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
--
http://yaxu.org/
Received on Mon Oct 05 2009 - 11:35:46 BST