unit VS QED

https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit recently, which at least uses some kind of hinted auto-layout (besides the more propriety fancy)

I really want to see more graphical coding for years, but node/graph-based and blockly seem to be the only approaches that got sone traction so far. So I like this thread and it seems at the right place.

I'd wish to see

Interesting, and clearly a lot of work's gone into this (60,000 lines of Typescript), particularly the UI, which is impressive (if, sometimes, over the top). I've been developing a similar system (http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/tutorials/TOC.html) and it's interesting to note the similarities and differences.

Similarities: code as directed graphs (less obvious in FMJ); can only connect outputs to units of compatible type; if and wait (looping is handled differently); sticky values; sliders. These design decisions are practically forced on you, but are often absent in earlier visual dataflow languages (e.g. Prograph, LabVIEW).

Differences: (1) inputs are named in Unit, ordered in FMJ (though they're named in formulas and edges can be labelled). (2) I experimented with automatic code layout but found this was too slow and not always what I wanted. Well done for getting this to work. (3) FMJ is now fully homoiconic - this maybe isn't a priority for Unit.

The Unit design philosophy is explained in https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit/blob/main/src/docs/conc... . This doesn't mention earlier approaches (e.g. the Manchester Dataflow Computer, Prograph) and it seems to be based on vaguely similar ideas developed more recently (Morrison's Flow Based programming; possibly React and similar systems for web development - I'm unfamiliar with these).

I have a number of questions:

(1) How does the type system work? Is it Dependently typed, Hindley-Milner, or something more basic? (FMJ is Hindley-Milner, with dependent typing partially implemented). How are new types be defined?

(2) How is the visual representation stored? One criticism I faced was that people wanted a readable textual representation which would work well with existing version control systems, a problem I have now largely solved.

(3) How are runtime errors handled?

(4) Is recursion supported? (I assume yes, but I didn't see any examples.) What about macros?

(5) What does Unit compile to? (FMJ has an experimental compiler where programs are compiled by running their source without evaluating their inputs, output is Lisp.)

I enjoyed reading this. I knew of quartz composer but I never did anything with it.

I love visual tools and I think they are underutilized today. I cut my teeth in ~2005 with Houdini[0] and Fusion[1] which are both heavily graph / node based (and procedural).

Most recently I have been rekindling my love for visual programming and flow based programming and plan to spend some time in January and February doing more research around flow based programming for infrastructure management.

I plan to get this sort of info published on my website which I have neglected for half a decade or more but if you are interested in visual programming you might enjoy checking these out:

Unit from Samuel Timbó:

https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit

https://ioun.it/

A video of me exploring what I figured out about it (while also learning to stream) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwknTfGVDq8

Behave-Graph from Ben Houston:

https://github.com/bhouston/behave-graph

And the products I learned so long ago

[0] Houdini https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini/

[1] Fusion https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion

https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit

- A code drawn in unit is simply a Directed Graph.

- Programming can be partially performed by Gesture and by Voice.

Not exactly "experimental", considering the Unix heritage, but -- line editors.

"I've seen [visual] editors like that, but I don't feel a need for them. I don't want to see the state of the file when I'm editing." -- Ken Thompson, on the superiority of ed to visual editors. Summarized by Peter Salus in A Quarter Century of UNIX (Addison-Wesley, 1994).

Definitely a blast from the past, but I do think line editors may force one to write simpler programs -- or to think in smaller chunks, as opposed to (doom)scrolling or moving about incrementally on a large screen.

Rob Pike's sam editor has an interesting command language. You're not limited to thinking in "lines" as in ed or sed; rather, the whole file is a giant string that you manipulate using regular expressions, external pipes, etc: http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/sam_lang_tutorial/sam_tut.pdf

Its predecessor, qed, is also interesting, extremely powerful, but it seems to have a much steeper learning curve. I have used sam quite a bit, but not qed. https://github.com/phonologus/QED/raw/master/doc/qed-tutoria...