[HN Gopher] Show HN: What would mechanical programming look like?
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Show HN: What would mechanical programming look like?
Author : felipereigosa
Score : 138 points
Date : 2020-10-29 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mockmechanics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mockmechanics.com)
| theodric wrote:
| It would look like an automatic transmission
| rjsw wrote:
| Have you looked at ThingLab [1] ?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThingLab
| doinathing wrote:
| This looks amazing! Please consider making your website more
| accessible... the menu cannot be focused with the tab key, the
| images in your gallery do not have alt tags. Those are some low
| hanging fruit you can correct. The overall strategy of toggling
| the main content with CSS might need some aria announcing so
| folks at least know different stuff is on screen as you move from
| one thing to another.
|
| Again, AMAZINGLY COOL project, not wanting to take anything away
| from that. Just want everybody to be able to learn about it, even
| if they are not mouse users, not sighted, etc.
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Not at all, this is exactly what I want, some good feedback, I
| hadn't even considered those things you mentioned, I'll look
| into it thanks!
| ArekDymalski wrote:
| Very interesting - I'm going to show it to my 11yo son and see
| what we can build.
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Cool! If you guys build anything you can send me pics so I can
| put in the gallery of the website.
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Hey guys, I've been working on this Clojure project for a while
| now, honestly I'm not even entirely sure what it is, a game? a
| game engine? a 3d editor? a visual programming language? Anyway,
| it's a system to create mechanical contraptions and interact with
| them. I built a few test machines and you can see them in the
| first video I posted on my channel [1]. For instance you can
| create a fully functional piano in 5 minutes and play it, the
| keys move, it plays the sounds as you would expect. And this
| system turned out surprisingly powerful, to build these machines
| it often does not require any coding which was kind of
| surprising. I created this tetris game in half an hour [2]. It's
| not perfect but it is functional and again it required only a
| tiny snippet of code to coordinate the different submachines and
| even that might be unnecessary. The "programs" i.e. the machines
| created also interact in a way that you usually only see with
| command line programs. You can create a machine then someone else
| can use that machine as a part for a more powerful machine, for
| instance that lever that turns the tetris game on and off doesn't
| "come standard" with the system, I build it separately then
| imported it. Using the program is a lot like programming,
| thinking logically, coming up with solutions to problems, fixing
| bugs, but it's entirely visual so you can use your physical
| intuition to figure things out, maybe that's why it's possible to
| do things so fast. Anyway I was hoping some of you would give it
| a try and give me some feedback. I need people to see what they
| can build with it, I don't even know what's possible at this
| point. And if you want to give it a go and get stuck, feel free
| to contact me with any questions.
|
| [1] MockMechanics Introduction Video -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrwxbQj5mj0&t=193s
|
| [2] Tetris Machine Video -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSPm1xxQ-qY
|
| [3] https://mockmechanics.com/
| gitgud wrote:
| One of the best things I've seen in a long time on here. It
| reminds me of a few different games; "Little Big Planet", "The
| Incredible Machine" and of course "Factorio" but this
| synthesises the best part... Inventing machines!
| c22 wrote:
| Yeah, this makes me think of an "open-map" version of The
| Incredible Machine [0].
|
| Very impressive!
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine_(s
| eri...
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Thanks, one of the great things about creating a program
| where other people can create things is seeing them inventing
| things you wouldn't even think of, it's so open ended. Alan
| Turing and those other guys had no clue what we would do with
| his idea. I'm looking forward to see what people will make
| with this. (Not that I'm comparing myself to Alan Turing!)
| frompdx wrote:
| Awesome project. Can you share which libraries you are using
| with this project?
| felipereigosa wrote:
| org.clojure/clojure obviously, org.clojars.nakkaya/vecmath,
| org.clojars.nakkaya/jbullet, batik and lwjgl. All the other
| stuff, the opengl shapes and whatnot I wrote myself over the
| years, mostly to learn how to do it. In fact I probably can
| speed up this program a lot by not using my own code for
| those parts where libraries are available.
| dkersten wrote:
| That's pretty cool! It seems like a weird mixture of physical
| contraptions (lego/meccano etc) or minecraft redstone circuits,
| and something you'd see in Media Molecules' Dreams (especially
| the graph-motion).
|
| I just watched the Tetris video and it reminded me of this
| mechanical pong game:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBoe3yM9IKs
|
| What inspired you to create this?
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Thanks and that pong game is a great idea for my next
| machine, unless someone beats me to it! If I recall correctly
| the very first thought that led to this project was thinking
| about how to formalize mechanical devices, they have a
| language of sorts to describe chess games, same with
| choreographed dance I think. I was thinking how can I do that
| for machines without all the extra stuff like heat and
| friction, but I pivoted a lot since then and ended up with
| this.
| luminati wrote:
| Could you elaborate a bit more on "formalize mechanical
| devices"? That has really piqued my interest especially
| since you mentioned dance choreography as an example. Do
| you have any examples/prior art you found interesting?
|
| One of the topics I occasionally like to think about is how
| to formally describe manufacturing steps in some
| structured/programming language. Maybe your program could
| be it. Would love to hear other folks' thoughts on this
| too!
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Well, I was really into formalizing stuff when I was in
| college, you know proving that a cryptographic algorithm
| was correct by formalizing them as black boxes talking to
| each other, that sort of thing. Then I just started
| thinking about how to formalize mechanical things. One of
| the very things I remember is coming to the conclusion
| that all motions of a machine can be implemented as a
| combination of linear and rotational motions (and that's
| where the two things that move on mockmechanics, the
| track and the wagon, come from), but I don't know if that
| is true. But I don't really have any prior art, I had a
| 2d version that didn't work years ago but I think I lost
| it.
| amelius wrote:
| This reminds me of logic gates based on pulleys and weights:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNbScb8v-MI
|
| (someone posted this here on HN a few weeks ago)
| felipereigosa wrote:
| It's interesting you'd mention that, because most of the
| program is "mechanical", you manipulate things in 3d, but for
| some things you have to go into a window and connect a few 2d
| nodes like the gates in motherboard mode. I was thinking
| maybe I should use 3d manipulation for everything, maybe the
| video you posted could serve as inspiration for 3d gates.
| mikevin wrote:
| >... honestly I'm not even entirely sure what it is, a game? a
| game engine? a 3d editor? a visual programming language?
| Anyway...
|
| It's refreshing to see this kind of exploratory project. Every
| now and then, I need to be reminded there's room for play and
| exploring in life, not just productivity and producing. Thank
| you for reminding me!
| felipereigosa wrote:
| You're welcome :) I remember someone saying somewhere that
| most of the great computer programs probably haven't been
| written yet, if we remember that maybe we'll be the ones to
| write them!
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| This looks amazing. Several times in the last couple of
| decades, as graphics and physics engines have evolved, I've
| built little prototypes whose main goal was "this should work
| using real physics and mechanics", and then built things like
| marble machines. Games like Crayon Physics always felt so
| limiting; they were _only_ about things bouncing off each
| other. I 'd like gears that turn and mesh, light that
| diffracts, motors that naturally work in reverse as generators,
| and the ability to build machines that use more than one of
| those effects without any special-casing.
|
| I look forward to playing with this, and extending it!
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Thanks, once you are familiar with it you can start extending
| it right away, a couple of motherboards running custom short
| scripts could implement all those things you mentioned and
| then you could make that machine (for example the
| motor/generator) available for others to use on their own
| machines!
| vagrantJin wrote:
| This is so cool. It would be great to use this as a teaching
| tool so students can visualize things. Keep at it man.
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Yeah, as an introduction to programming, it could even be
| used with very, very young kids, apparently people are born
| with an intuitive physics module (babies are surprised by
| things that don't make physical sense), so who knows? Maybe
| someone may claim one day that she has been programming since
| age 2!
| Animats wrote:
| That looks like Working Model, from Knowledge Revolution, from
| the early 1990s. That was a great little program for Macs that
| let you build 2D machines. It was too slow and the physics engine
| was primitive, but I used it to figure out how to do robotic
| legged running up hills.
|
| The CEO went on to found Roblox, which is much more successful.
| gbasin wrote:
| This looks awesome, great work!
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Thanks!
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| You can also play factorio
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28UzqVz1r24&t=145s
| dllthomas wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine_(series...
| traceroute66 wrote:
| Surely I can't be the only one who saw the title "Show HN: What
| would mechanical programming look like?" and thought ... sure
| mate, just go back to the 70's and you've got mechanical
| programming galore in the form of punch cards. ;-)
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Haha... I remember talking to a teacher in college that used
| punch cards when he was young and I thought it was awesome,
| people were closer to the hardware you know? Hopefully my
| version of mechanical programming is a little more convenient
| :)
| luminati wrote:
| This has to be one of the best show hns I have seen in quite a
| while. It looks amazing - congrats and thanks!
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Thank you so much! I've been working hard for quite a while on
| this, you don't know how much it means to me that people liked
| it.
| issa wrote:
| This is fantastic. I would have absolutely loved this as a kid.
| Thanks for all of your hard work!
| felipereigosa wrote:
| Thanks, if I manage inspire some kids into coding just like I
| was, my work here is done :)
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(page generated 2020-10-29 23:00 UTC)