| 23 Jul 2021 |
 David Arnold (blaggacao) | (and corporate is lured in) | 03:59:27 |
 matthewcroughan - nix.zone | It's actually one of the fastest growing parts of Nix. | 03:59:40 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | Nah, we have to be honest, I'm not "normal". 😎😂 | 03:59:53 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | I can't prove it with numbers, but Discord (Unofficial), Reddit, Discourse, have seen remarkable growth. | 04:00:12 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | But Nix is a programming language. And whatever we do has to result in code. How many successful visual programming systems do you know of? | 04:00:39 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | Maybe, we can discern if it's rather the tech savy user for productivity or the system sculptor? | 04:01:02 |
 davidak | yeah, we have to market it what is does best and to people that care | 04:01:07 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | If it doesn't result in code, somehow, it's not really inheriting the qualities we want. And that's more or less the problem with other things. | 04:01:20 |
| davidak | i think about the potential it has. it will take 10+ years to make it accessible to the mainstream | 04:01:37 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | So we have to do the impossible, and make the world's first fully competent visual programming system that normal users can use to great effect. | 04:01:44 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | Somehow, I don't think that's as achievable as we want it to be. | 04:01:59 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | I think draw by numbers combines that rather elegantly. We already have a graph of config options. | 04:02:19 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | It shouldn't be too hard to connect the leaves and dots in a visually appealing and intuitive way. | 04:02:40 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | it's certainly possible, and I really like node programming like node-red. | 04:03:03 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | (the main ones to get one going) | 04:03:03 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | But most users don't even want to believe they're programming. | 04:03:10 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | If they think they're programming, they might reject it on that basis. | 04:03:19 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | But Nix is code, and that is how it has to be, in my view. I am always hoping this isn't true. | 04:03:37 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | Maybe really just a dynamic option tree where you can click through and when you click on an option, all suboptions come available and documentation is presented. | 04:03:54 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | In reply to @blaggacao:matrix.org
Maybe really just a dynamic option tree where you can click through and when you click on an option, all suboptions come available and documentation is presented. I've then been hit with a response to that, which is that "A list of options isn't helpful" | 04:04:18 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | (starting with a typeform-style experience to seed that tree) | 04:04:16 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | It depends on the length and familiarity of that list. | 04:04:49 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | And type-form style seeding might bootstrap familiarity in a psychologically intriging way. | 04:05:22 |
| davidak | In reply to @matthewcroughan:defenestrate.it
So we have to do the impossible, and make the world's first fully competent visual programming system that normal users can use to great effect. can you imagine apple making macOS such a system? they never will, for a good reason | 04:05:23 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | Imagina a blank screen with just a few options in light gray. You start from there and things pop up as you advance and get more proficient. | 04:06:36 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | And before you notice, you start writing nix scripts on some leaves. | 04:07:05 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | And that's the point where you jump and learn nix proper. | 04:07:19 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | (and a elegant apply button in some corner, that does just that to your system) | 04:07:58 |
| davidak | In reply to @blaggacao:matrix.org
And type-form style seeding might bootstrap familiarity in a psychologically intriging way. do you have an example of such a system? i can't really imagine how that should work | 04:08:03 |
| David Arnold (blaggacao) | Well for the really mass user the important things are actually not a lot:
- email, timezone, keyboard, location, name.
| 04:08:47 |
