Hey, Daniel.
Thanks for the +1, as the kids today say!
Yeah, what we developers deal with must somehow be avoided until the students have felt the thrill of programming, if they will. This programme will not be for everyone. But for those who light up as much over algorithms as they do the music, *then* we can let them see a two thousand line Clojure backtrace on every error. Grrrr. :)
I like the section contrasting Pyret with other languages that are considered clean syntactically. Pyret makes them look like Java. :) We devs put up with such garbage. One reason I want Clojure or CL for this is because the macros will make it easy to deliver a super friendly yet powerful new music DSL.
Looking at Pyret also reminded me of Logo, another super clean yet powerful language aimed at noobs of any age.
Thx for the Pyret pointer!
-hk
On Mon, Jul 6, 2020 at 11:23 PM Daniel Herring dherring@tentpost.com wrote:
Hi Ken,
I think music is a great way to engage a wider audience of potential developers. It has a wider appeal and lower barrier to entry than many other programming activities.
Having seen kids fire up a web browser to do "Scratch programming", I'm convinced that a web-based platform is the most accessible. People can use almost any computer to create accounts, create projects, and share/publish projects. Only seasoned developers are comfortable with the concept of "install this editor, compiler, and Git". :)
Here's an interesting language, though it may not have a audio library yet.
- Daniel
On Mon, 6 Jul 2020, Ken Tilton wrote:
"actively under development"! Music (sorry) to my ears! The Lisp and ADD
genes must overlap seriously. I started one of the videos. Really nice live coding.
I'll make sure our code camp grad school uses CL.
Thx!
-hk
On Mon, Jul 6, 2020 at 8:11 PM Andy Peterson andy.arvid@gmail.com
wrote:
https://github.com/byulparan/cl-collider "A SuperCollider clientfor CommonLisp"
Never tried this but I've been following it for a few years and it is
actively under development.
Andy
On Mon, 6 Jul 2020 at 13:57, Ken Tilton kentilton@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for the seconding motion! But part of the plan is high
accessibility, and low cost. I just noticed the pricing on OpusModus, bit of a showstopper there.
We would use Clojure Overtone https://overtone.github.io/ but that sits
atop Supercollider, not sure if that would make installation a PITA. Ideally we would have sth built atop Web Audio, but
then we really are super low-level. I think! Have to look into that.
We would want to hook the students with solid music before taking them
down to the basics, so existing effects etc would be great to have, but again, this is about coding in general, not music
generation. That is just the hook.
Thx again! If some campers get more turned on by music than coding that
will be a great next step.
On Mon, Jul 6, 2020 at 1:43 PM dbm@refined-audiometrics.com <
dbm@refined-audiometrics.com> wrote:
Yes, I was also going to suggest OpusModus. I see little purposein reinventing any portion of what they have done.
I have been a user for about 2 years now. It seems to be the defacto
replacement for an earlier product done in Lispworks, from Italy, called Symbolic Composer. OpusModus is very good, and
getting better every day. They just implemented live MIDI recording in
the latest version.
- David McClain
Refined Audiometrics Laboratory, LLC Tucson, AZ, USA refined-audiometrics.com
On Jul 6, 2020, at 8:11 AM, Ken Tilton <kentilton@gmail.com>wrote:
Sounds great, I will keep it in mind if we loosen the web/mobile-native
constraint. Or maybe as a direction for campers who take off -- no need then to fret over platform,
power will matter.
Thx!
On Mon, Jul 6, 2020 at 10:54 AM Stonewall Ballard stoney@sb.org wrote: Ken,
Are you familiar with Opusmodus? http://opusmodus.com
It’s written in Clozure ccl, and besides providing an incredible array
of music manipulation functions and structures, it’s got a beautiful window system. Mac only.
Your idea of using music as a hook to learn Lisp sounds plausible. Good
Luck!
- Stoney
————Stonewall Ballard stoney@sb.org http://stoney.sb.org
On Monday, July 6 at 8:15:31 AM, Ken Tilton (kentilton@gmail.com) wrote:
So I got to thinking about creating an approachable pathway to IT
careers for anyone really, but in the spirit of today one focused on creating career opportunities for
African Americans.
The idea would be a code camp developed around algorithmic generation of
music. I know nothing about music theory, except that there is prolly enough there to introduce
most if not all fundamental programming concepts.
For those campers that accidentally get hooked on programming itself,
which is how many of us ended up in IT careers, away they go!
The idea is to:
- use music as the hook;
- defer as long as possible the annoying things about programming (I
am looking at you, node.js);
- part of that ^^^ will be using a powerful language with the
parentheses in the right place, prolly ClojureScript since that could run where JS runs;
- keep programming as the focus, as tempting as the music will be.
Sonic Pi comes with all sorts of built-in sound capabilities, but we want to develop those in the
code camp;
- tailor the program to specific musical genres, to maximize the
musical hook.
I am dropping this here since I know many Common Lispers have a strong
musical bent. My questions are:
- Could we use CL instead? I do think this almost has to be a web app,
perhaps even mobile. Hmmm, we could CL-ify CLJS with sufficent clever macrology.
- What do you think? Can a solid programming fundamentals course be
expressed in music theory? Hint: HTTP is not a programming fundamental.
- If there is any interest, what would be a good place for an ongoing
discussion? Google groups?
Ideas, comments, suggestions all welcome.
-hk
-- Kenneth Tilton http://tiltontec.com/
-- Kenneth Tilton http://tiltontec.com/
-- Kenneth Tilton http://tiltontec.com/