[PD] PD OOP?

[Chris McCormick]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:10:24PM -0500, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Dec 2010, Chris McCormick wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 09:57:08PM -0800, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
>>> In many cases it is replaced by the effort required to make
>>> a hack to replace the functionality of the missing external.
>> Yep. In my experience, the cost-benefit balance usually falls on the side of
>> restricting myself to not using many externals,
>
> What's the cost of getting used to restricting yourself in such a manner ?
> The effect on your problem-solving habits with pd... you'd have reasons 
> of using externals, such as concision, completeness, correctness, 

I don't care about those things as much as I care about making a noise that
makes people want to dance[1] and getting my patches running with the least
effort on the most platforms.

> expressing yourself at an appropriate level of understanding, but 

The appropriate level of understanding is the level at which people hear the
noise and want to party. Is there any more important level? Of course not.

> instead, you'd rather learn kludgy workarounds by heart until you don't 
> have to think about them anymore ?... (though you can compensate for some 
> of it using abstractions, but how much are you compensating ?)

I don't know of a good way to quantify "how much are you compensating?" I guess
I could be similarly ambiguous and say "somewhat". I am compensating somewhat.

As for "learn kludgy workarounds," I probably do that less in reality than I
seem to do in your imagination.

> Why don't the handheld-pd-without-libdl crowd pick a set of most useful  
> externals and compile them as part of vanilla, statically ? I mean only  
> things that would be portable anyway : there are lots of useful things 
> you can do as externals for pd, that don't require any libraries 
> whatsoever (apart from a minimal libc).

That is a lovely fantasy. It may become a reality, but the person to make it a
reality would probably be me. I am not going to do that becuase I can already
do most of what I want without investing in externals. If someone else, like
Hans, does it and I can use those externals on all platforms where I run my
patches without having to port them myself then I might start using them,
although probably not because future platforms will be less likely to support
those externals than pd-msp. This might sound terribly lazy and self serving to
you, in which case you would be interpereting the situation correctly.

I have actually used externals before on one platform for a specific niche
need. That made those patches less portable. So there you go. Externals are a
tool I have made use of in the past. I am not religiously against the idea of
externals in all situations.

If I want my code to be as portable as possible, I use fewer libraries.

If I want my patches to be as portable as possible, I use fewer externals.

> What do you do to get [fiddle~] loaded, on a system on which you don't  
> have the dynamic loading support running ?

I don't remember. I think Peter Brinkmann wrote something about this on Android
OS, so he's probably a better person to ask (he did all of the porting work).

>> I guess I view it in a different way. Pd-msp is a constrained software
>> environment. I choose to match my patching style to those constraints so that I
>> don't have to do more annoying and time-consuming work.
>
> If you wanted to avoid annoying and time-consuming work, you'd use  
> externals.

Heheh, you can say whatever you like but it does not change reality. My
definition of annoying includes porting, compiling, and maintaining externals
on obscure platforms. No amount of lengthy, philosophical pd-list emails will
make that fun for me.

>> It's like writing a haiku.
>
> Haikus don't get any work done.

Haha! Wow.

The statement is technically correct.

> (And I'm not even convinced that they _say_ anything either !)

Maybe the problem isn't with the haikus.

> And if you cared about getting patches to remain as small as they can be, 
> you'd care a lot more about externals than you do.

At which point did I say I cared about getting patches to remain as small as
they can be? I don't remember that. Please feel free to continue to care about
whatever you like.

I must go now, because in exactly three hours I will stand in a field and use
Pd to help people party[2].

Cheers,

Chris.

[1] http://sciencegirlrecords.com/chr15m/squeakyshoecore
[2] http://www.rtrfm.com.au/dreamgirl/filesend/13390/SSS2010%20Web.jpg

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