I have seen dozens of these things and have made a few myself.<p>Beyond some specific use cases, they don't seem to scale cognitively. The tangle of connections is a problem. The previous HN link from @andsoltis has a better critique than me.<p>Don't get me wrong. Besides being experientially cynical about these things, I'm also firmly in the camp of "one more UI breakthrough, bro and we might crack it!"<p>This one has some deep design that definitely attempts to extend the state of the art but still struggles with that aforementioned problem.<p>TBH though, the coolest feature is that widget that focuses on what you are doing. There is something there with it, I'm just not sure what the "there" or "it" is, but I do know I like it.
I discovered Unit in the latter half of 2022 and found it very interesting. I always loved Fusion and Houdini for the flow based programming aspects. I think in Houdini's case it is notable that is has such a long history it dates back to earlier research in visual computing...<p>Anyway, I used Unit as an excuse to play with OBS and stream a bit... if you'd like to see a video of how I figured out some bits about how it worked since I couldn't find anything close to a tutorial I have a video on YouTube:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwknTfGVDq8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwknTfGVDq8</a>
Looks promising. I would love to see a tool to convert existing programs to Unit.<p>This readme gives a much better idea of how it works: <a href="https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit/blob/main/src/docs/start/README.md">https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit/blob/main/src/docs/star...</a>
This is quite comparable to the vision I had in 2012 for NuzzGraph, but there was no way I was going to realistically make any real progress given the complexity and my lack of experience at the time.<p>Also it was clearly a solution in search of a problem. I was a believer in the idea that graph databases would enable a new paradigm of application development in the way that relational databases did, and wanted to try to pioneer something. That was (so I thought) what college dropouts like myself in my early 20s needed to do to get ahead in tech, as I was only a mere data analyst at the time, with no connections to the tech industry, scraping by while living inside a garage.<p>It was a good exercise though and it somehow out of sheer luck caught the attention of Manning Publications as it likely came up in the search results for OrientDB. My project page included a sort of roadmap to integrate with OrientDB.<p>They signed me on as a co-author of the book OrientDB in Action as the other author(s) IIRC weren’t native English speakers and they needed one. The book was never released but a different author released a similar book without publisher backing which was good enough for OrientDB.<p>If a publisher ever approaches you to help write a book, no matter how ridiculous of a candidate you think you are, your initial response should always be yes. You don’t have any obligation to actually finish a book unless it’s in the contract. You won’t make a dime but you’ll get world-class training on writing technical documentation. They only required that I complete a draft of one chapter within a shorter timespan for the first phase.<p><a href="https://code.google.com/archive/p/nuzzgraph/wikis" rel="nofollow">https://code.google.com/archive/p/nuzzgraph/wikis</a><p><a href="https://code.google.com/archive/p/nuzzgraph/wikis/NuzzGraphBenefits.wiki" rel="nofollow">https://code.google.com/archive/p/nuzzgraph/wikis/NuzzGraphB...</a>
Hi,<p>I've probably mentioned this a few times on here, but Prograph was a GREAT example of a visual language, that solved a LOT of issues (spaghetti code) etc. It's worth a look if you're interested in visual programming<p>* object oriented
* scrunching of code - tha could be turned into functions (local-to-opers)
* you could edit code and values whilst it was running
* FAST!<p>Here's an ole video of some server software I made, that at the end shows me rustily doing some Prographing.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/MtECJw59elc?si=svRbd5_IA4cAFhVa&t=1429" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/MtECJw59elc?si=svRbd5_IA4cAFhVa&t=1429</a><p>p.s A free version of Prograph (Marten) used to exist, but when the genius creator died, the project, sort of lost its way too.
Love unit, long time admirer. If you're into this, you might also be into Substrate - a non-visual but also graph-based programming model, for multi-step ML programs <a href="https://www.substrate.run/" rel="nofollow">https://www.substrate.run/</a>
I think the future is in mixed modal computing environments. Text is superior in some architectural paradigms and inferior in others.<p>Box and noodles can be more descriptive and interactive for some parts of a system but probably not for all parts of a system. Configurations for parts of applications can be better in a GUI than a yaml file. Embedding one language like SQL in another could have an integrated GUI subeditor complete with language server.
The flow based visual programming has always being challenging field, and the problem remains: what are the values added comparing with the text based coding?<p>I really want to love it, please give me a strong reason.