> It's just that the presence of those features makes it much easier not
to care, and many users just don't care, and it makes things worse for
those of us who have to use that patch elsewhere.
Short story: I'm not going to write the code to implement segmented cords, and
I don't think anyone else is, either. But if someone wants to I'll certainly have
a look.
Long story:
Non-segmented patch cords suggest a flow chart. Segmented patch cords--
when used sensibly-- suggest a circuit board. The difference IMO is nobody in
their right mind would suggest circuit boards are an especially readable and
friendly way to elucidate a program's logic to human beings. That's the starting
premise of every "flow based" language, though, and I've never seen much
evidence to back it up.
All those awful-looking yet functional Pd and Max patches get that way
because of the strength of the approach, IMO-- that is, a physical motion with
visual animated feedback creates the flow of data. It's the drawing of the
patch matters, not the engraving.
For example, imagine that Pd tracked Dan's eye movement on the first
version of his patch. Those objects and wires that he hasn't looked at for
awhile fade more and more into the background, unless he tries to focus
on one of them and then they return. I think that's a pretty decent description
of how we actually create those write-only patches. Throw in whatever the
opposite of MVC is (e.g., where a toggle can appear smack dab in the model),
and you have an environment that's well suited to quick prototyping.
Of course that mental model has a short shelf-life, so there's the separate
issue of how to turn that into a readable patch. There are certainly patterns
to follow there, and ways to minimize the spaghetti in the first place. But I think that potential to draw big ugly lines across the whole damn thing is what drives the speed and elegance of developing in the language. If it weren't then Pd
would be like brainfuck, and none of those spaghetti patches would be able to
deliver any functionality to speak of.
So for those users who don't care about taking their patches (or, hopefully,
small abstractions or subpatches) from
"draw-time ugly-mode" to "presentable-to-other-humans mode", I don't think
segmented cords matter much. For the ones who do, I guess I'd rather look at
a flow chart than a circuit board. But given the choice I'd rather watch little
gremlins carry buckets of water up a hill, or robots shooting lasers at drones.
Or at least see the data "pumping" through all those boring control wires that seem to always obscure the text I'm trying to read...
-Jonathan