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Comment by keeran | Hacker News Reader

There are multiple communities of 'creative coders' who already work with this paradigm using tools like vvvv[0], MaxMSP[1], PureData[2] & others.

Closer(ish) to home we have QuartzComposer[3] available for OSX.

I like all of these tools but can't help feeling I'd be more effective if I could just get at the underlying code half the time (in cases where that's not an option).

[0] http://vvvv.org/ [1] http://cycling74.com/ [2] http://puredata.info/ [3] http://developer.apple.com/graphicsimaging/quartz/quartzcomp...

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> I like all of these tools but can't help feeling I'd be more effective if I could just get at the underlying code half the time (in cases where that's not an option).

I've seen novices do cool stuff with Max without thinking that. Perhaps this feeling comes more from familiarity with textual coding than something fundamental about textual coding.

On the other hand, we keep saying "a picture is worth a thousand words", but here we are writing blog posts in gobs! That suggests that text is what we train for, and is what we might be most effective with in the future too.

> I'd be more effective if I could just get at the underlying code

For something similar to MaxMSP/PureData but with writing code in a text editor, you may wish to take a look at ChucK [1]. Instead of graphical edges or links between between UGens ChucK provides the '=>' operator.

E.g.

adc => Chorus c => LPF lpf => Echo e => Delay d => dac;

[1] http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu

I took a class in ChucK once. It is moderately terrible and half-finished but I managed to write a patch once while blackout drunk, so I'd say it's pretty intuitive.

I have the same frustration with PD and QC.

NoFlo's UI design will make it easy to dive in and edit any module's source, as well as make a new module when code is easier than wiring. We are coders designing this tool for our own work.

Seconding Max/MSP, you can write C code in it thanks to "gen".

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