On Feb 17, 2005, at 11:00 PM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
suppose you wanted to reply to the list but it was a mistake. (If that's not the case, just tell me)
No no, you did well.
Well, there really *aren't* any textual dataflow languages as it stands. I've searched quite a bit and I've never seen any of them. (If you know of any, PLEASE inform me!) I think that alone is a reason to go for it.
AFAIK, the theory-oriented experiments in dataflow languages tend to work in a way quite different from PureData. For example, there are no active inlets, and no long-term state, so you have to send exactly one value to each inlet before something happens, and if you send more than one value to the same inlet it's a collision (not allowed).
Yes yes, this I know. I have no interest in that sort of thing though. Doesn't sound fun at all!
Apart from that, there is a language design called CSP = Concurrent Sequential Processes, which is about doing parallel imperative programming using message pipes (and not with shared memory, so mutexes are not required here). These are the most dataflow of otherwise "ordinary" languages. They don't usually have inlets and outlets but have similar concepts: mailboxes, and pointers to them, respectively. I think I recall Erlang is the most prominent example of that kind of thing.
I have played with Erlang a bit, but it doesn't take flow-based programming to the level I'd like.
IMHO, what I prefer is not the languages that fit purely in a paradigm, but those that are impure. Although this may seem clear, this requires explanation: Java is a quite impure OOP system, but is so for sloppy reasons in a way that makes it rigid, as the non-OOP part is weakly done, not integrated, and despite those problems, completely unavoidable, so you have those problems in your face all along.
Java is crap. Kill it!
Ruby may be more thoroughly OOP than most others, but it is also more thoroughly something else (a more "functional" style) than most others, and those concepts are quite integrated together.
I've played with Ruby a bit. While its nice, I just don't find it any fun. It's a rather boring language I think. You can't get as creative with it as you can with Scheme or Lisp. I love the Io language btw for its conceptual purity and small footprint. Good stuff.
CommonLISP is firstmost an hybrid of imperative "structured programming" and functional programming, but it includes well-integrated extensions to the base language, that implement: OOP, logic(backtracking), and _dataflow_.
Lisp is great. I'm a Schemer myself though. Since most of my serious stuff is done in C or Javascript (for inlining it in Max), I figured that Scheme is a more fun toy language than Lisp. Continuations, all that fun stuff. I could be wrong though.
PureData itself is somewhat of an hybrid between a dataflow language and an imperative OOP language.
Yes. This is why I like it. I like imperative programming. It makes sense.
I wouldn't know exactly where it stands in terms of flexibility, but I have the impression it is quite rigid, given how often complicated patches are required to do simple things, and how often people need externals, and how often people need to _write_ externals.
People write externals more often than they need to. Most often the people that can write externals knew C before they started with Pd, and hence they're more used to solving problems that way. Things they might hesitate to do in Pd might be quite possible and not too messy, but they're just not used to doing things that way. Still, it is somewhat rigid, although not as much as you might think. I think.
If we all love PureData so much, then why doesn't it get a good nudge in the proper direction? Because writing abstractions _ought_ to be better than writing externals, but unfortunately it's not the case often enough, due to the difficulty in getting things right, or getting them to work at all.
I don't know what it is, but I just love Pd/Max. I never even have to think when I'm working with it. I just think in that sort of data-centric way I guess. I like table-driven programming too. But to me, objects without a flow-centric concept (i.e. just about everything out there, Python, Ruby, Java, C++, whatever) make no conceptual sense whatsoever. Who is this god that takes data from one object and gives it to another? Just a bunch of objects floating in space with some magic hand... Forgive me... I had too much caffeine. Java suck. Espresso good.
- John