A Live Programming Experience

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/smcdirm/apx/index.html

by seanmcdirmid • 11 years ago

60 11 11 years ago

research.microsoft.com

OliverM3• 11 years ago

The experience of programming is ripe for transformation, and work like APX, Johnathan Edwards' Subtext (https://vimeo.com/106073134) (which uses the spreadsheet UI metaphor to specify programs and expose their run time data transformations) and, though I'm not as enthused about it, Chris Ganger & co.'s Eve (http://incidentalcomplexity.com/) are making great progress towards that goal. I've been following this kind of work for over a decade though, and it looks like it'll be a couple of years yet before you can open up an editor the way you'd fire up emacs.

It feels like programming never really escaped its command line origins, where all UI is orientated around ordered text transformations. Coding in that environment is empowering once mastered, but very frustrating to master; for me the promise of these kind of programming environments is that the same level of mastery is possible with only a fraction of the frustration.

ibdknox2• 11 years ago

Out of curiosity, what makes you "not as enthused" about our work? The focus on Bloom? Going more visual?

I'm really excited to see what Jonathan is doing now that he's shifted his focus to end-user and building a releasable system at CDG. If you're interested in this stuff, all three of us are going to be at the Future of Programming workshop at strangeloop this year :)

azeirah• 11 years ago

Sadly, strange loop is sold out. I very much wish I could go there, but it's impossible for me as a student in the Netherlands, both too expensive to go there, and it's too far away. There are many people there I'd love to meet in person.

OliverM3• 11 years ago

Oh, I'm still enthused about it! But I just don't have as complete a sense of how it all fits together (presumably you're still feeling that out yourselves). Also I wonder if it goes too far from abstraction, the ability to name and manipulate something before specifying what it is, exactly, and how to define something iteratively as you become more familiar with what it has to be.

I like how the tutorial goes from concrete data, but wonder how to specify computations where the shape of the data isn't known completely in advance, or could change over time.

I also dislike drawing diagrams on screen when they're much quicker to sketch out on paper, but that's probably more of a personal preference (and I've not spent enough time with the editor yet).

I'd love to get to strangeloop but it's a long way from Dublin, Ireland! Maybe another year...

seanmcdirmid2• 11 years ago

I'm totally looking forward to your talk on Eve, the workshop will be a lot of fun.

Rooki• 11 years ago

This was an interesting read, the focus on time reminded me of the Extempore project (see [1] and [2]).

I wonder when this article was posted? Along with the Eve announcement it seems there's a lot to look forward to for the future of live programming.

[1] http://extempore.moso.com.au/

[2] http://benswift.me/extempore-docs/

seanmcdirmid2• 11 years ago

It was posted today, but written last month. It will be presented at the Future of Programming Workshop at strange loop next month.

jonathanedwards• 11 years ago

As will Eve!

VOYD• 11 years ago

great for a bouncing ball example, not so great for enterprise level distributed engineering.

A Live Programming Experience

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