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Comment by JRKrause | Hacker News Reader

Very neat, nice work.

I tooled around with a similar idea sometime back. There are clear advantages of code over graphical-schematics when it comes to automatic generation of component values / re-use of elements / speed of development / automatic SPICE testing / etc.

The primary issue I ran into was that: electronic circuits are inherently graph-structured and the traditional circuit schematic is well suited, optimal even, for displaying this kind of information. Trying to understand an analog circuit that is described as code seems awkward.

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Yeah we did run into a similar issue. Someone designed a power supply and it wasn't immediately obvious how the elements of the circuit were hooked up in ato.

I think a viewer would be nice ultimately. But we haven't exactly figured out how the solution might look like. ideally something that allows you to create datasheet-like snapshots of part of your design?

A nebulous description of my ideal setup would be something like this:

Side-by-side schematic symbol view / code view that are actively synced to one-another in real-time. Schematic view allows basic arranging of parts, editing interconnects, triggering jump-to-reference within the code view, adding probe points for SPICE, displaying SPICE output graphs. Code side does all the heavy lifting like creating new parts, scripted behaviors, editing component values, all the cool shit that would be a nightmare to sort into a GUI.

Much easier said than done, of course.

Yeah the side by side thing makes sense. Especially for very low level or analog designs. But in some cases it wouldn't be desirable to show the whole circuit. Say you are dealing with a module that has been characterized and that you know works. In this case, using a language server or a linter that shows you available interfaces might be easier to use.

For the spice graphs, having a jupyter notebook-like interface would be great to document why your design looks the way it does.

If you have specific ideas or drawings of how this might look like, please send them over in our discord server :)

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