Future of Coding Research Archive

Andre Staltz Codementor 9/11/17

Links on “CycleJS as IDE”

• https://medium.com/open-collective/cycle-js-a-unified-theory-of-everything-for-javascript-e266ac9a59ad
• https://vimeo.com/217444733
• https://github.com/Widdershin/bonsai-editor
• https://github.com/Widdershin/stream-tree
• making sure everything can be visual (pool, math.random) https://github.com/cyclejs/cyclejs/issues/581

How devtools work

• window.Cyclejs gives you metadata for the app, shares with devtools
  • window.Cyclejs comes from `run
  • has sinks, final node at bottom of graph, what is rendered on DOM
• traverse starting at the sink to the nodes above it (graphSerializer)
  • https://github.com/cyclejs/cyclejs/blob/master/devtool/src/graphSerializer.ts#L357 (starts here)
  • https://github.com/cyclejs/cyclejs/blob/master/devtool/src/graphSerializer.ts#L329
    • buildGraph goes through each node from sinks (sinks are streams) https://github.com/cyclejs/cyclejs/blob/master/devtool/src/graphSerializer.ts#L160
    • idTable is just a JS map for an ID number for each node
    • traverse does a depth-first search and registers those nodes https://github.com/cyclejs/cyclejs/blob/master/devtool/src/graphSerializer.ts#L138
      • 1) stream has producer, listening to something, operator like map or filter, but anything that produce data, like addEventListener which isn’t an operator (which you can find in xstream codebase)
        • ins property: input straem
      • 2) insArr: many input streams, like merge
      • 3) _prod: source nodes, grey boxes at top
      • then run layout which gives x and y for nodes
      • serialize https://github.com/cyclejs/cyclejs/blob/master/devtool/src/graphSerializer.ts#L335
• panel/index gets stream of JSON https://github.com/cyclejs/cyclejs/blob/master/devtool/src/panel/index.ts#L66
• panel/model parses
• panel/view renders

data -> code

• go from data structure to code
  • use the dagre structure (nodes and edges)
  • there are some hidden data (what is being mapped, what is being folded)
• also considering writing a DSL
  • limiting JS expressivity
  • related to push/pull thing (disable Math.random type of thing), so basically like seperating side effects / monads
• signal and stream
  • signals are the pull thing
  • like Elm, if a function has no arguments, it should be a constant

difference between Elm and Cyclejs

• first class streams in CycleJS
• Elm has callbacks, but CycleJS treats clicks as “coming from outside the program”
  • Actions, not callbacks
  • with the same data structure, you’re defining those two things, the output and input
  • the way CycleJS gets around this is by refering with classnames or ids
    • you can then get a graph from these things, not sure if you can do this in Elm
    • even if you could get this graph from Elm code, it’s less aparent in the texual code

noFlo

• not going to go down this road
• the nodes are allowed to do side effects
  • In Cycle, devtools, grey is not in app, blue is transformations
• could just use subset of noFlo
• benefit from building something custom and constrained
  • simple and optimized for this use case

constructing HTML in devtools

• there are some use cases where text is better
  • for example, BMI calculation
• the goal here is to replace the sublime text minimap
• summary of your code that’s 90% complete
• also ability to add the box in the editor and then see what that code will be
  • directly would affect the code in my editor, somehow sync to text editor, parse code to AST
• eventually if we wanted 100% IDE then snipets for code in the boxes

StreamSheets

• sounds like Eve
  • they have a table of clicks
  • he had trouble with building BMI calculator in Eve
  • TODO strangeloop spreadsheet
• visual editor
  • constrains thinking
  • ask questions
    • where is data coming from?
      • server
    • are you going to send requests to some server?
• visualize cyclejs window object as spreadsheets
  • spreadsheets as reactive programmign model
  • people used to spreadsheets are used to static data where you can manually update data which will then update data
  • there are some live data cells that are live, like stock market
• value-change-over-time vs events
  • time -> real numbers (like age)
    • in cyclejs, this is also a stream
  • events (no current event)
    • birthdays are stream of events
• signals (math.random)
  • represent its sampling by some event
  • it changes every nano second but we sample at some specific times
  • event, with value over time and you get another event
  • can also do proccessing in the signal world and then sample in different ways

Getting involved in CycleJS

• gitter chat, really represents us. get their help in like a minute.

• help-needed bug

• readme has more info on getting started