Re: Alternate computing models

[Masem]

in reply to Alternate computing models
in thread Any interesting philosophy of programming articles to recommend?

I once dabbled in a bit of Flow-based programming to develop a visual 'pipe' program in Java, to the point where the basics worked including plug-ins, visual editing, etc. However, I believe others have superceded my work with actual released projects :-)

But I'm curiously interested in developing something similar in perl with some sort of GUI. The back-end really isn't that hard, and with typelessness of perl, data transfer's a lot easier to handle. The fun, of course, comes when it's time to set up all the intra-process pipes and threads. Ugh. :-)

But to come down to the point, there's several different ways to think of flow-based programming. The one that seems to be most popular is that as used with Macromedia's products, where you have a flow-chart, and user-interactions determine which way you go down it. In this case, this is much less like flow-based programming than procedural programming with events. On the other hand, something where data flow is unaided by the user save to initiate it, whether part of a gui or not, is more interesting to think about.

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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - [e-mail] || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain

[mattr]

There's also Max from Opcode Systems. I've played with it (a visual programming tool that lets you do anything with midi and serial cables), a friend was able to turn seismographic live from California into body-shaking sonics at a Tokyo art museum. The interface (which animates as it runs, and can be pulled and tweaked on the fly) is very good for technical artists.