40 • Live as in Alive
I have a swirl of feelings and this is the only way I know to express them.
Nov 08, 2024•41 min•Ep. 40
Hest
Ivan Reese thinks out loud about the design of his esoteric graphical programming system.
Episodes
39 • Jerk
The story behind one of my songs, tracing its roots back through several failed career changes, through my life slowing to a crawl, how I got serious about programming, the damage it's done to me, and a recurring idea that informed Hest and, well, so many other things. Note that there's nothing new to learn about Hest here. This one is just a story.
Jul 07, 2024•41 min•Ep. 39
38 • Of A History That Never Existed
This year in Hest: Amb Bi Omni d.ts & Switch
Apr 13, 2024•27 min•Ep. 38
37 • Rabbit Hole
As promised at the end of the previous episode, this one breaks the format a little. Granted, if this is going to be a once-a-year affair, I think it's reasonable to have a bit of fun with it, mmm?
Apr 17, 2023•51 min•Ep. 37
36 • Crosscut
Seven months of inking and switching later, a novel saw has been seen by all. In what interesting ways does said saw differ from Hest? In what ways are they similar? What even is Hest anymore? Listen on, Macduff.
Apr 06, 2022•46 min•Ep. 36
35 • Kraft Dinner
I'm going to change the format of this show, for the next few months at least if not longer. We'll see! But stick around. There'll be more to come. I think. Probably! Maybe. Wait, where are you going? Aww beans.
Nov 15, 2021•7 min•Ep. 35
34 • Crib Autodesk's Homework
I'm not trying to invent a new genre, I'm just trying to be the Estradasphere of visual programming.
Nov 07, 2021•17 min•Ep. 34
33 • Aesthetic Constraints
Why do all programming tools look so similar?
Oct 31, 2021•20 min•Ep. 33
32 • What Gets Cut
If I'm not able to build Hest as it's currently conceived, what will it end up looking like? What gets cut, what gets saved — and in what order?
Oct 24, 2021•16 min•Ep. 32
31 • Abstraction in VPLs
Marcin Ignac asked me the following on Twitter: "We are actually starting to think of abstractions/groups/sub-graphs in Nodes just now. Would you have any pointers to environments doing it well or wishes for a better way of doing it?" Yep, I've got wishes. Speaking of Marcin's Nodes project, this is essential reading: https://nodes.io/story/ Every visual programming language should have that depth of thought put into it, and should share that thinking out loud. Beautiful stuff....
Oct 17, 2021•18 min•Ep. 31
30 • Schematics
Similar to the one about SpaceChem, this episode looks at another piece of prior art I'm drawing on for the design of Hest: the Live Schematic simulations built by my company, which are so much like a "Future of Technical Documentation" tool that it seems obvious to me that we need something similar for software development.
Oct 10, 2021•14 min•Ep. 30
29 • Some Good Tools
The only thing easier than making better tools for working with wires… is insisting that it'd be easy to make better tools for working with wires.
Oct 03, 2021•24 min•Ep. 29
28 • Functions
Listener question: What's the current plan for functions in Hest?
Sep 26, 2021•26 min•Ep. 28
27 • Soft Ideas
How ideas solidify as you think about them.
Sep 19, 2021•15 min•Ep. 27
26 • As a Library
• A strange kind of not invented here. • "Easy to reason about" — quarter in the swear jar.
Sep 13, 2021•20 min•Ep. 26
25 • We Can Put Lipstick on Our Pigs
Listener questions? Send 'um in! • @spiralganglion • [email protected] Hest's data model is simple, very simple, but not so simple as to avoid a digression into AoS vs SoA. Properties are our springboard into the main topic: what is to be done about the interface? A sidebar is a recipe for spooky action, and I don't like spooky action, and I definitely don't like meat.
Sep 05, 2021•17 min•Ep. 25
24 • Hest's Approach to Static Type Checking
I have an idea for a feature called "accelerator functions", which are functions that define behaviour both within Hest itself and within the underlying runtime Hest sits atop (JavaScript, maybe someday "et al" too). Accelerators give you a way to write some heavily-constrained code that can run extra fast (directly against JS), but that can still be viewed and debugged as full-on Hest graphical code (which normally has a ton of overhead). This episode only discusses the feature in brief. The bu...
Aug 29, 2021•10 min•Ep. 24
23 • Barnacles
Speculating on nice affordances for programmers to hook into Hest's editor features.
Aug 22, 2021•11 min•Ep. 23
22 • Niceties Now or Later?
Should nice, fun, playful tools and capabilities be built directly in the editor now? Or should those things be held back, waiting until the language model is robust enough to build them within it?
Aug 16, 2021•11 min•Ep. 22
21 • Terminology
Point, dot, position? Edge, wire, path? And, whence Hest?
Aug 08, 2021•23 min•Ep. 21
20 • Numerical Precision
Issues with floats, Conal Elliott's FRP, 3:2 Pulldown, quantization, keeping things consistent whether running at "full speed" or in super slow motion.
Aug 02, 2021•17 min•Ep. 20
19 • Excess Unwanted Growth
Yes, I know it's pronounced "bez-ee-ay" not "bez-ee-er" but old habits die hard.
Jul 25, 2021•18 min•Ep. 19
18 • How Hest Code Is Executed
In detail, here's how Hest's evaluator advances the simulation state. This episode covers the simple parts. Next week, we'll look at the emergent chaotic bits.
Jul 18, 2021•13 min•Ep. 18
17 • requestAnimationFroop
Most games, and game-like software, use a constantly-running main loop to handle input, update their internal state, and produce an ever-changing result for the user. With Hest I'm taking a different approach, designed to reduce the idle power consumption to a minimum.
Jul 10, 2021•15 min•Ep. 17
16 • Pluggable Dog
Zdog: https://zzz.dog Also — looking back on this episode after the fact (a few weeks after recording it, having spend the past few weeks thinking more about rendering), my thoughts on what would make for the best approach have changed. I'm already trying a new prototype with a different approach. This should serve as a reminder to myself (and such constant reminders are needed) that I ought to be very careful about speaking with undue certainty. I like to say that something *will* happen, when ...
Jul 04, 2021•14 min•Ep. 16
15 • One (Hundred) Rendering Trees
• Glamorous Toolkit's One Rendering Tree: https://medium.com/feenk/one-rendering-tree-918eae49bcff • Natto: https://natto.dev
Jun 26, 2021•15 min•Ep. 15
14 • The Pit of Your Stomach
Why not just make all data points take the same amount of time to convey along every path?
Jun 19, 2021•14 min•Ep. 14
13 • Begin Third Batch
My blog post about different approaches to rewind: https://ivanish.ca/hest/time-travel Enso: https://enso.org Places to contact me with feedback: https://ivanish.ca#contact
Jun 13, 2021•19 min•Ep. 13
12 • Not the Goal
Caution: This episode may qualify as ASMR content. It might also qualify as irritating, sophmoric philosophizing. But as the previous few episodes have run aground on the muddy bank of the design space, I'm marking the occasion by establishing firmly that WHILST PERFECT IS NOT THE POINT, NOR IS GOOD. And now that that's out of my system, we're going to (in the upcoming episodes) jump back to the center and venture outward along an entirely new axis. Though that Ira Glass quote is fucking fire, h...
Jun 06, 2021•16 min•Ep. 12
11 • Reconcile
Each part of the whole can have different philosophies.
May 30, 2021•10 min•Ep. 11
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