Thomas F. Burdick wrote:

Kenny Tilton writes:

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Thomas F. Burdick wrote:

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For those curious, I'll be using Cells to drive the application (Kenny, you ever come up with a term for this? ).

"Cells Inside"? If that is what you mean. Not sure. You mean a shorthand for "Cells-driven app", right? That's a tough one.

Right. "Cells Inside" could mean all sorts of things, which wouldn't necessarily involve driving the main application logic. If it weren't a great road towards confusion with research-style constraints systems, I'd say, "I'm using Cells as the constraints system," just like I'd say, "I'm using Araneida as the web server."

I think the problem is that there is a pretty dramatic paradigm shift. Use a familiar word (constraints) and people cannot escape the gravitational pull of their knowledge of that domain; they understand, but the wrong thing. Make up a new word (animus-oriented programming) and people simply have no idea what you are going on about. Use a familiar term as an analog (spreadsheet for instances) and they have one of those two problems, either "No, I have to do a RoboCup team, not Visicalc" or "Hunh?".

"Dataflow model" is tempting, but I think has the problem of "constraints". "cell-driven" is a lot easier to say than "cells-driven", but no one will understand you. How about "datapush"? "Causal programming"? It's a tough one. Probably the best thing to do is say cell-driven to avoid false sense of comprehension, then deal with the hunh? Builds the brand, too. :) I mean, basically, this is the time to pick the buzzword we'll have to live with. But should those things be picked, or should they just be the phrase we all settle on as shorthand without thinking about it?

I like "animation" because it is novel as a programming metaphor and captures the essence of what cells do. "Animus" forces a "hunh?" to head off "no, I am not doing a cartoon...".

The other highbrow way of looking at Cells is that they endow data with causal power over other data and, via echo, processes. The causal thing facilitates the animation thing. Causal is a deeper way of looking at it, animation is sexier.

Something like that.

kt