Elephant in the Room
Future of Coding
Exploring Creativity Through Tools and Constraints
Delving into the interplay between tools, constraints, and creativity, the chapter discusses a unique tool that enables users to craft melodies and phrases using a sequence of short recordings. It compares the design choices of the tool to musical instruments like guitars and pianos, emphasizing how varying degrees of constraints can inspire artistic expression. The conversation extends to programming interfaces, video game systems, and the importance of creating environments that foster creativity beyond traditional forms of expression.
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Episode notes
Inventing on Principle
Stop Drawing Dead Fish
The Future of Programming
Yes, all three of them in one episode. Phew!
Links
$ patreon.com/futureofcoding — Lu and Jimmy recorded an episode about Hest without telling me, and by total coincidence released it on my birthday. Those jerks… make me so happy.
- Lu's talk at SPLASH 2023: Cellpond: Spatial Programming Without Escape
- Gary Bernhardt's talk Wat
- Inventing on Principle by Bret Victor ("""Clean""" Audio)
- Braid, the good video game from the creator of The Witness
- David Hellman is the visual artist behind Braid, A Lesson Is Learned but the Damage Is Irreversible, Dynamicland, and… the Braid section of Inventing on Principle.
- Light Table by Chris Granger
- Learnable Programming by Bret Victor
- When Lu says "It's The Line", they're referring to this thing they're working on called Seet (or "see it"), and you can sneak a peek at seet right heet.
- Paris Fashion Week absolutely struts, and so can you!
- The Canadian Tuxedo. As the representative of Canada, I can confirm that I own both a denim jacket and denim pants. If you see me at a conference wearing this combo, I will give you a hug.
- Jimmy runs a personal Lichess data lake.
- Hot Module Replacement is a good thing.
- Pygmalion has a lot of juicy silly bits, 'parently.
- Cuttle is awesome! It's a worthy successor to Apparatus. Toby Schachman, Forrest Oliphant, I think maybe a few other folks too? Crushing it. Oh, and don't miss Toby's episode of this very podcast!
- Recursive Drawing, another Toby Schachman joint.
- Screens in Screens in Screens, another Lu Wilson joint.
- Larry Tesler. Not a fan of modes.
- Lu writes about No Ideas on their blog, which is actually just a wiki, but it's actually a blog, but it's actually just a garden.
- When we mention Rich Hickey, we're referring to the talk Simple Made Easy
- Jacob Collier, ugh.
- Suffragettes, women advocating for their right to vote, absolutely had a principle. Not sure that we should be directly likening their struggle to what we do in tech. On the other hand, it's good to foster positive movements, to resist incel and other hateful ones.
- Instead of linking to e/ anything, I'm just gonna link to BLTC for reasons that only make sense to longtime listeners.
- Stop Writing Dead Programs by Jack Rusher. Jack Rusher? Jack Rusher!
- It's the fish one, the one with the fish. …Sorry, these aren't actually fish, or something, because they're just drawings.
- René Magritte is the creator behind La Trahison des Images, origin of "Ceci n'est pas une pipe". Or maybe it was Margit the Fell Omen?
- Magritte's Words and Images are lovely. Here's an English translation, though its worth taking a look at the original in context.
- Acousmatic Music
- Lu has made art with behaviour — various sands, and CellPond, say.
- Barnaby Dixon? Barnaby Dixon. Barnaby Dixon! Barnaby Dixon!!
- You can listen to part of Ivan's """Metronome""", if you want. Or you can listen to an early version of the song he's using this metronome to write. Or you can hear snippets of it in the Torn Leaf Zero video (especially the ending). But, like, you could also go make yourself lunch. I recommend mixing up a spicy peanut sauce for your roasted carrots. Shred a bit of cheese, tomato. Toast the bread. Pull the sausages right when the oil starts to spit. Put them straight into the compost. Look at the bottom of the compost bucket. What's down there? It's shiny. Why are you reading this? Why am I writing this? Why do we make thispodcast?
- Wintergatan — Marble Machine exists
- Oh, I forgot to add a link to Arroost earlier. You can also watch a pretty good video that is basically an Arroost tutorial, not much to it. There are also some nice examples of things people have made with Arroost.
- The Rain Room looks pretty cool. It's the exact inverse of how rain works in many video games. YOU MUST PLAY RAIN WORLD.
- Here's a beautiful demo of a microtonal guitar, and speaking of using complex machines to make music that would be "easier" to make with a computer, here's a microtonal guitar with mechanized frets that can change the tuning dynamically. This entire YT channel is gold.
- Shane Crowley wrote a lovely blog post about creating music with Arroost.
- blank.page is a fun experiment in writing with various frictions.
- Super Meat Boy (the successor to Meat Boy, a Flash game) and Celeste are great examples of communicating tacit knowledge through the design of a simulation.
- Newgrounds and eBaum's World and Homestar Runner were early examples of (arguably) computer-native media.
- Hey, here's this episode's requisite link to the T2 Tile Project and Robust-First Computing. I should probably just create a hard-coded section of the episode page template linking to T2, The Witness, and Jack Rusher.
- The pun-proof Ivan Sutherland made Sketchpad. Planner exists.
- The PlayStation 3 Cell processor was this weirdly parallel CPU that was a pain in the butt to program.
- The SpaceMouse
Put all metal back into the ground.
Music featured in this episode:
- Fingers from This Score is Butt Ugly
- The Sailor's Chorus from Wagner's The Flying Dutchman.
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See you in the future!
https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/71
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