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Dave Griffiths
pawfal.org · Personal blog · on HN since 2007
Dave Griffiths writes about live coding, his Fluxus 3D engine, Scheme Bricks, weaving, and creative programming projects.
What HN saysHN commenters admire his live-coding work, pointing to Fluxus, the drag-and-drop Scheme Bricks language for music, and his blog's weaving section.
50HN people shared it
29linked it in comments
26stories submitted
715story points
4 years agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Fluxus – A 3D game engine for live-coding worlds into existence26 people · 385 points · first shared 2008 · 23 comments on HN
- 2Scheme Bricks6 people · 73 points · first shared 2010 · 6 comments on HN
- 3Projects using fluxus2 people · first shared 2010
- 4A 6502 lisp compiler, sprite animation and the NES/Famicom1 people · 114 points · first shared 2016 · 13 comments on HN
- 5Coding Scheme Live, to Music1 people · 51 points · first shared 2009 · 2 comments on HN
- 6Pixel Quipu (Inca knots)1 people · 33 points · first shared 2016 · 3 comments on HN
- 7AI as puppetry, and rediscovering a long forgotten game1 people · 28 points · first shared 2015 · 3 comments on HN
- 8Download (fluxus)1 people · 8 points · first shared 2009 · 4 comments on HN
- 9Quagmire - "Programs are drawings"1 people · 4 points · first shared 2007 · discussion on HN
- 10LazyBotz: Building 3d robots in fluxus1 people · 3 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 11Raspberry Pi: Built for graphics livecoding1 people · 2 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 12Minecraft-style lighting in Scheme1 people · 2 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 13Weavecoding performance experiments in Cornwall1 people · 2 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 14Al Jazari, live coding in your browser1 people · 2 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 15Some post-Snowden thoughts1 people · 2 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
eggy · 2019-01-13
I am amazed at how technology and older technology come together over time. I was following Dave Griffiths since my early interest in live coding and the program fluxus [0]started. He has a section on his blog on weaving [1] that is pretty cool. I remember when flexible circuits were starting to be integrated into hats and sweaters (LEDs and such). From Jacquard loom to FM sweaters!
[0] http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/
[1] http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/category/weaving/
vmorgulis · 2016-02-01
Amazing!
Related, a drag'n drop only language for live coding music:
http://www.pawfal.org/dave/index.cgi?Projects/Scheme%20Bricks
fr0styMatt2 · 2015-08-25
I can't wait to get home from work to try this, looks awesome!!
I've been looking for something that gives a modern, live-coding-ish experience similar to how you used to program in BASIC on the Commodore 64. No clutter, a fullscreen immediate editor/REPL in one window, nice big text, etc.
The closest I've found to what I'm after (until now that is) is (fluxus) (http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/). Would really really love to hear of any others.
rbanffy · 2014-04-22
It's close to the end of the list, but it's worth hearing more about Scheme Bricks and the music people do with it.
http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/2013/05/algorave-practice/
ique · 2012-04-19
How can you have a website displaying a live-coding language, without a video displaying someone actually live-coding? :P
Seriously though, I'd love to see a video of someone doing live-coding. I've been looking for a good live-coding environment ever since I found fluxus[1], and subsequently found out that development of it had stopped.
[1] http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/
bjconlan · 2012-02-28
Wow that is a great example! Kudos Chris.
I would also like to point some of the commenters to (fluxus) http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/. It is a very nice example of this concept of the same thing, only using racket/plt scheme.
Live coding/reactive code are fantastic little ideas which I wish had been exposed to me earlier in my career.
mquander · 2010-03-15
Here's a cool thing you can do in Scheme if you feel depressed that nothing is written in Scheme:
http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/
(P.S. I love Scheme and did everyday things in Scheme when I had the opportunity to for a while. But right now I'm really enjoying Clojure and I think that Clojure might replace Scheme for me, because of Java libraries, and because of the really concise, consistent, and pleasant syntax, especially for maps and functions.)
jamii · 2009-03-16
Fluxus ( http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/ ) is a scheme environment for live-coding graphics. Its a brilliant way to get started with games programming since you can modify code on the fly and see the results immediately. The underlying graphics engine is written in C++ so you don't lose much performance by choosing scheme.
moron4hire · 2015-07-01
I'm somewhat surprised he isn't basing his work on Fluxus: http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/
> people who might be a little hostile to working in a Lisp.
Hostility is an excellent word for it.
> Doing VR GUI development in the native apps is unpleasant – you can gut it out in C++ with our current interfaces, but the iteration times and code structure don’t make it a lot of fun.
> In-editor prototyping is nice in Unity, but actual on-device testing cycle times are terrible, and you wind up with all the bulk of Unity and poor access to the native VR features like TimeWarp layers.
This is exactly the reason I've focused on WebVR with my Primrose project. Otherwise, JS sucks.
> I am a big believer in functional programming (and static types) for large projects, but there is an undeniable bit of awkwardness compared to just imperatively poking things for small projects
That's funny, because I would say the opposite is true: imperative code with global state is harder to poke around on because it's harder to reason about your state, whereas functional code [0] can be sliced and diced and put back together much more readily.
There are places where traditional for-loops, with a readily exposed counter, are extremely useful in game programming. Perhaps that is what he means? Map and for-each are great when they are the right tool, but I've personally never subscribed to the idea that they are particularly "easier" to use than for-loops, or "more functional".
> The design usage …
craigsmansion · 2019-07-22
Some other Free Software programs for live-coding, as the practice is called:
Fluxus (https://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/) with scheme
Tidal Cycles (https://tidalcycles.org/index.php/Welcome) with Haskell
Samis2001 · 2017-03-03
An addition to this list:
http://www.pawfal.org/dave/index.cgi?Projects/Scheme%20Bricks
zzkt · 2016-03-21
you might find fluxus interesting. http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/
dyadic · 2015-01-07
Since the actual linked page contains video links that don't work, here's Dave Griffith's blog of Scheme Bricks posts including audio, some images and videos : http://www.pawfal.org/dave/blog/tag/scheme-bricks/
neaanopri · 2015-01-07
Has anybody managed to install http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/, the program it's based on?
mrdoob2 · 2012-09-05
I feel that talk made an impression on many people. I think that talk made live editing "mainstream" and Bret "stole" the concept by doing a good show just like Apple does. It's been done for years but no one "bothered" making a good show/product that wowed people.
From the top of my head (fluxus) [1] and impromptu [2]. And I bet every game company have their own live editing tools.
Anyway, </rant>.
What inspired me was this video of Iq's live coding setup [3] from last year. Months later I made a webgl version [4] to help spread glsl know-how. Then doing the HTML/CSS/JavaScript one was just natural de-evolution :)
[1] http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impromptu_(programming_environment)
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g8CdctxmeU
[4] http://glsl.heroku.com/e
genieyclo · 2011-12-07
Fluxus is a 3D game engine for livecoding in Racket. http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/
Example video:
http://vimeo.com/6744140
muyuu · 2011-10-08
If you like this you may want to check Fluxus.
http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/
http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/projects-using-fluxus/
And impromptu:
http://impromptu.moso.com.au/
makmanalp · 2010-12-29
More goodies:
http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/projects-using-fluxus/
stratospark · 2010-07-11
Fluxus is another cool Scheme-based live coding environment, more focused on graphics and physics: http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/. Here are some awesome examples: http://vimeo.com/gabor/videos.
RodgerTheGreat · 2010-05-31
Something like "Scheme Bricks", maybe?
http://www.pawfal.org/dave/index.cgi?Projects/Scheme%20Bricks
Keyframe · 2010-04-28
I "remembered" (thanks to delicious) - fluxus http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/ but it's not really helpful for beginners.
MaysonL · 2009-08-31
About page (easily findable by truncating the link above).
http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/
This is the software used to create the video linked to in this HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795184
adbachman · 2009-04-09
The software is Impromptu [http://impromptu.moso.com.au/](http://impromptu.moso.com.au/), it sounds a lot like [fluxus](http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/) which emilis mentioned.
> Impromptu is an OSX programming environment for composers, sound artists, VJ's and graphic artists with an interest in live or interactive programming. Impromptu is a Scheme language environment, a member of the Lisp family of languages.
emilis_info · 2009-04-09
You can do it too! See some of the programs you can use for this:
http://www.toplap.org/index.php/ToplapSystems
I have tried fluxus (http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/) about a year ago and it involved some non-trivial tinkering before I could start it on my Ubuntu laptop.
Good tool to start conversations at developer conferences ;-)
jmatt · 2008-06-02
... unfortunately still necessary. The link to the pdf:
http://www.pawfal.org/dave/files/scheme-uk/scheme-uk-fluxus.pdf
yellowapple · 2019-07-19
I know of at least one warehouse management system (and in fact maintain a deployment of it as part of my day job) where all the source code for the business logic exists in a SQL Server database; the vendor developed their own IDE of sorts for it that queries the different types of language objects for editing and eventual compilation. Most of the logic itself exists as "process objects" consisting of lists of code elements to execute (comparisons, assignments, database operations, even subprocesses) and pass/fail branches, all manipulated via the IDE's GUI. I suspect it's possible to manually edit the code via SQL (and in fact I'm looking into this, since the IDE is Windows-only and I'd like to do my editing in Linux), but much more tedious (lots of UUID manipulations and joins and such).
On a different note, Lisp would lend itself well to what you seek. While most Lisp/Scheme programming happens in a text editor, Lisp is inherently syntax-agnostic; sure, s-expressions are the most typical, but once upon a time there were M-expressions[1], and Scheme has support for alternative syntaxes[2]. Projects like Scheme Bricks[3] take this even further into visual representation.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-expression
[2]: https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-119/srfi-119.html
[3]: http://www.pawfal.org/dave/index.cgi?Projects/Scheme%20Bricks
brudgers · 2016-03-28
Probable link: http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/
pmoriarty · 2014-10-27
Also see:
http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/
kaoD · 2015-09-07
Keep in mind there are actually two domains in music: instruments (sound synthesis) and orchestration. Both Skoar and Alda (which was linked yesterday) are only orchestration languages.
I've been researching about this and narrowed down by these criteria: (1) Modern and maintained (2) Open source (3) Multiplatform (4) Supports live coding (5) Not MIDI-only output (6) Text-based (7) Not Java (sorry JSyn :P)
For me live coding is important since I prefer to compose music in an exploratory fashion. Also, live performances are cool. Read more about live coding and resources in http://toplap.org
The list in no particular order (beware of the brain dump):
·
## Overtone (https://overtone.github.io/)
The coolest kid on the block is actually a frontend to SuperCollider.
- Clojure based.
- VJ-ready. Integration with Processing via Quil (https://github.com/quil/quil) and GLSL shaders via Shadertone (https://github.com/overtone/shadertone).
- Lots of tooling: https://github.com/overtone
·
## SuperCollider (https://supercollider.github.io/)
- Object-oriented functional language (similar to Smalltalk/Ruby/C/JS).
- Basically Overtone minus Clojure minus VJ plus IDE.
- Client-server architecture (which is what allows Overtone to use it as a backend).
·
## Sonic Pi (http://sonic-pi.net/)
- Ruby DSL + IDE.
- Built for Raspberry PI (but runs anywhere SuperCollider and Ruby are available).
- Another frontend to SuperCollider.
- Designed to be suitable for teaching children.…