✉️ Not subscribed yet? Subscribe to the Newsletter
Future of Coding Weekly 2025/02 Week 1
2025-02-03 11:01
🎥 FoC Virtual Meetup 8 📢 HYTRADBOI 2025 🎹 Sound As Pure Form
Two Minute Week
🦋 It's worth explaining how I'm making these semantic zoom demos with just CSS via Christopher Shank
I put together a brief writeup about how I've been doing semantic zoom with just a little CSS. I feel like I haven't seen a lot of recent visual programming interfaces (although there are certainly a lot of prior art) take advantage of fluid zooming and geometric encapsulation. Here's a couple small demos:
Our Work
📝 Pure CSS Mixin for Displaying Values of Custom Properties via Roma Komarov
Finally, finished my most recent article (and published a package): kizu.dev/preview-mixin — a lot of overcomplicated CSS, but one that makes it much easier to debug various dynamic values. For now, it is mostly for displaying them as text when possible, but I have a few ideas about some other visualizations. I already used it for a few experiments — and seeing the values of what you're working on in real time really helps.
💻 levlo.com via Jarno Montonen
My natural language programming technology, Levlo, is now a "LLM Integration Platform". Updated the site: levlo.com. The Document Agents stuff is something I have not shared here before: levlo.com/document-agents. Any feedback appreciated!
📝 Of Interest via Paul Tarvydas
FWIW: this is a reply I made elsewhere. Hoping it might be of interest here.
🎠 Practicing graphical debugging using too many visualizations of the Hilbert curve via Kartik Agaram
🎥 Video
🎥 Transclusions and Rectangles via Robin Allison
Here is something I've been working on for a while that I've finally figured out how to do. You draw rectangles in the plane and 'transclusions' between them. Transclusions produce copies which display only in the target. Transclusions copy rectangles to produce new (cropped) rectangles. Transclusions also copy copied rectangles. Additionally, transclusions copy transclusions, which in turn copies transclusions and rectangles as well. Because rectangles can be moved around and resized every transclusion copies every rectangle and every transclusion ad infinitum at all times (though currently we stop after four steps). You can think of this structure as something like a syntax tree whose pieces can be moved in and out continuously at will, and two way transclusions as a kind of symbolic variable with the symbol missing. The math behind all this is really interesting too, but I probably don't want to go on about that here.
(cc @Elliot and Lu Wilson, thanks for inspiring me to think about rectangles and affine transformations! Also cc Jonathan Edwards since transclusions are very similar to inclusions from First Class Copy and Paste.)
Devlog Together
🧰 das2json.js via Paul Tarvydas
Created yet another diagram-to-json converter in Javascript by asking Claude 3.5 nicely to convert the existing Odin version to Javascript.
📝 Draw.io via Paul Tarvydas
I got live update messages to work in DPLWB. Draw.io -> choreographer.py -> spawn transpiler -> choreographer.py -> dplwb.html. The transpiler, while working, sends little updates (JSON objects (an array of one object consisting of a pair of strings)) to the choreographer which are immediately sent to dplwb.html. Final result is sent to dplwb.html as an array of JSON objects. Turn-around is "fast enough" (seconds) to be usable in bootstrapping and debugging this stuff more deeply. [DPLWB == Diagrammatic Programming Language WorkBench]
🎛️ GOOD KNOB via Ivan Reese
I've been tinkering on a way to handle continuous numeric input. Or, in plainspeak, a knob … that you can turn. But it's, like, good , as far as knobs go. (Fake computer knobs, at least.)
- It does the usual thing… you can drag up-and-down to turn the knob. Classic.
- Oh! You can also drag left and right to turn the knob. That's nice.
- Wait… you can crank in circles around the knob? And that works well too?
- But but but… you can also crank in circles, like, anywhere on the screen!
The goal is "do what I mean" gestural input. Granted, it's currently dumb and could be better, which is why I'm still tinkering on it.
You can play with it here. Code is here.
Thinking Together
💬 Matt Rasmussen
I've been thinking about what libs and pkg indexes might look like as coding assistants become the norm. What if instead of packages providing a post_install.sh script (to regex config, add symlinks), they had a post_install.md prompt to help integrate the code into your app.
Libraries and packages indexes (especially language specific ones) have been a boon for code reuse. But they can only be used for code that can be cleanly abstracted. I often encounter chunks of code I wish could reuse as a lib, but I can't because I can't abstract it well enough
But if you wanted to package up a partial table schema and some prompt about how it could be rendered in a UI, then the package manager+coding assistant could auto merge the partial schema into the user's existing schema and even make the right UI updates to show the new fields
This might really help when building apps using coding assistants. Having assistants write so much code from scratch still feels unpredictable. What I really want is to be able to suggest from an index of code fragments and prompts which things to glue into my app.
Such a package index would encourage open source contribution of prompts plus pre-made code fragments. I'm interested in others thoughts.
💬 Jim Meyer
AI-coding (chat) to create UIs — working software you can own — is the "worse is better" existential threat to traditional design tools and no-code.
This is as big, or bigger, than the "worse is better" that JavaScript pulled off for the Internet.
Chat is slow, but it gets the job done in a super accessible way, hence the "worse is better".
The real prize will be to combine the best parts of chat with the best parts of the canvas in design tools / no-code tools.
💬 Oleksandr Kryvonos
I was sceptical about LLMs up till yesterday,
what changed? - arrival of Deepseek R1
Do I think it is "Sputnik moment" - not entirely,
I think it is more like an "Apple I moment" - in a sence that now more people can experiment with this idea,
And the tools are no longer in the hands of only big players.
I will explore the combined approach - I will use LLM with some simple workflows,
For example verification/critique of answer first.
And I will research the subject more carefully.
I do not have powerfull hardware - Apple M1 and SteamDeck ,
So I hope that these limitations will benefit me.
🤔 How might AI change programming? via Mariano Guerra
Interesting list of questions to think about
It will change it. But how?
💬 Jason Morris
Is it neuro-symbolic AI if a generative AI system is used to generate a symbolic representation, which is then modified by a human user, and provided back to the generative AI in a later phase? Or does neuro-generative AI specifically require automated reasoning over the symbolic knowledge? I'm playing with a system for editing propositional argument maps that were generated by an LLM, and I'm not sure that counts. Is it "reasoning over symbolic knowledge" if a symbolic data structure is only being used to generate a graphical UI? It seems borderline, but I'm inclined to think not, and if we aren't reasoning over it, it doesn't count...
💬 Jon Secchis
Hey, folks. I'm experimenting with a universal structured input interface for my research project. The idea is that commands/functions will provide a schema and invoking them prompts the user with a form. I'm pushing for super tight constraints on information density (I want interfaces to spread over time to save screen space, non-negotiable). Now since inputs are going to be generated I cannot have exceptional designs/behavior – it's all going to be rigorously data driven and I can only affect the design/experience by changing the data model. Below are two videos showing how a user would invoke a function for data input. Each video represents a distinct data model. The one with a tabular data model yields a short "time-to-first-field" (less overhead) interaction. The one with a composable tree model (much much more powerful) yields more overhead (2 more steps to reach the first field). Can you share your opinions? Not seeking any specific kind of feedback, just wanna hear your thoughts.
Content
🏢 Umpteenth take on "Programming As Theory Building" via Kartik Agaram
Umpteenth take on "Programming As Theory Building"
One thing I haven't thought to mention until now, in all the conversations about this paper. Between 2019 and 2021 I had perhaps the influential experience of my dayjob career. I got reorged to take over a legacy codebase, and after some initial struggles became expert with it to the extent it felt like my baby, something I'd written myself. And it wasn't just me; I gradually became the tech lead for the team, helped others understand it, and for a while[1] the team was able to own it and make improvements to it.
Factors that made this possible:
- The codebase was relatively recent, just like in OP.
- The codebase was well-designed, just like in OP.
- One of the original authors was still in the company, and welcoming to questions. This one is not like OP. And it was crucial.
[1] What happened after? The company decided it was old, banned changes to it, chased a new shiny thing and let it decay. Companies find many, many ways to fail.
📊 The Communal Plot | A Daily Visualization We All Build Together via Bill Mill
this is a small neat thing: perthirtysix.com/communal-plot-daily-poll
Interactively respond to a daily poll and see how your responses compare to others in real-time!
🎹 Sound As Pure Form via Mariano Guerra
Sound As Pure Form - a Forth-like language for audio synthesis using lazy lists and APL-like auto-mapping.
From the creator of SuperCollider
Other languages that inspired this one: APL, Joy, Haskell, Piccola, Nyquist, SuperCollider.
📝 The Future of Coding: ignore users, build for cyborgs via Kartik Agaram
📝 The UNIX Time-Sharing System: D. M. Ritchie via Xavier Lambein
Expanding on @Jon Secchis's video from last week, here's a 50-page memo on the design of Unix, written by Ritchie
Present Company
🎥 Virtual Meetup 8 • January 22, 2025 via Ivan Reese
Here's the recording of the Future of Coding Virtual Meetup 8. Once again, I've added notes and timestamps to the description. For next month, we're considering trying a different day/time than our usual Wednesday eu-evening/na-morning. Maybe a few hours later, maybe a weekend, who knows. Leave a reply in the thread if you haven't been able to join our other meetups but would love to join the next one. It might be nice to try a bunch of times and get different folks to cycle in/out.
📢 HYTRADBOI 2025 is a fun online conference about databases, programming languages, and everything in between via Jamie Brandon
HYTRADBOI still has plenty of room for more lightning talks, so I'm going to extend the deadline to Feb 16. Check out hytradboi.com/2025#lightning-talk-buffet for details.
Also the program is up and tickets are live.
👨🏽💻 By 🐘 @marianoguerra@hachyderm.io 🐦 @warianoguerra
💬 Not a member yet? Check the Future of Coding Community
✉️ Not subscribed yet? Subscribe to the Newsletter / Archive / RSS
🎙️ Prefer podcasts? check the Future of Coding Podcast