Coding with instant response/effect

Bret Victor gave a very interesting talk on Inventing on Principle, where he also shows off results of his personal principle. His is that one should see instant changes and results when changing and editing data on PC – be it programming, animating or constructing circuit. For these 3 he also shows off 3 of his own projects, solving the problem of missing feedback.

The real fun starts at 2:20. At 23:10 the 3 programming examples are ofter, circuit application follows. Animation application example ends at 34 mins.

So in case you do not want to watch the full hour presentation, I definitely encourage you to watch the 30 minutes of it.

Coding, circuiting as well as (key-frame) animating is still based on the concepts developed for the first computers, where you actually coded or drew on paper. With todays possibilities of interactivity though, the creative productive process can be vastly improved, leading to a more playful and creative space when manipulating your ideas and products.

For the programming parts the talk uses JavaScript, which works great to illustrate the point, and where it is practical. Adopting these concepts to bigger desktop software projects may be a harder task, but seeing the results of his work definitely shows: the effort would be worth it. It changes the whole concept of how we program today and how/that we have to abstract and imagine, greatly reducing the distance between state and logic in the mind and the actual product.

Even for non programmers this talk could be (very?) interesting. Especially since the second part is of general nature, not focusing on the mentioned 3 concrete areas any more.

Found via CodeBook