[chuck-users] Begin the beguine (Kassen)

[Kassen]

On Mon, Oct 01, 2012 at 10:33:27AM -0700, Perry Cook wrote:
> Kas,
> 
> So sorry for making my very personal confusing code public!
> The many lines per line is indeed me trying to optimize for screen
> space, grouping things together once I'm sure they're working.
> 
> NOTE:   Kids, don't do this yourselves.  Only crusty old timers get 
> to write code that looks unstructured and confusing :-)
> 

It was nice to see, actually. Yesterday I commented on how a file
looked like Ge's style (quite "open" indenting, looks structured and
friendly, does playful weird things in a apparent hope that we'll try
to trace what he's up to and learn).

This wasn't "unstructured" but I'd call it "brutally straightforward".
Not unlike the kind of person who needs two things stuck together for
the course of the day so he (invariably a he) welds the two together
in the morning and takes a angle-grinder in the evening. There is no
debate that that works and that I wouldn't recommend it for the
novice, who is likely better off spending two days and keeping their
fingers.

I enjoy seeing style differences like that. Dan's code is always
friendly to me, Rebecca's stuff makes me think "oooh, this will be
good, let's set it aside to calmly read in depth alter". ;-)

> PICO actually refers not to the editor, but rather a whole series of
> small expressive controllers based on real-world objects I built back
> in the 90's.  See: 
> 
> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~prc/PICOSlide.jpg
> 

Ah, yes. Those I like.

> I do indeed use pico the editor, but one has nothing to do with the others.
> 
> I have lately (Since NIME at CMU) taken to making a MAUI "Dashboard"
> for every controller I use, demo, (and hopefully every one I've ever made).
> The dashboard code checks for MIDI input, and if it's there it uses the data
> from the controller to update the controls on screen.  This helps me debug
> the controller connections, individual sensors, battery, etc.  If there is no 
> MIDI seen, then the code switches over to just hanging out waiting for the
> user to move sliders and click buttons on the interface.  This allows me to
> write and work on performance pieces on the airplane or other places where
> getting out the controller and plugging it in would be inconvenient (or get me
> arrested and sent to terrorist camp).

Nice. I like how modern USB MIDI and HID devices can be polled for
their name, so we can load this kind of thing automatically, or at
least always have the code open the right device.

Totally unrelated; one of E-Mu's old MIDI controllers is all black and
metal and looks like some sort of control-room device. It is called
"Launchpad". I got lucky that one of the customs officers associated
it with "samples" because his collogue was very sceptical about this.


Thanks,
Kas.