✉️ Not subscribed yet? Subscribe to the Newsletter
Future of Coding Weekly 2025/09 Week 3
2025-09-14 22:44
✊ Live Programming in Hostile Territory 📡 Propagators 📄 What Does ‘Human-Centred AI’ Mean?
Share Your Work
🗨️ Pandi Lin:
Hi everyone 👋
I’ve been working on a JavaScript implementation of Sussman & Radul’s propagator model and wanted to share some progress + questions. here's the link to the repo: https://github.com/Semi-0/Propagator
I currently have two branches:
- A custom push-based version (works, but amb can get weird). (In the AMB branch)
- A more faithful scheduler-based version, closer to the original design. (but amb still acts weirdly when execution gets large)
It supports almost all of the original Scheme machinery, and I’ve been experimenting with a reactive extension so propagator networks can drive UI updates.
Lately I’ve been exploring some theory: I noticed interesting parallels between wired diagrams in category theory and propagator networks, and I’m researching how to separate representation from execution (syntax vs. scheduler). And how I can perhaps making the propagator more self-reliant as independent programming languages.
Since I’m pretty new to open-source, I’d really appreciate advice on two fronts:
- Research direction → does this “wired graph <-> propagator <-> representation/execution” connection resonate with anyone? Are there papers or projects I should look at?
- Sharing the code → what’s the best way to make an infrastructure repo like this easier for others to understand? (Docs? examples? small demos?)
Thanks in advance for any pointers
For anyone not already familiar with propagators, here’s a quick refresher:
A propagator network is a collection of small, independent agents connected by cells that hold partial information. Each agent watches its inputs and, whenever it can deduce something new, it updates other cells. Unlike ordinary functions, information can flow in many directions at once — for example, if you know two sides of a right triangle, the Pythagorean propagator can solve for the third no matter which two you provide. This makes propagators a general model for constraints, dataflow, multi-directional reactivity and incremental reasoning.
🗨️ guitarvydas: 🎥 PBP Part Basics
🗨️ Guyren Howe:
I can’t find a working link here or in the YouTube video. For those interested in further info about Propagators, see: https://wiki.futureofcoding.org/Propagators/
TIL that we have a wiki…
🗨️ Christopher Shank: ✊ Live Programming in Hostile Territory
Orion Reed and I submitted a positional paper for LIVE 2025 called "Live Programming in Hostile Territory". Now that it's been accepted, I'm excited to hear peoples thoughts and feedback! It touches on a topic wider than just live programming and, at least to me, is very relevant to the FOC community. Here is the abstract:
Live programming research gravitates towards the creation of isolated environments whose success is measured by domination: achieving adoption by displacing rather than integrating with existing tools and practices. To counter this tendency, we advocate that live programming research broaden its purview from the creation of new environments to the augmenting of existing ones and, through a selection of prototypes, explore three adversarial strategies for introducing programmatic capabilities into existing environments which are unfriendly or antagonistic to modification. We discuss how these strategies might promote more pluralistic futures and avoid aggregation into siloed platforms.
Thinking Together
🗨️ guitarvydas:
A sketch that might inspire brainstorming. I perceive that we're "doing what we've always done" instead of stepping back and inventing new stuff, like they did in 1960. The "we've always done it this way" mentality results in epicycles piled on top of epicycles.
Linking Together
🗨️ Ivan Reese:
(Graphics) Clever use of screen-space vertex positions + edge depth to represent impossible objects in a robust way.
Meschers: Geometry Processing of Impossible Objects
🗨️ Ivan Reese:
Double header — lead author on the above also has a good paper/talk about gender and bias in graphics research.
🗨️ Jasmine Otto:
Dreyfus 1965, 98p. longread, early example of critical AI. feels kinda ripped from the headlines.
emphasizes gestalt processing & gestures toward embodiment. looks like frame problems and wicked problems (critique of reductionist / associationist assumptions) developed in parallel
📝 Lori Emerson (@loriemerson@post.lurk.org)
I am SO enjoying this very early...the earliest? critique of AI from 1965 whereby Hubert Dreyfus calls the hot air about AI "the production of intellectual smog" #ai https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3244.html
🗨️ Mattia Fregola: 📝 Physically based rendering from first principles
Feels like it might have been shared before, if not this is pretty awesome:
📝 Physically based rendering from first principles
🗨️ Jasmine Otto:
good manifesto for slow tech 📄 What Does ‘Human-Centred AI’ Mean? (15p.)
Something I hinged on to get to this what I describe: the Marxian fetishisation of artefacts is so complete in the case of AI that not only do we somehow conclude machines think, but we accept for them to think, speak, draw instead of us, while also thinking these are (expressions of) our thoughts.
👨🏽💻 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