makepad VS processing

It is what Makepad is working on in an interesting way using Wasm and Rust. They have created a Figma-like DSL and a good code separation with the logic behind it. You can edit UI's of in-production apps, and they are bundling an editor for that. Accessibility is an issue, and the project are looking to offer proper support there. In their video linked on the README they run the conference slides on Makepad with live apps embedded and running at 120 fps.

https://github.com/makepad/makepad

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36567681

> if anyone tells you they need to use WebAssembly to make the UI snappy I'd advise you interrogate that assertion thoroughly.

Get prepared to be blown away by Makepad [0]. I have no affiliation with them, but just watched their most recent conference presentation [1]. The slides were made with Makepad itself and included, embedded, a full-blown IDE, a synthesizer app, a Mandelbrod to zoom in endlessly, and more. All running at 120fps. The presentation is for the most part live-coding with this setup.

What they want to do is bring coders and designers closer together, and while some code is in Rust they developed a DSL for the GUI parts that is close to how Figma works. These GUI's can run anywhere.

And I couldn't help thinking "Why would people have complicated stacks to create Web 2.0 apps for the Google Web, when they have this?", in other words an opportunity to break out of the browser straitjacket.

[0] https://github.com/makepad/makepad

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC4FCS-oMpg

For those who haven’t seen it, Makepad is also an in-browser code editor with an open-source UI toolkit. Looks like this synth is one of the examples of the UI toolkit.

https://makepad.dev/

And I'm obsessed with what happens when you press Alt in their editor. I never knew I wanted this, but boy, do I want it.

I tried this, using https://makepad.dev our GPU accelerated UI and renderstack. And unfortunately it wasn't a great experience. Text popping forward for whatever reason is not really an improvement (i tried indent depth, syntax highlighting reasons, cursor behavior). Maybe 'veeeeery' subtly could do something, but otherwise you dont want it to break visual symmetry as we are used to

Wow, so they did: https://github.com/makepad/makepad/pull/142

It says on the front page Mac and Web only

https://github.com/makepad/makepad#prerequisites

(windows and linux are coming )

We can! It’s a lot of work because you don’t have the whole JS ecosystem to fall back on, but to some that’s a feature not a bug.

My favorite example of this is https://makepad.dev

And a feature highlight of Code Lens. The idea is borrowed from https://github.com/makepad/makepad

When it comes to compile times, the most optimized Rust codebase I know for optimized for this is makepad.dev [1].

It is compiling from scratch on mac m1 in around 7.5s [2] and that's +100k lines of Rust. However there is close to none dependencies, so this +100k is all there is to compile pretty much.

[1] https://makepad.dev/

[2] https://twitter.com/rikarends/status/1467529091284934666

reply

I disagree. There are so many creative tools that are now online that you can access from your browser that were not envisioned in the original web. It is obviously true that not EVERY website is about creation (but to expect that seems unreasonable?), but even Wikipedia is a collaborative project.

Examples include products from big vendors like Adobe's Photoshop, to smaller products like SketchUp, to more indy generative art tools like https://processing.org and Strudel (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39924210).

Would processing[0] be a good fit? It's designed to be easy to use and learn but powerful enough for professional use. Very quick to get cool stuff moving on a screen and the syntax is Java with a streamlined editing environment.

[0] https://processing.org/

I would personally use the language Processing. It's the one I use the most. And it's relatively easy to start drawing text, squares, and do other kinds of things. (It's kind of like java, but without all the boilerplate code)

Processing (P5) had this: you can select any string of text in its IDE anl search for it in the docs, and if it's one of the built-in functions or constants it will open the associated static html page that came installed with the software, so no internet nor server required. And despite being offline you can still navigate the docs too. This feels a lost basic skill in static site generation these days.

It was the only creative coding framework that had complete, offline documentation like that at the time I might add. OpenFrameworks is still mostly autogenerated stubs for example.

IMO it was one of the things that gave Processing an edge in educational contexts over all alternatives. I was pretty sad to see p5.js not fully continue that tradition and require that you go online to read the docs, and that it's not a static website but that text is rendered with javascript when you open it (still complete and with examples though).

https://processing.org/

https://p5js.org/

Processing is very cool, especially if you like graphics.

https://processing.org/

Processing is a flexible software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code. Since 2001, Processing has promoted software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within technology. There are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning and prototyping.

And it's not even their IDE. They just slapped some AVR compilers into Processing

https://processing.org/