31 • Abstraction in VPLs

I have a swirl of feelings and this is the only way I know to express them.

The story behind one of my songs, tracing its roots back through several failed career changes, through my life slowing to a crawl, how I got serious about programming, the damage it's done to me, and a recurring idea that informed Hest and, well, so many other things. Note that there's nothing new to learn about Hest here. This one is just a story.

This year in Hest: Amb Bi Omni d.ts & Switch

As promised at the end of the previous episode, this one breaks the format a little. Granted, if this is going to be a once-a-year affair, I think it's reasonable to have a bit of fun with it, mmm?

Seven months of inking and switching later, a novel saw has been seen by all. In what interesting ways does said saw differ from Hest? In what ways are they similar? What even is Hest anymore? Listen on, Macduff.

I'm going to change the format of this show, for the next few months at least if not longer. We'll see! But stick around. There'll be more to come. I think. Probably! Maybe. Wait, where are you going? Aww beans.

I'm not trying to invent a new genre, I'm just trying to be the Estradasphere of visual programming.

Why do all programming tools look so similar?

If I'm not able to build Hest as it's currently conceived, what will it end up looking like? What gets cut, what gets saved — and in what order?

Marcin Ignac asked me the following on Twitter: "We are actually starting to think of abstractions/groups/sub-graphs in Nodes just now. Would you have any pointers to environments doing it well or wishes for a better way of doing it?" Yep, I've got wishes. Speaking of Marcin's Nodes project, this is essential reading: https://nodes.io/story/ Every visual programming language should have that depth of thought put into it, and should share that thinking out loud. Beautiful stuff.