[PD] self-modifying and dynamic patching

[IOhannes m zmoelnig]

Derek Holzer wrote:
> Hi all and thanks for chiming in on this thread. There was once, long 
> ago, a simple mixer which dynamically created the busses and channels. 
> If anyone can remember that one, it must have been 5 years ago, and was 
> the first dynamic patch I had ever seen.

could be my "abcde(fg)", the great "ambisonics-based coding and decoding 
environment (for graz)".
you can get it here:
http://iem.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/iem/spatialization/abcde/

however, my experiences with abcde were the main reason i s did not 
touch self-modifying patches for years and years.
the lesson i learned was: never do self-modification in patches that 
other people will ever have to regularily use.
(the original phrase would have been "never do self-modification in 
patches that other people will ever have to maintain"; however, this 
might give the impression that chances are low that somebody else will 
really have to "maintain" a patch); in practice you pass maintainership 
to somebody as soon as you give them your patch: they will eventually 
start to modify it.


having said that, self-modification might work resasonably well with 
_small_ "atomic" abstractions e.g. implementing a settable [route] via 
self-modification might be fine, but don't try to do so with 
core-components of a big application.

> 
> Also fun, non-utilitarian ones, like once someone sent some kind of 
> "card" to the list which just made a huge self-generating GUI art-mess 
> on the screen. I wish I could remember who wrote it. Lastly, IOhannes 
> showed a very nice self-modifying patch at Piksel last December using 
> iemguts.

i'll see what i still have on my disk.
being a live-coding session i had not prepared so much "patch" in 
advance which i could share now...


vhmysdrt
IOhannes
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