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February 02, 2007
Functional Graphics = Fun!
Ezra blogs on something I've often thought. Wouldn't it be cool if Processing had a better programming model. For better you should read: functional reactive. Imagine how easy it would be to code great animations. As he notes, it would make a good Master's project, but it probably wouldn't work as a PhD as I don't think there is enough originality.
He closes with:
f I were just starting now on my PhD, I'd find a way to include this in my work, or I'd put off the PhD until I could get this done! Tinkering with graphics demos and slapping them up on the web is the kind of hacking I'd really like to be doing. As it is, I'll have to leave it to some young whippersnapper, alas.
You mean a PhD isn't about pursuing your own side projects? Why didn't some one tell me! 'sides Ezra, your PhD is really cool already. I don't think it would be fair if you got all the toys.
Posted by Noel at February 2, 2007 01:11 PM
Comments
That was roughly 1/3d of my NSF proposal this year to fund my Ph.D.
The results are in - they agree. The moment I saw processing, and how well artists dealt with its main redraw loop, it was obvious. Judging by the success of Max/MSP, the IDE potential is great too.
I think Conal Elliot (did the original work with Hudak on frp) is working on related java stuff nowadays that he embeds into browsers. However, I think some sort of IL approach makes more sense, compiling into both GPU code (it *is* stream based) and something like Flash. There are a lot of open questions in FRP in terms of both semantics and implementation (from supporting mutation and useful relationships with executable temporal logics to taking advantage of concurrency and dealing with collections). The other domain I think that is fresh picking is servers. They're fun domains and give room for basic work in the field (all implementations I've seen are slow when stressed).
Posted by: leo at April 17, 2007 06:12 AM