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Visual Programming

michaelstrong
Wed, 07 Feb 2018 03:26:15 GMT

Hello HADDINGTON DYNAMICS, Is there going to be perhaps Visual Programming in the future? In the past, I have had multiple attempts to wrap my head around C# and Javascript, unfortunately it is simply not my forte. CAD (Fusion 360), 5 Axis CNC Milling as well as generating beautiful toolpaths and 3D printing are where I can be put to use, but coding? I could never get that rocket to launch!

cfry
Wed, 07 Feb 2018 22:33:21 GMT

Our goal is to make programming as easy as possible. I (Fry, the main guy behind DDE) have done a bunch of work in visual programming in the past. The trick is to keep the flexibility high while at the same time making it easier to program. The popular visual programming environments out there don't qualify. Boxes and arrows doesn't scale well in complexity. Blocks programming a la Scratch ( I worked at the MIT Media Lab for hears where Scratch was invented) are better except that they often lack the language features needed and editing flexibility, plus doing significantly large programs is extremely cumbersome. We are working on a solution that overcomes these conventional limitations. Such visual tools can overcome the syntactic difficulties, which ARE significant, but don't address the underlying conceptual issues. However, given your background in engineering, I think the conceptual stuff won't be so hard for you. Sorry no date on release, but it will be at least months. This is a complex task. In the mean time, DDE offers lots of examples that you can just insert into the editor buffer with a menu pick and click the EVAL button to run. There's extensive "click help" (click on any character in the editor buffer to find out about it.) I recommend watching the first webinar video on DDE at http://hdrobotic.com/webinar/ which tells you primarily about the extensive HELP system that can get you through a lot of the issues. If you don't like videos, click on the big question mark in the upper right corner of DDE and it will take you to the documentation that describes the Help system.

michaelstrong
Thu, 08 Feb 2018 03:52:30 GMT

Thank you very much for shedding light on my question Fry. I really appreciate it. I am going to be engaging in Javascript once again while the 3D printer is working on the STL Files off of Thingiverse. Furthermore, I will be watching all the videos from HADDINGTON DYNAMICS more importantly your webinar series. I hope something will click and I get that ah-ha moment! My goal is to make the Dexter perform pick and place and sorting. If I nail that then I would say its a good start! But I suppose I can just train Dexter to do those correct? I look forward to Visual Programming in the mean time, I will go ahead and attempt to understand Javascript. I am glad I found Dexter totally by random in YouTube and have told my Friends about it!

cfry
Thu, 08 Feb 2018 05:09:50 GMT

Pick and place is very much on our radar screen. We are not yet selling or documenting grippers, but there have been prototypes. The coordinate system is designed to handle the complexity of nested regions with pick and place. Just an out of the blue idea: If you want to get an entirely different take on the real gut of JS (and advanced programming in general) you could take a look at "How To Think Like A Computer". This is both a Webinar video and an article (In DDE doc pane, twist down Articles and you'll see it.) If normal software tutorials haven't done it for you you, perhaps this will. Normally I consider this a very advanced topic in software, but you sound like a bit of a special case so maybe it will work for you.

michaelstrong
Thu, 08 Feb 2018 05:15:38 GMT

Let me go and check out "How To Think Like a Computer" now. I think I have time before bed!