I see where you are coming from, and when I first used PD after being a
programmer for years I found it to be just a clunky scripting language.
For someone who is new to programming though, I think this is far from
the case. (I don't claim to be an expert, but this is my current
thinking after having taught a couple semesters of undgraduate
programing and having tutored my brother in Max.)
I think it has to do with your mental model while coding, more than some
technical difference in the languages. To someone who has programming
experience their is a large abstract model that comes into "view" while
you are working on a project. You balance all sorts of things in your
mind, from top level architectural analogies to concrete syntactic
constructs at your current line of code. In an audio system you build
up a picture of the signal and control flows in your mind, and then
modify and manipulate these mental flows by writing functions.
To a new programmer there is virtually a blank slate when first coding
though, and without having a toolbox of typical components in mind or
memories of past projects, I think it is very difficult for beginners to
keep an accurate mental model in mind. Having a patch on screen, where
you can constantly check things, look at signals flow, watch buttons and
number boxes update, etc., it all helps very, very much to inform this
nascent mental model. My brother would create max patches where debug
lines were connected to almost everything possible because he liked to
have a "live" feel for what was happening in the patch. Even with
modern IDEs this is quite tedious to setup, let alone in emacs or vim
(where I feel at home). It also allows for run-time experimentation in
a way that even using a REPL doesn't duplicate. (Because you can easily
watch the effects of your changes on the rest of the patch, rather than
implicitly "watching" them in your mental model and then just checking a
variable or two to verify your intuitions.)
So yeah sure, they are Turing complete and you still type function names
and arguments, but I think the real reason visual programming is nice
for people with no programming experience is because it dramatically
helps clarify and remind them of the working model of their program.
Interestingly, I think that this same benefit in the beginning stages
becomes the primary drawback at later stages. While in "real"
programming languages you have good tools for creating abstractions so
that you can think at higher and higher levels, I think in Max you are
kind of stuck at a sort of medium level of abstraction no matter what.
Big patches with many interconnected components are far messier than the
equivalent program would be, and once you get to that point I think you
already have to be operating on a decent mental model anyways. (Which
is I think why many people who get proficient in Max want to move on to
programming in javascript, C, Clojure :-)
That's my 2 cents anyway.
-Jeff
alex wrote:
> 2009/10/5 Dave Griffiths <dave_at_pawfal.org>:
>> The difference between text and graphical programming seems fairly
>> arbitrary to me
>
> I make this point every time this discussion comes up but it seems
> no-one either agrees or disagrees with me. Maybe I'm not making any
> sense. I'll try again.
>
> Pd and max are not graphical programming languages. They are textual.
> They are no more visual than C. You make an object and it does
> nothing until you give it a name. Then you connect it to other
> objects also with names. You move the boxes around the screen and the
> meaning doesn't change (except with weird edge cases in Max, but
> that's a side issue).
>
> Maybe if I make an outrageous statement someone will disagree with me;
> when artists who say they find pd or max more intuitive than textual
> languages because they are more visual and therefore more in tune with
> their visual thinking are plain wrong. They don't understand how they
> think, and don't know what they're doing, just like everyone else.
> They are using a symbolic language to make art and shouldn't be afraid
> to admit it.
>
> There are language differences between PD and supercollider but
> spatial and non-spatial is not one of them. Both allow symbolic
> abstractions, loops and conditionals, and both require abstract
> thought to make or understand a patch.
>
> http://yaxu.org/textual-patching/
>
> I think what makes live coding is some system where a human composes a
> string of symbols from an alphabet, while a process interprets the
> string according to some Turing complete language rules, so that the
> interpreter follows changes to the code.
>
> You might have a language that isn't Turing complete, but still allows
> interesting abstractions, and call that live coding. I'm not sure if
> I'd agree or not, that would be an interesting route to follow but for
> now I think the turing-completeness is important.
>
> alex
>
Received on Mon Oct 05 2009 - 13:44:43 BST