I really applaud the developers of this for choosing to develop a programming language with its educational utility as a top priority along with a strong visualization component. As someone who got started programming around 2012 because of wanting to make “cool weird art” with Processing, I at least have strong anecdotal experience which biases me to appreciate that these kinds of endeavors exist. People have their whole lives to learn how to implement eg bin-lattice spatial sorting or the discrete element method or SPH or whatever other three letter CFD acronym you might choose, so even if there are lots of abstraction layers on top, getting these sorts of tools into people’s hands at an earlier age is awesome. Hopefully many people will get hooked on programming, CFD, scientific computing, accelerated computing etc simply because the devs of this thought it was worthwhile to make an accessible fun way to “make particles go brrr.” Very cool!
I mostly agree with you. However I'm frightened of every step of ease we take. Will people really then go farther to end up understanding what's really going on and become physics engineers, or will the hidden detail be to solid and high a wall, much like modern devices, the app-based world, modern mobile games, etc.
I agree that getting more people in on it can be good, but every simplification scares me. What if that's knowledge we never get back? Who among us
My guess - lowering barriers to entry is usually a good thing. Maybe you've got someone with the potential to be a low-level engine wizard who just doesn't know they're interested yet because they haven't seen the potential. Maybe someone getting to play with things at a high level starts thinking "but how does it work and dives deeper. Or maybe you have someone who can make something cool, but was never going to slog through the "physics engineering" to get there - and there's one more cool thing in the world because we knocked a limitation out of their way.
I think your concern is a valid one - but I also think it's worth the "risk" to bring concepts up to accessibility and widen the funnel that leads to depth.
I see your point, it seems like this has been a concern since calculators allowed us to stop doing arithmetic.
I think the key is to make sure that when our brains get to “skip” one level of intellectual challenges that we replace it with new challenges.
Put another way, we have finite time and capacity to learn, so what no longer occupies as much of our thinking at one level, hopefully is replaced with something even more useful to focus on at a new level.
You're frightened by 'ease'? Do you think this is a real problem?
Will people really then go farther to end up understanding what's really going on and become physics engineers
Who cares, that's up to them.
but every simplification scares me
This is irrational
What if that's knowledge we never get back?
That hasn't happened for the last 50 years and there have been a lot of toy languages that no one ever used. I don't think this niche side project is going to somehow erase the decades of global computation progress.
I really need to get emacs set up again and give extempore a go. I had a blast playing with Overtone (Clojure bindings for supercollider) a few years back.
Cool read, I wonder how this handles large 3d simulations like the airflow through a system, or a detonation cannon simulation when it comes to performance.
Syntax seems to be like someone mixed elements of C and python in a big kettle, and this syntax was the result.
What a cool project - getting to build an educational particle simulation system that is fun to play with and possibly inspiring ideas and career directions of who knows how many others.
For me and I bet of lot of others it’d be a dream to work at a place like HARC.
Most digitally controlled sewing/embroidery machines have some form of embroidery CNC-like file that they can accept, and as far as I am aware it’s easy to convert to other formats for different machines. I picked up an entry-level Brother (same as the printer company!) machine for a friend recently who wanted to start trying some digital design stuff with it. Was my first exposure to that world!
See eg for a list of the common file formats, mostly associated with specific hardware manufacturers I believe.
