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0 pointsvidarh1y ago0 comments

That doesn't solve anything. The problem isn't how to represent the AST, but defining both a visual and textual version that can unambiguously represent the same thing without either or both representational becoming unusable.

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conartist61y ago

Right. I think it's already a solved problem though. HTML and the HTML DOM are a living solution to that exact problem. All that we have to do is take the patterns used to power general UI and develop a DOM for code.

vidarhOP1y ago

The internal representation isn't the problem, or even a problem. It's not even beginning to address what I described.

E.g this is a real line of code:

    link = wf["links"].find{ _1["rel"] == "self" && _1["type"] == "application/activity+json" }

Now consider I have a visual programming version representing that expression, and I want to ask someones opinion about it on Slack. Unless your visual programming environment has a solution for how I can post that to Slack, and have others respond with tweaked versions, it's a non-starter.

Once you've solved Slack - maybe with a plugin -, you need to solve all our e-mail clients, and you need to solve Google Docs and Word for when we write documentation, and a multitude of other tools.

You might be able to get part of the way there with a browser plugin, but you'll still have a wide variety of other tools and platforms to cover.

conartist61y ago

Your assumption is that visual programming and textual programming are disjoint, but I have not observed this to be true (necessarily). Being able to edit a program in a semantic fashion does not preclude its having syntax. I don't see syntax as a boondoggle to be eliminated, but rather the highest-bandwidth way we know how to convey information!

I think you're right that the end game of any successful attempt at standardization is integration with all those tools like Outlook, Slack, Discord, Signal, Word, Docs, Notion... The list goes on and on. It's strange how the presence or absence of political momentum behind a standard could change that from being "basically impossible" to "basically inevitable"

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conartist61y ago

vidarhOP1y ago

The internal representation isn't the problem, or even a problem. It's not even beginning to address what I described.

E.g this is a real line of code:

    link = wf["links"].find{ _1["rel"] == "self" && _1["type"] == "application/activity+json" }

Once you've solved Slack - maybe with a plugin -, you need to solve all our e-mail clients, and you need to solve Google Docs and Word for when we write documentation, and a multitude of other tools.

You might be able to get part of the way there with a browser plugin, but you'll still have a wide variety of other tools and platforms to cover.

conartist61y ago

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