | I need something like this to let non-programmers create some
       | basic JavaScript scripts/flows in an app I have. Obviously would
       | need to be some level of power user but hopefully doesnt require
       | them to know how to code. Has anyone tried this or any of the
       | related projects and have an opinion or experience on what works
       | best for a "normal" user?
        
       | nfoz wrote:
       | I love this category of thing, glad to see more of it.
       | 
       | How do projects like this get off the ground / get funding?
        
       | DecoPerson wrote:
       | Looks like a new assembly of old ideas that's different enough it
       | might do better for some purposes. Very exciting.
       | 
       | I was about to start prototyping some tool ideas I had in it, but
       | I can't find it's source or license info anywhere. By Googling, I
       | found the GitHub repo [0], but it's empty of code and looks to be
       | used for issue tracking only.
       | 
       | I can't see something that's trying to be an ecosystem being very
       | successful without being open (see: every closed-source
       | language/runtime ever).
       | 
       | I couldn't even find any example code. I tried clicking the
       | examples on the home page. I even tried clicking "Playground" and
       | it wasn't a link. The only CTA I could find was "Download Nodes"!
       | 
       | [0] https://github.com/nodes-io/nodes-io
        
       | axguscbklp wrote:
       | >What if programming was about ideas, not semicolons?
       | 
       | This is like saying "What if writing was about ideas, not
       | periods?" It already is.
        
         | nickthemagicman wrote:
         | Yeah are they trying to sell python?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | heldrida wrote:
       | Nodes.io is looking great!
       | 
       | *For other HN readers: If you're going to leave a message, can
       | you ask yourself, if it's really worth to be so negative? *
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | eyelidlessness wrote:
         | I very seldom share anything of my own here for this reason.
         | It's cool to have high expectations but it's really a shame how
         | much people just dump on everything without any consideration
         | for the intent or level of effort that went into something.
         | 
         | It's disheartening. I have a project I've just launched that
         | I'm incredibly proud of, with all the warts a just launched
         | thing might have, and I've barely mentioned it here and
         | certainly won't Show HN because I would be heartbroken to see
         | it trashed by a bunch of strangers.
        
           | fermienrico wrote:
           | Why are negative comments bad? I wouldn't mind at all.
           | Rudeness is not acceptable but people poking holes at your
           | project is a good thing. People poked holes at Dropbox back
           | in the day. Just take negative comments, grow a thick skin
           | and move on. Please don't hesitate one iota, would love to
           | see your work.
           | 
           | The thing is, HN is a pretty safe place to test and get early
           | feedback. Are the comments tell you it sucks? Hey, they cared
           | enough to say it sucks, so incorporate their feedback and try
           | again.
           | 
           | Most people who are negative here have high expectations or
           | are clueless. Ignore if they are the latter kind!
        
             | hermitcrab wrote:
             | I agree totally. And, as a one-man-band indie developer who
             | is totally dependent on sales of my software to make a
             | living, the pain of low sales is much greater than the pain
             | of any criticsm. Also a lot of the comments have been
             | incredibly useful, even if they were a bit painful.
        
           | ALittleLight wrote:
           | I think the negative comments are inversely proportional to
           | the language used to hype the product or project. If you make
           | an app that points out carcinogens in the user's grocery
           | list, and explain that your project's mission is curing
           | cancer then people are going to have a lot of negative things
           | to say about how this approach will never do that, etc.
           | Conversely, if you describe it tightly as what it is there
           | will be less room for people to have negative takes and more
           | for people to appreciate the project for what it is.
           | 
           | I encourage you to share your project. Negative comments,
           | even if they happen, won't diminish your accomplishments.
        
           | hermitcrab wrote:
           | Trying selling software commercially online for a few years.
           | Your skin will soon thicken up a bit. ;0)
        
           | Aeolun wrote:
           | > level of effort that went into something
           | 
           | The level of effort that went into something is absolutely
           | irrelevant to your users if it doesn't solve their problem.
        
             | eyelidlessness wrote:
             | Okay thanks Jira, sometimes people are just making stuff to
             | learn, or explore, or experiment, or share something that
             | addressed their own needs or wants.
        
             | esperent wrote:
             | The people who knee-jerk complain here are not the users
             | though. They are the people who say "I wouldn't use this,
             | therefore it's useless".
        
               | Aeolun wrote:
               | I think it's mostly that they think the people that seem
               | targeted by the product would not (generally) use it.
               | 
               | That can be either an error on their part, a problem with
               | the copy on the website, or a deliberate choice on the
               | creators' part (e.g. hobby project, I don't care).
        
       | beaconstudios wrote:
       | looks cool guys! I'm working on something similar (won't be so
       | vulgar as to self-promote on your post though) - it's exciting to
       | see more people exploring this space. I think there's a lot of
       | potential in visual programming going forwards; I know it's been
       | explored before but it feels like smart phones pre-iPhone: lots
       | of entries but no-one has captured the essence of it into a
       | compelling product yet (outside of specialist but great tools
       | like Houdini and UE Blueprints).
       | 
       | Have you shared this with the Future of Coding community
       | (https://futureofcoding.org/)? They're very excited by these
       | kinds of tools.
        
         | spiralganglion wrote:
         | A few of the Nodes devs are in the FoC community, yep!
        
         | Borlands wrote:
         | This is really great,loving the whole code catalog and podcast.
         | 
         | Codeflow looks interesting, but is mislisted as open source in
         | the catalog[1] although private on github, and there's a new
         | sign up for beta option on their page - I believe it's no
         | longer open source
         | 
         | [1] https://futureofcoding.org/catalog/codeflow.html
         | 
         | [2] https://github.com/codeflowlang
        
       | uglycoyote wrote:
       | I agree with some of the other posters who are saying that that
       | it is difficult to figure out what this does or who it is for.
       | 
       | There's a huge headline saying "nodes for everyone". So, it's for
       | my grandmother and my son and my uncle too?
       | 
       | Looking at the examples I see that there's a lot of cool looking
       | geometry and special effects. So maybe "nodes is for everyone who
       | wants to make cool visual things?"
       | 
       | Is it for artists who don't want to have do deal with code? Is it
       | for coders who want their code to be more modular?
       | 
       | The best way I can understand this is maybe it's a competitor to
       | something like Houdini, for people who are working at the
       | intersection of art and code, it's like a procedural generation
       | tool for art.
       | 
       | I thought it might be something which lets you build cool stuff
       | without much code, but I was disappointed in the lack of
       | modularity of some of the examples -- e.g. the "basic webGL"
       | example in the playground. In that example almost everything
       | interesting is going on in the one shader node.
       | 
       | Similarly with the boids example, the entire boid simulation is
       | in one node with Javascript. It's not a reusable node.
       | 
       | I think the examples would be a lot more compelling if the nodes
       | were each some trivial piece of functionality than anyone could
       | look at and understand within 30 seconds, but they were put
       | together into impressive creations. Like MIT Scratch for adults.
       | 
       | The problem with these examples is that there's too much
       | complexity baked into a single node, which makes it difficult to
       | understand those as reusable nodes. If I'm understanding it
       | correctly, reusing nodes is the whole idea here.
        
       | distalx wrote:
       | This looks amazing.
        
       | anotheryou wrote:
       | Looks like a web based TouchDesigner :) (all originating from
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Composer )
       | 
       | How does it compare? What's new?
       | 
       | Certainly could say somewhere that it's one of these node-based
       | visual programming languages made for artists. Well the node part
       | is in the name at least :).
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | pharke wrote:
       | After taking a quick look at existing visual scripting tools[0],
       | it seems like the main feature differentiating this from the
       | others is that the nodes are code modules instead of primitives.
       | I think this is where visual programming can really shine, write
       | modules in a text editor and then wire them up in a visual
       | editor. This gives you the high level, conceptual view of the
       | program flow without the excessively verbose visual spaghetti of
       | wiring up individual operations and control flow statements. I
       | think UE4's blueprints can work this way as well, writing a new
       | node in C++ and then wiring it up, but they're not really
       | portable to the wider development ecosystem.
       | 
       | [0] https://github.com/ivanreese/visual-programming-
       | codex/blob/m...
        
         | dmnsgn wrote:
         | We tried to stay close to what you would write without it,
         | using npm packages and all that comes with it. TBH, spaghetti
         | cables is kind of inherent to this kind of programming when
         | scaling up but having code modules instead of just primitives
         | is helpful indeed, letting you give the weight you want each
         | node to have. We're also thinking about node groups as another
         | level of abstraction to reduce visual cluttering.
        
         | ingenieros wrote:
         | There's really nothing unique or "differentiating" about
         | nodes.io Plenty of other visual scripting environments offer
         | power users the ability to code their own nodes: cables.gl,
         | TouchDesigner, vvvv, Grasshopper, Houdini.....
        
       | herunan wrote:
       | I love this. We need to get out of the usual representations of
       | data and get 'out there' a little more. Who said art and science
       | couldn't coalesce? Nothing wrong with a bit of wackiness. Will be
       | following this closely.
        
       | taldridge wrote:
       | Whenever I see things like this I tend to think back to this:
       | 
       | > Largely I think that text is already a highly-structured
       | graphical notation, and that when people try to get "away" from
       | it they're often doing so from a position of ignorance of how
       | very long it took to get to where we are in textual notations,
       | and how very many technical innovations are latent in textual
       | notations. Visually unambiguous yet uniform symbol sets,
       | combinatorial-positional word formation, linear spatio-temporal
       | segregation, punctuation and structured page layout .. these are
       | all technologies in writing that we had to laboriously invent,
       | and they have purposes, advantages! Similarly in coding, we had
       | to invent and adapt technologies from verbal and mathematical
       | notations refined over millennia: lines and columns, indentation,
       | block layout, juxtaposition and precedence, scope, evaluation
       | order, comments, grammars, version control, diff and merge
       | algorithms ... the pile of structuring technologies embedded in
       | the textual representation of programs isn't free, and it isn't
       | useless. So I'm just really cautious when people suggest throwing
       | it all out for some hypothetical reinvention. You need those
       | structures: so you've got an immediate problem of "what are you
       | going to use instead", and a longer-term question of "what makes
       | you think you're not going to wind up right back at the same
       | place ten thousand years of refining graphemes-on-a-page wound
       | up"?
       | 
       | (Taken from https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org)
        
       | breakfastduck wrote:
       | Ohhh, this looks like Cycling 74's Max MSP.
       | 
       | Lot of seeming derision in the comments but I LOVE Max and this
       | is an amazing step in that direction for visuals.
        
       | mirekrusin wrote:
       | Is it (going to be) open source or not?
        
       | verifex wrote:
       | This looks like Node-Red, but with less pre-made nodes, and
       | designed to show stuff, I love the idea. Also, maybe this is a
       | problem with my installation, but I only see one type of block
       | "custom". If I'm supposed to use npm to install any blocks that
       | support anything, this isn't an ideal starting point, too little
       | information on getting started.
       | 
       | Looking at the examples, I'm a bit overwhelmed with how much new
       | boilerplate code I need to remember in order to use all the fancy
       | GUI. I like the idea of having the code be front-and-center, but
       | if you require me to remember how to use the UI elements, why not
       | make some of that code auto-generated based on some UI widget? I
       | like what you have, but it's so minimalist (or brutalist as
       | someone else pointed out) that I find the actual utility of the
       | visual controls... disappointing.
        
       | ralusek wrote:
       | I'm so sick of this ironic brutalist web design. That HTML blue.
       | It's so frequently paired with that gross salmon color.
        
         | ibn_khaldun wrote:
         | I have not thought about the irony of "HTML blue" before, but I
         | am not a fan of its use, nor that inner-nostril shade of pink
         | (please don't insult salmon by calling the color that). I love
         | Space Mono/Grotesk and I don't understand why they chose Space
         | Mono as the _body_ type, when it has a lower x-height and lower
         | weight. They were already using Space Grotesk to begin with for
         | headings and else where (albeit sparingly
         | /unpredictably)...strange.
         | 
         | All of this has nothing to do with the software, which looks
         | really interesting and may be quite successful in the future.
         | But it's worth noting and there's nothing wrong with pointing
         | these things out. ralusek's post should not be so grey.
        
         | eyelidlessness wrote:
         | I personally like seeing it because it's still not as pervasive
         | as a lot of design trends and feels like there's still some
         | variety on the web. But I pain for anyone struggling with the
         | accessibility of these designs.
        
         | wccrawford wrote:
         | Even just directly on white, I find that Blue to be far too
         | powerful. On that salmon, it's _horrid_.
         | 
         | Combined with the fonts and font sizes, it's rather hard to
         | enjoy the site.
        
         | singhrac wrote:
         | I'm fine with brutalist web design, what I can't stand is low
         | font-weights and small font sizes, like assuming all of your
         | readers are on a 4K screen with the eyes of a 20 year old.
         | 
         | On a more substantive note, this looks really neat. However, as
         | a data scientist of sorts I've found that what people really
         | want is not some sort of interactive 3D visualization, but a
         | well-computed chart showing a sort of natural experiment (e.g.
         | the results of an A/B test) with the right axes. Has anyone
         | used a 3D visualization outside of tech demos? I guess the
         | NYTimes has some neat stuff that's useful.
        
         | systemvoltage wrote:
         | It started with Dropbox:
         | https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/dropbox-rebrand-collins-gra...
        
           | eyelidlessness wrote:
           | I'm certain that I saw similar stuff on Bloomberg well before
           | that. But yeah it's been a thing for a while.
        
       | dannyow wrote:
       | For completeness, here https://github.com/ivanreese/visual-
       | programming-codex is a pretty comprehensive list of different
       | takes on visual/flow based programming through the ages...
        
       | lmeyerov wrote:
       | Been following the creators for awhile and very much happy to see
       | them democratizing their difficult skillset.
       | 
       | Most designers -- think anyone using figma -- are effectively
       | locked out of modern interactive and animated visuals due to not
       | knowing hardcore shaders + effective js coding. To get a feel for
       | how hard that is, look at the public timeline of Shirley Wu,
       | another wonderful award-winning designer and experienced js
       | coder, to pick this kind of stuff up. Nodes makes it a lot more
       | accessible, similar to Max/msp for musicians. Once you look
       | beyond the over-claiming, which is clearly nails-on-chalkboard
       | for most engineers and scientists as you are seeing in the
       | comments -- this is a wonderful and enabling project.
       | 
       | Extra impressive is they do not seem to try to 'dumb it down'.
       | They are a consultancy and (seem to) try to use it for their own
       | bespoke advanced installations. I don't know how well this will
       | translate to others, but the success of Max msp and super
       | collider make me optimistic that it can grow to those levels.
       | Cycling 74 supports 20+ employees and empowers many musicians,
       | and as Nodes can be used for commercial art (web+tv ads, music
       | videos, landing pages, ...), I can see them being even bigger.
        
         | bezelbuttons wrote:
         | > look at the public timeline of Shirley Wu,
         | 
         | Do you have a link to this?
        
           | lmeyerov wrote:
           | https://twitter.com/sxywu/media?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwc.
           | ..
        
         | dmnsgn wrote:
         | Being coders ourselves we focused on a programmer-first
         | approach indeed. The idea came naturally from a gap we
         | identified in our day-to-day practice at Variable.io (data-art,
         | installations, generative systems, ...). It enables some
         | collaboration with designers (through exposing some parameters
         | of the UI) but still focus on the coding experience to bring
         | our projects to life.
        
       | dmnsgn wrote:
       | Hi all, Damien here, one of Nodes creators. We tried to bring our
       | own take in the visual programming space. We're still in beta and
       | figuring out how people are using Nodes. Happy to answer any
       | question you might have, AMA.
        
       | motohagiography wrote:
       | It's hard to overestimate the impact of this technique, though it
       | is 5-10 years too soon. :)
       | 
       | What this does is lets people reason about change in massively
       | multivariate data sets. Like GPT level multi-variate. I look
       | forward to seeing this applied to the state of ML models, as this
       | is what we're going to need to express the complexity of a lot of
       | techs we will all depend on.
       | 
       | There is a casting pearls before swine problem they will need to
       | overcome, as the level of management understanding to interpret
       | and respond to the changes this framework expresses is going to
       | take some years to get people with that level of technical
       | sophistication into decision making positions.
       | 
       | Near term, my impression is it will be amazing for getting
       | funding for scientists of all kinds, and being used in hyper-
       | competitive data fields like americas cup sailing, F1 racing, and
       | spooky intelligence/social media company social engineering
       | analysis, and I could see it being used in a new hybrid of quant
       | trading funds, as any sufficiently advanced data vis is
       | essentially arbitrage. All very rarefied niches with a high
       | degree of autonomy. It may be too cool for making policy or lower
       | level decisions in the near term, but this is super epic.
       | 
       | When you look at the recent history of how data viz has impacted
       | fields, it has always been way out ahead of the industries it
       | served. I hacked around with 3D "coral" graph viz back around
       | 99-01 (early CAIDA stuff) for internet security analysis in govt,
       | and in spite of its incredible analytic power, the anecdata was
       | it didn't get traction because it was unmanageably powerful.
       | However, I think we're just entering a data viz renaissance, and
       | this is the bar. Amazing.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | barnaclejive wrote:
       | I'm so confused.
       | 
       | "Build interactive web apps"
       | 
       | "Create bespoke tools"
       | 
       | Any examples besides weird shapes?
        
         | breakfastduck wrote:
         | This isn't necessarily made for building enterprise web apps or
         | social media sites.
         | 
         | There always seems to be a complete absence of appreciation for
         | value to artists on HN. This is very clearly a creative tool
         | first and foremost.
        
         | jpomykala wrote:
         | Maybe weird shapes is the future of web? Forget about JS and
         | React. This is future old man.
        
           | goatlover wrote:
           | CSS regions back from the dead?
        
           | jspash wrote:
           | Maybe it's for creating NFTs? Every one I've seen so far is
           | hideous yet "priceless".
           | 
           | Like the old saying: During a gold rush, sell shovels.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | That is already here, since 2003, provided there is enough
           | budget,
           | 
           | https://www.outsystems.com/
        
         | pharke wrote:
         | I think it has other uses, being able to attach visualizations
         | to data processing code is very helpful especially if it's
         | simple to just drop in something like a histogram. It would be
         | even nicer to have a way to scrub through the processed items
         | and see them displayed in an easy to read format on the screen
         | as you do so. Cypress allows this to a degree by recording the
         | visual state of a page as tests are run and lets you hover over
         | the output and see the layout change as you scroll up and down.
        
       | fao_ wrote:
       | 40-second video that lagged so much it was unplayable on my X200
       | that runs discord fine, and can have 300 tabs open in firefox
       | without a sweat. Obviously, we're off to a good start.
        
         | Hnaomyiph wrote:
         | Forever benchmarking on old hardware is counterintuitive to
         | forward progress. As much as I love my T400, I know someday,
         | probably sooner rather than later, it won't be suited to daily
         | use.
        
         | mrnothing_123 wrote:
         | the power of HN, Speculation the conteiner is creating new
         | instances like fire to HN traffic
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | An embedded Vimeo video lagging most likely has nothing to do
         | with the power of your laptop. It's just slow due to whatever
         | issues Vimeo is having.
        
         | Biganon wrote:
         | Don't be snarky.
        
         | domano wrote:
         | Ran fine on my ipad.
        
       | naebother wrote:
       | Remember https://noflojs.org ?
        
       | pjmlp wrote:
       | Looks quite interesting, I always had a found spot for visual
       | languages.
       | 
       | The problem with visual spaghetti is the same as with monoliths,
       | lack of understanding how to modularize the code.
       | 
       | I think applying digital circuit design best practices to such
       | tools would help more people to properly modularize their boxes.
        
       | rgovostes wrote:
       | Tangentially related, I've been thinking about how it is somewhat
       | difficult to describe state machines in regular textual code, and
       | it would be nice to have a drag-and-drop visual interface for
       | mapping out the states and transitions, then tie regular code to
       | the transition events.
       | 
       | Is there anything like that out there? Or a good open source
       | diagramming library that might lend itself to prototyping this?
        
         | cryo wrote:
         | QtCreator has a SCXML based visual editor for state charts
         | https://doc.qt.io/qtcreator/creator-scxml.html
        
           | rgovostes wrote:
           | Thank you! This looks very much like it would fit my needs,
           | and I love that the output is an XML file I can integrate
           | with other tools.
        
         | strogonoff wrote:
         | You might be interested in XState[0] and its visualizer[1]. It
         | is not drag and drop, but it does provide a nice visualization
         | that can help debug state logic. I imagine it's possible to
         | extend it to support visual manipulation and code generation.
         | 
         | Project is JS/TS-specific, however.
         | 
         | [0] https://github.com/davidkpiano/xstate
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://xstate.js.org/viz/?gist=bbcb4379b36edea0458f597e5eec...
        
           | davidkpiano wrote:
           | Thanks for sharing!
           | 
           | > It is not drag and drop
           | 
           | > I imagine it's possible to extend it to support visual
           | manipulation and code generation
           | 
           | It will be soon ;-)
        
         | TFortunato wrote:
         | Yakindu comes to mind as one (if you aren't allergic to eclipse
         | :-) )
         | 
         | https://www.itemis.com/en/yakindu/state-machine/
        
       | domano wrote:
       | I somehow fail to understand what this is, but am impressed by it
       | nonetheless. Is this purely for animation designers with coding
       | skills? I thought animation work is done in editors with even
       | less code required usually, but for me as a developer this seems
       | more approachable.
       | 
       | I could not look at the advanced examples on my iPad though.
        
         | eyelidlessness wrote:
         | At least at a glance I think you've got this right. And I think
         | it's the same kind of productivity boost that came with
         | graphics tools getting JSX/etc bridges. You can design and dev
         | in the same environment with minimal handoff, far fewer broken
         | expectations when they render differently due to different
         | presentation metrics, and tons of opportunity to automate the
         | design-build process and visual documentation.
        
         | dmnsgn wrote:
         | We're more geared towards programmers as you define what each
         | node does in their code but you can choose to expose selected
         | node parameters when exporting, for a designer/animator to
         | potentially tweak.
         | 
         | Sorry about the advanced examples, some use WebGL and might
         | have issues on iPad Safari that we'll need to check.
        
       | cheeaun wrote:
       | Wow, somehow looks similar to another site that I discovered few
       | weeks ago: https://cables.gl/
       | 
       | I googled and found this: https://nodes.io/story/#background
       | 
       | > When we set off to create a tool of our own, there were already
       | plenty of different node-based or visual scripting/programming
       | tools and environments; VVVV, Houdini, TouchDesigner, Cables.gl,
       | Vizor Patches, Lichen, MaxMSP, UE4 Blueprints and Origami were
       | among the most popular.
        
       | nafey wrote:
       | There is a similar project for building web services visually:
       | http://blyss.tech/
        
       | jslakro wrote:
       | It took 15 years from the first versions of Context Free Art to
       | get to this point of evolution in that kind of experimental
       | proposals. It's interesting anyway, a cool/creative hobby (I
       | think no more than that)
        
       | galfarragem wrote:
       | Unpopular idea here (from a hobbyist programmer).
       | 
       | I would "kill" for a text editor/IDE/REPL shaped as a spreadsheet
       | where each cell is a block of code with 2 possible views (text or
       | result) linkable to other cells. This "spreadsheet" would be
       | programming language agnostic (each cell could use a different
       | language) and I could organize/format my cells (location, colors,
       | size, etc) as I wish.
        
         | ReservedIgnac wrote:
         | Sounds like microservices taken to the atomic level.
        
         | jlundberg wrote:
         | I am very curious about this idea of yours.
         | 
         | Do you have a draft drawing of the concept or could you
         | otherwise elaborate a bit more?
        
           | galfarragem wrote:
           | As an anecdote I used to use a spreadsheet to visually
           | "assemble"[0] HTML code for a niche blog. Some cells would
           | compute values to be used in other cells that would compose
           | the final HTML code. Of course existent spreadsheets are way
           | too rudimentary to use as an "Excel Code": cells don't act as
           | a REPL for the language of your choice nor allow a "text
           | view" with syntax highlighting.
           | 
           | [0] Maybe because I have a background in Architecture, I tend
           | to look at code as I would look at a house plan.
        
         | progfix wrote:
         | That's an idea that seems to be forming in the heads of a lot
         | of people. I started working on something like that a couple of
         | months ago. Blender is adding spreadsheet now. Excel is getting
         | a more advanced language. ...
        
         | david-cako wrote:
         | Replit has touched on this idea, @tylerangert on twitter
        
         | chrisweekly wrote:
         | Yes! This concept aligns with MWeststrate's ideas about
         | reactivity / observables, implemented in MobX
         | 
         | https://mobx.js.org/README.html
        
         | FractalHQ wrote:
         | Ellx.io is doing this at the moment afaik
        
           | galfarragem wrote:
           | Ellx.io seems promising, I'll toy with it a bit, thanks!
           | Unsurmountable objections:
           | 
           | - not language agnostic (JS only, AFAIK).
           | 
           | - lack of _native_ desktop app to keep it fast.
           | 
           | - not spreadsheet view only. I would then hide/collapse
           | syntax highlighted code inside of cells as I wish.
        
         | regularfry wrote:
         | I suspect Emacs could be convinced to do this. Right now
         | there's the Simple Emacs Spreadsheet which uses elisp as a
         | formula language and has a grid view, but I can't imagine
         | shelling out to alternative interpreters would be beyond the
         | wit of man.
        
         | primitivesuave wrote:
         | This is actually a great idea. I had a conversation over beers
         | with some people in a higher intellectual realm who were
         | discussing the details of flow-based languages. It was the
         | general consensus among them that in the future, flow-based
         | programming will be the way everyone learns structural
         | thinking, and we will look back on sequential instruction
         | programming the same way we look back on punch cards today.
        
           | voceboy521 wrote:
           | this seems obviously true. but why has it failed for like 40
           | years so far? many attempts have been made. for some reason
           | all tools seem to fail, no matter how simple, they cause more
           | problems than they're worth.
        
           | [deleted]
        
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