hetida-designer VS Ryven

Shameless Plug: We are working on a similar tool: https://github.com/hetida/hetida-designer

We have no GUI programming in the broader sense, in our case nodes are simply run one after another (DAG).

Our tool is a web application and workflows can be triggered / executed via API, which allows for automatisation. Workflows can be nested and are tagged with a version tag making production runs reproducible. It is very much taylored to (simple) Data Science use cases with the goal to make the Python data science stack accessible for Business Experts (or power users), maybe collaborating with Data Scientists.

It is actively developed, and our industrial customers happily use it, however it is still in early development state.

Hello everybody! We recently open sourced hetida designer, a workflow-based collaboration, development, and runtime environment for the Python data science stack.

Why did it have to be pixelated in appearance? It would be far more attractive as anti-aliased vector lines and type.

The red highlighting reminds me of electricity in the classic circuit problem game _Rocky's Boots_ on the Apple ][.

As I've posted in similar discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42051536

The problem here, as always is that there isn't an agreed-upon answer for the question:

>What does an algorithm look like?

The problem is expressiveness of such a diagram is bounded by the size of a screen or a sheet of paper, and once one starts to scroll, or can't see the entire flow at a glance, things get complicated.

The node/wire programming folks have this a bit rougher to the point that there are sites such as:

https://blueprintsfromhell.tumblr.com/

https://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com/

I prefer to work visually, but not sure if that's actually valid --- unfortunately https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/ doesn't support all of OpenSCAD and https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor has problems with a stylus (I have to leave the Windows Settings app open to toggle stylus behaviour which is enough friction that I don't use it as much as I would otherwise).

There are promising tools though: https://nodezator.com/ and https://ryven.org/ are very cool.

Really surprised that the references skip from 1988 (Viewpoint: Toward a Computer for Visual Thinkers) to 2010 (INK-12) totally overlooking:

- Momenta

- Go Corp.'s PenPoint

- Aha! Inkwriter (which became the basis for Microsoft's Journal)

- Dan Bricklin's pen software

- the academic exercises Denim and Silk which were written in Java

or even extant tools such as:

- https://www.inftyproject.org/en/software.html

- or the facility to do math in text input fields drawing software such as Freehand or Illustrator

- or https://ryven.org where one can drag in programming elements and annotate with a pen

I've been a big believe in this sort of thing for a long while now, and would be glad of it becoming more workable and available and popular.

I'd love to have a piece of software which was:

- freeform, allowing both writing and drawing

- yet still allowed capturing data structures and referring to things by some meaningful handle

- programmable --- even just a formula pane such as Lotus Improv had would be great

I'd give a lot to have a graphical development environment which:

- allowed drawing a user interface as naturally as I used to use Altsys Virtuoso (or Macromedia Freehand which I moved to when my Cube stopped working)

- allowed programming the UI as naturally as HyperCard (and to a lesser extent Lisp) "clicked" for me

- was as visual as Google's Blockly (which as BlockSCAD: https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/ I've used a fair bit)

- exposed variables in a mechanism like to OpenSCAD's Customizer: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenSCAD_User_Manual/Customize...

Currently plugging away with OpenSCAD Graph Editor: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor but hoping that: http://nodezator.com/ will become a viable option (still a bit bummed that I rolled and crashed w/ https://ryven.org/ though in retrospect, maybe I should try to tie that latter in to: https://pythonscad.org/ )

I really wish Livecode hadn't pulled their opensource/Community Edition (and I'd be very glad for someone to do something with that code).

Gambas is something I keep wanting to try and seems promising.

I did one small app w/ Python and TKinter, but it was a dense wall of text/code when I was finished and not something I was interested in revisiting. I keep seeing suggestions that Python w/ QT support is supposed to be quite good.

One unlikely option is Google's Blockly (which I wish had a stand-alone desktop implementation which would make graphical programs), which has a nifty version implementing OpenSCAD:

https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/

which I've used a fair bit. Moving on from there, there is: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor which has the advantage of encompassing the entirety of OpenSCAD. It's also possible to wrap up Python using PythonSCAD.org

If you're willing to consider other node/line connection systems two promising options are:

https://ryven.org/

and

https://nodezator.com/

What sort of coding, on what sort of projects do you want to do?

There are general visual programming tools for python like ryven or PyFlow that should be able to run generic code, so in theory you can put SimuPy code in the blocks.

"What does an algorithm look like?"

I'm an intensely visual person, but have never found a visual programming system which scales well --- the problem is, past a certain level of complexity one has to use modules, which then devolves the visual representation down to just a bunch named blocks.

That said, I'm using BlockSCAD:

https://www.blockscad3d.com/community/projects/1421975

to work up designs which I'm then putting into other tools.

Looking at GraphSCAD:

http://graphscad.blogspot.com

and there's also Ryven and pythonocc which I managed to get installed:

https://ryven.org

https://github.com/Tanneguydv/Pythonocc-nodes-for-Ryven

but I'd really like to see a tool for this sort of thing which made G-code.