[HN Gopher] Explorabl.es
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Explorabl.es
Author : rickdeveloper
Score : 251 points
Date : 2020-02-19 18:17 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (explorabl.es)
(TXT) w3m dump (explorabl.es)
| lukifer wrote:
| Hah, was planning on linking to Nicky Case[0], but of course
| that's exactly who's behind this! :D
|
| Very exciting project. We're absolutely leaving "leaving money on
| the table" by not leveraging the full power of the brain for
| education and reasoning about complex systems. See also: Bret
| Victor's "Ladder of Abstraction" [1], and Kevin Simler's "Going
| Critical" [2].
|
| [0] https://ncase.me/
|
| [1] http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/
|
| [2] https://meltingasphalt.com/going-critical/
| qqii wrote:
| Thank you for highlighting these examples, they've been very
| insigntful.
| dev_throw wrote:
| The notion that only serious work can educate someone is
| something I hope future educators can dispel and build engaging
| platforms (edutainment).
|
| I learned about game theory, communication, teamwork, strategy
| and business from gaming and sports. These topics would have been
| quite dry to learn in a sterile educational setting. In the same
| vein, I hope we move to a more experiment/physical based learning
| of science and technology over rote learning, since a lot of
| learners hugely benefit from that.
|
| I commend you on what you're working towards!
| lonelappde wrote:
| Gaming and sports can be serious, and taking it seriously leads
| to big gains in learning.
|
| I think you mean "formal" or "prim" more than "serious".
| MasterPI wrote:
| 3Blue1Brown is among the supporters on Patreon which I think is
| another big recognition for the work of the creator(s).
|
| https://github.com/explorableexplanations/explorableexplanat...
| spyckie2 wrote:
| What would make explorables really take off is a killer framework
| to make building them easier, ala Ruby on Rails.
|
| I know ncase has built some frameworks and I applaud his work,
| but this space just needs a lot more investment.
|
| Here's what I think the killer framework will do really, really
| well: (Note this is VERY rough, it comes from spending 20 minutes
| trying to create an explorable a long time ago and realizing that
| the tooling just isn't right)
|
| - 1) Turn the act of coding a model into mostly verbal reasoning
| by having a great framework language / API. Rails actually did
| this, turning the entire building a website into composing
| english. It greatly reduced the distance between the concepts /
| app that you were building and how you went about building it -
| i.e. Model has_many :users
|
| - 2) A standardized convention on inputs, outputs, relationships,
| defaults, and time (step functions).
|
| - 2b) A standardized convention of defining one unit, populations
| and groups of units within populations
|
| - 3) Automated scaffolding to display raw data, with add-on
| libraries to easily scaffold formatted or visual data.
|
| - 3b) Automated scaffold to visualize a unit, a population,
| groups within populations, and units within groups (a scaffold of
| a population is like table rows)
|
| - 3c) Language / api should also make it dead simple and
| intuitive to control converting from numerical data to textual
| data. i.e. if you are modeling stress, what does 60 points in
| stress mean?
|
| I think something inspired by ActiveModel (my Rails bias is
| showing) would be a great way to define the above since defining
| a strong way to define your data is also how you would get
| automatic scaffolding language and high level functions on top of
| it.
|
| - 4) A dead simple way to display and embed models anywhere. 1
| line of javascript or a 1 line import and you can plug it into
| jekyll, hugo, (any static site generator, really)
|
| - 5) A killer tutorial.
| paulgb wrote:
| I haven't used it myself, but I wonder if Idyll comes close?
| https://idyll-lang.org/
| spyckie2 wrote:
| unfortunately, not really. The language you have to speak is
| still in variables, buttons and code.
|
| I'd love to be able to write in a way that feels more like
| documenting models rather than writing code. Admittedly this
| is a really spoiled point of view since ideas are cheap but
| execution is hard.
|
| A quick example is as follows:
|
| Persons have stress level from 0-100, start with random
| stress, and belong in the following environment conditions:
|
| Normal: Stress + 0 / year
|
| Low Income: Stress + 5 / year
|
| High Income: Stress - 5 / year
|
| Change functions:
|
| Every year, 0-3% persons change from low income to normal
| income
|
| 0-1% of persons change from normal income to high income
|
| Population has 100 persons
|
| Groups:
|
| stress level > 50 is "high risk of heart attack"
|
| stress level < 20 is "low risk of heart attack"
|
| This kind of definition should be enough to chart out # of
| people in the high risk group over a period time.
|
| What I imagine is writing more or less the above as
| psuedocode and then a framework to automatically scaffold a
| basic data view and controls for time / data manipulation.
|
| _edit_ i took a further look at idyll, and this language can
| probably be built on top of idyll.
| mathisonian wrote:
| We're working on this with https://idyll-lang.org/, it does
| some of the things you mention already (standard conventions
| for how to do common tasks, standard set of widgets, handles
| loading data, extensible plugin system, etc).
|
| But it is a big undertaking and there is still a lot of work to
| do. If anyone on HN wants to contribute or give feedback you
| can reach me at mconlen at cs dot washington dot edu.
| TruthSHIFT wrote:
| There's so much content there. But, this explanation of particles
| is pretty great:
|
| https://manytinythings.github.io/
| truebosko wrote:
| Love the language here. Even see this as a meaningful way to
| explain concepts to children.
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