Rethinking the User Interface Paradigm of Integrated Development Environments
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Code Bubbles[^] "Developers spend significant time reading and navigating code fragments spread across multiple locations. The file-based nature of contemporary IDEs makes it prohibitively difficult to create and maintain a simultaneous view of such fragments. We propose a novel user interface metaphor for code understanding and maintanence based on collections of lightweight, editable fragments called bubbles, which form concurrently visible working sets." There's also an 8 min. video. Not sure what to make of it at this stage but looks intriguing - or not?
Kevin
I have two questions. 1. What the heck is the resolution of the display? The reason I ask this is with my code I can not get two functions side by side on a single monitor. Also my functions are not all 2 to 10 lines long. 2. Don't they think all this clicking and dragging of the GUI will take more time then the alternatives? To me it seems like way more time will be taken manipulating the GUI this way instead of the old methods.
John
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Code Bubbles[^] "Developers spend significant time reading and navigating code fragments spread across multiple locations. The file-based nature of contemporary IDEs makes it prohibitively difficult to create and maintain a simultaneous view of such fragments. We propose a novel user interface metaphor for code understanding and maintanence based on collections of lightweight, editable fragments called bubbles, which form concurrently visible working sets." There's also an 8 min. video. Not sure what to make of it at this stage but looks intriguing - or not?
Kevin
Interesting but I can see a couple of issues. First off, I find this a little bit similar to Houdini's Vex Operator editor (Vex is a graphics programming language, like Renderman), in that it's sort of node based. Based on my experience with that, I find it really irritating to work in, it doesn't scale well unless you've got a 30+ in monitor, and even then it's still a hassle dragging connections all over the place. Once you reach a certain amount of complexity you're constantly messing with the layout and repositioning parts. I see some of the same issues here. Looks cool, nice colors, but my guess would be that once you get beyond any trivial example this is not going to scale well, and it will be just as cumbersome, possibly more so, than current editors.
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Interesting but I can see a couple of issues. First off, I find this a little bit similar to Houdini's Vex Operator editor (Vex is a graphics programming language, like Renderman), in that it's sort of node based. Based on my experience with that, I find it really irritating to work in, it doesn't scale well unless you've got a 30+ in monitor, and even then it's still a hassle dragging connections all over the place. Once you reach a certain amount of complexity you're constantly messing with the layout and repositioning parts. I see some of the same issues here. Looks cool, nice colors, but my guess would be that once you get beyond any trivial example this is not going to scale well, and it will be just as cumbersome, possibly more so, than current editors.
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I agree for the most part, but I do think it has its benefits - sometimes I find it helps to change the colours of my IDE as it makes me re-read things more carefully rather then assuming that I got things right because the colours are correct. It seems to me that while you wouldn't want to work exclusively in bubbles, it might help to give a new perspective on a problem every once in a while. Chris
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Interesting but I can see a couple of issues. First off, I find this a little bit similar to Houdini's Vex Operator editor (Vex is a graphics programming language, like Renderman), in that it's sort of node based. Based on my experience with that, I find it really irritating to work in, it doesn't scale well unless you've got a 30+ in monitor, and even then it's still a hassle dragging connections all over the place. Once you reach a certain amount of complexity you're constantly messing with the layout and repositioning parts. I see some of the same issues here. Looks cool, nice colors, but my guess would be that once you get beyond any trivial example this is not going to scale well, and it will be just as cumbersome, possibly more so, than current editors.
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Jim Crafton wrote:
any trivial example this is not going to scale well
Isn't it the same case with IDEs? After a certain limit, they do not scale. (Look at the best of Kevin post below). I think it is a pretty neat idea. I wrote a much detailed reply, but I when I clicked on Post Message it timed out.
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Interesting but I can see a couple of issues. First off, I find this a little bit similar to Houdini's Vex Operator editor (Vex is a graphics programming language, like Renderman), in that it's sort of node based. Based on my experience with that, I find it really irritating to work in, it doesn't scale well unless you've got a 30+ in monitor, and even then it's still a hassle dragging connections all over the place. Once you reach a certain amount of complexity you're constantly messing with the layout and repositioning parts. I see some of the same issues here. Looks cool, nice colors, but my guess would be that once you get beyond any trivial example this is not going to scale well, and it will be just as cumbersome, possibly more so, than current editors.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
Jim Crafton wrote:
Based on my experience with that, I find it really irritating to work in, it doesn't scale well unless you've got a 30+ in monitor, and even then it's still a hassle dragging connections all over the place. Once you reach a certain amount of complexity you're constantly messing with the layout and repositioning parts.
Sounds very similar to my experience with LabVIEW. Great for knocking up something simple and quick, totally impossible for anything of any real complexity.
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I have two questions. 1. What the heck is the resolution of the display? The reason I ask this is with my code I can not get two functions side by side on a single monitor. Also my functions are not all 2 to 10 lines long. 2. Don't they think all this clicking and dragging of the GUI will take more time then the alternatives? To me it seems like way more time will be taken manipulating the GUI this way instead of the old methods.
John
John M. Drescher wrote:
1. What the heck is the resolution of the display? The reason I ask this is with my code I can not get two functions side by side on a single monitor. Also my functions are not all 2 to 10 lines long.
You can drag stuff back in view I think and it's supposed to be able to elide text.
John M. Drescher wrote:
2. Don't they think all this clicking and dragging of the GUI will take more time then the alternatives?
They say there are keyboard shortcuts for many of the operations. But yes these questions are why I said I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It might be one of those things where at first glance it looks like chaos but when you try it you find that it's not.
Kevin
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Jim Crafton wrote:
any trivial example this is not going to scale well
Isn't it the same case with IDEs? After a certain limit, they do not scale. (Look at the best of Kevin post below). I think it is a pretty neat idea. I wrote a much detailed reply, but I when I clicked on Post Message it timed out.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
I think it is a pretty neat idea.
Well I agree it's interesting, I just don't think it's practical, at the moment. But I'm definitely for rethinking how the IDE works, I think there's a number of things that could be changed, but I'm not 100% what the best approach is to do that.
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Code Bubbles[^] "Developers spend significant time reading and navigating code fragments spread across multiple locations. The file-based nature of contemporary IDEs makes it prohibitively difficult to create and maintain a simultaneous view of such fragments. We propose a novel user interface metaphor for code understanding and maintanence based on collections of lightweight, editable fragments called bubbles, which form concurrently visible working sets." There's also an 8 min. video. Not sure what to make of it at this stage but looks intriguing - or not?
Kevin
looks interesting, and I'd have to try to use it for a while in "real life" to judge accurately. But, my first impression is that it would get to be a pain to use and would cause a lot of "spaghetti-code" and coding of methods with too-short of lines. Plus a lot of screen real estate is devoted to the white-space between the bubbles and the "bubble" borders. Not a good use of screen real estate. Still an intriguing idea.
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John M. Drescher wrote:
1. What the heck is the resolution of the display? The reason I ask this is with my code I can not get two functions side by side on a single monitor. Also my functions are not all 2 to 10 lines long.
You can drag stuff back in view I think and it's supposed to be able to elide text.
John M. Drescher wrote:
2. Don't they think all this clicking and dragging of the GUI will take more time then the alternatives?
They say there are keyboard shortcuts for many of the operations. But yes these questions are why I said I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It might be one of those things where at first glance it looks like chaos but when you try it you find that it's not.
Kevin
Kevin McFarlane wrote:
You can drag stuff back in view I think and it's supposed to be able to elide text.
That's part of my issue with this kind of thing. At the moment, writing code is generally typing stuff into an editor, it's based around text entry (for better or worse). Switching one hand to a mouse to reposition things quickly gets irritating, since it slows down your work flow. If something like this could be incorporated with a keyboard based work flow (using the mouse would be optional, just like it is when editing text), then you might have something interesting.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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Code Bubbles[^] "Developers spend significant time reading and navigating code fragments spread across multiple locations. The file-based nature of contemporary IDEs makes it prohibitively difficult to create and maintain a simultaneous view of such fragments. We propose a novel user interface metaphor for code understanding and maintanence based on collections of lightweight, editable fragments called bubbles, which form concurrently visible working sets." There's also an 8 min. video. Not sure what to make of it at this stage but looks intriguing - or not?
Kevin
I did something like that years ago on, of all platforms, a C-64! To me, it makes a heck of a lot more sense, but I would take it even further, making "bubbles" (in their jargon), of the UI, the model, the DB schema, the bindings, the business logic, plug-ins, etc. The whole concept of an only-text-based IDE is so obsolete, in my mind, I suffer pains coding that way. The problem is, just re-doing the features of a text-based UI as a mere component to my grander view of what I want is itself a daunting task, not to mention integrating a debugger and other tools. Marc
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Code Bubbles[^] "Developers spend significant time reading and navigating code fragments spread across multiple locations. The file-based nature of contemporary IDEs makes it prohibitively difficult to create and maintain a simultaneous view of such fragments. We propose a novel user interface metaphor for code understanding and maintanence based on collections of lightweight, editable fragments called bubbles, which form concurrently visible working sets." There's also an 8 min. video. Not sure what to make of it at this stage but looks intriguing - or not?
Kevin
This is actually a repost from a while back, but I'm going to make the same comment I made then ... This reminds me of FoxPro's Code Snippets, and no good ever came from that design.
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Code Bubbles[^] "Developers spend significant time reading and navigating code fragments spread across multiple locations. The file-based nature of contemporary IDEs makes it prohibitively difficult to create and maintain a simultaneous view of such fragments. We propose a novel user interface metaphor for code understanding and maintanence based on collections of lightweight, editable fragments called bubbles, which form concurrently visible working sets." There's also an 8 min. video. Not sure what to make of it at this stage but looks intriguing - or not?
Kevin
Honestly, I'd be happy if I could just drag one of my many open source files to the second monitor so that I can see it while I work in some other files. But no, if I want to do that I have to squeeze them in together inside VS itself.
My current favourite word is: Smooth!
-SK Genius
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Honestly, I'd be happy if I could just drag one of my many open source files to the second monitor so that I can see it while I work in some other files. But no, if I want to do that I have to squeeze them in together inside VS itself.
My current favourite word is: Smooth!
-SK Genius
SK Genius wrote:
But no, if I want to do that I have to squeeze them in together inside VS itself.
There's a variety of simple editors you could throw the code into, like Notepad++. Or even another instance of VS! Marc
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SK Genius wrote:
But no, if I want to do that I have to squeeze them in together inside VS itself.
There's a variety of simple editors you could throw the code into, like Notepad++. Or even another instance of VS! Marc
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Code Bubbles[^] "Developers spend significant time reading and navigating code fragments spread across multiple locations. The file-based nature of contemporary IDEs makes it prohibitively difficult to create and maintain a simultaneous view of such fragments. We propose a novel user interface metaphor for code understanding and maintanence based on collections of lightweight, editable fragments called bubbles, which form concurrently visible working sets." There's also an 8 min. video. Not sure what to make of it at this stage but looks intriguing - or not?
Kevin
No thanks. Object orientation is the key, not a huge whiteboard with lots of code snippets and arrows. All I ever wanted is: - powerful search facilities; - arbitrary text coloring, so you can see all occurences of a word at a glance. No bubbles. :)
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Code Bubbles[^] "Developers spend significant time reading and navigating code fragments spread across multiple locations. The file-based nature of contemporary IDEs makes it prohibitively difficult to create and maintain a simultaneous view of such fragments. We propose a novel user interface metaphor for code understanding and maintanence based on collections of lightweight, editable fragments called bubbles, which form concurrently visible working sets." There's also an 8 min. video. Not sure what to make of it at this stage but looks intriguing - or not?
Kevin
Repost :rolleyes: As said before, I'd love to play with it - because I find the entity-centric navigation and display seriously lacking from today's IDE's. I like the "Area Nav Bar" at the top seems a good idea - looks well thought-out. However: Does it scale to real projects with a million LOC? Still, even if this implementation doesn't succeed, it provides fresh impulses for IDE's.
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Honestly, I'd be happy if I could just drag one of my many open source files to the second monitor so that I can see it while I work in some other files. But no, if I want to do that I have to squeeze them in together inside VS itself.
My current favourite word is: Smooth!
-SK Genius
SK Genius wrote:
Honestly, I'd be happy if I could just drag one of my many open source files to the second monitor
You can do that with VS2010.
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Code Bubbles[^] "Developers spend significant time reading and navigating code fragments spread across multiple locations. The file-based nature of contemporary IDEs makes it prohibitively difficult to create and maintain a simultaneous view of such fragments. We propose a novel user interface metaphor for code understanding and maintanence based on collections of lightweight, editable fragments called bubbles, which form concurrently visible working sets." There's also an 8 min. video. Not sure what to make of it at this stage but looks intriguing - or not?
Kevin
The weird notion that files (and even directories) are bad keeps trickling into academic proposals. It's baffling. You have to organize and store your data somehow and files turn out to be a pretty darn good way to do it. A big problem with this proposal is that it assumes a tighter coupling between objects and a primacy of objects themselves that simply doesn't exist in the real world. It is very academic in this regard--that the algorithm and objectness is everything. Except they're not. Most functioning code is housekeeping tedium not easily encapsulated into neat little bubbles. It's all been done before and failed. (Another problem with this kind of thing is that it makes objects too important; the developer ends up spending time creating fancy, rich objects and forgets to actually make them do something useful. When the developer finally does get around to making them do something useful, they inevitably discover that half their fancy class isn't used and the other half doesn't fit the real world requirements very well, if at all. Been there, done that.)
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Code Bubbles[^] "Developers spend significant time reading and navigating code fragments spread across multiple locations. The file-based nature of contemporary IDEs makes it prohibitively difficult to create and maintain a simultaneous view of such fragments. We propose a novel user interface metaphor for code understanding and maintanence based on collections of lightweight, editable fragments called bubbles, which form concurrently visible working sets." There's also an 8 min. video. Not sure what to make of it at this stage but looks intriguing - or not?
Kevin
VH1's Popup Video meets Visual Studio...
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SK Genius wrote:
Honestly, I'd be happy if I could just drag one of my many open source files to the second monitor
You can do that with VS2010.
aspdotnetdev wrote:
SK Genius wrote:
Honestly, I'd be happy if I could just drag one of my many open source files to the second monitor
You can do that with VS2010.
Interesting. Are there any demo videos of that around; I'm curious how well it works in practice.
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