[PD] route outputs lists instead of floats

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Ian Smith-Heisters wrote:
> Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
> >>Of course Lisp also ends up with obnoxious things like trying to
> >>select an atom and it being the wrong type because it's actually a
> >>one-atom list.
> > That's a weak argument against Lisp. You can replace every occurrence of
> > CAR with CAR2 defined like
> I didn't intend it as an argument against Lisp, but rather a gripe about 
> the eccentricities of Lisp, or perhaps my own stupidity.

Ok, so let me say, it's a weak argument against a bunch of programming
languages.

> Dealing with things like this might be even more annoying in a
> dataflow language like Pd, but maybe not.

I wouldn't say it's because it's dataflow. I see "dataflow" in general as
open-ended with a lot more to explore. Within that large dataflow-land
there's a tiny dot called puredata that's still near the start in many
respects.

> I guess this gets back to a question someone raised earlier in the 
> conversation about where Pd wants to go. Do we want a high level 
> application, like Eyesweb or Isadora, or a programming language? It 
> looks right now like we want somewhere in between.

Whenever both at once are possible, pick both. You can use Pd as a tool to
make high-level applications.

> Does your average Pd user want to think about converting 1-lists to
> atoms?

It's not just about your average Pd user, you know. It's about all the
users at once.

Now, about those 1-element lists, I think the problem introduced by not
having them is more difficult to solve than the problem introduced by
having them. But that kind of thing would appear mostly in cases where
lists are grown gradually (or reduced gradually). Not everyone does that.

> and things like the Python and Ruby plugins help on the other end.

Well I don't think it's much relevant... I think Pd should have better
support for collections.

_____________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard -=- Montréal QC Canada -=- http://artengine.ca/matju