AndrewBragdon
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2011–2024
8:19 · 284K views · Mar 9, 2010
A short demo of Code Bubbles, an IDE interface built around editable code fragments in bubbles instead of files. It was a research prototype for Java development.
HN keeps returning to it as the most convincing example of moving past file-based code editing, even though it never left prototype stage.
7 comments from Hacker News
> Code folding in a IDE goes a long way to make this bearable. Code folding in IDEs is an indication that we are doing it wrong -- that is, we human beings are programming computers "wrong." I'm not saying that code folding is a symptom. I'm saying that code folding shows how primitive our means of managing code is. It's as if the mesopotamians somehow invented computers, and because of tradition, all code has to be written as cuneiform on wet clay tablets, then fired in ovens before being read. At least text files in directories are digital, but they are as static and behavior-less as clay tablets, and all of the important relationships therein are expressed as implicit correspondences which programmers have to keep track of in their heads. Code Bubbles is a beacon in the direction we should go. this video
Code Bubbles (from 2010) is the most convincing code visualization tool that I can recall: this video Shame it never grew beyond a research prototype.
It's just a general thought I've been having. We're using text and files because it's the way things always have been. But it seems there should be benefits to perhaps move beyond that. Things like with more canonical representations of code, rather than arguing over coding standards (although it can still text-based rather than completely graphical). Ability to more easily see related code and flows. Manage the meaning of code rather than its text (not changing text but changing symbols when you refactor). There's been attempts to move in that this direction with things like code bubbles ( this video ) but yet there hasn't been an approach that's both visually attractive and offers enough benefits, but it's probably coming somewhere down the line
Ditto on the java-applet comments - I was shocked. Haha. In all seriousness, though, people have mentioned this before but I don't think anyone's really tackled any underpinning reason why an IDE should be in "the cloud" (::cringe:: yea, I went there). If I think about it in terms of features such a setup could provide - cohesiveness btwn. client & serverside testing, development statistics in real-time, and highly integrated documentation & comm. - then perhaps it's kind of sexy. Seamless/buil-in pair-programming would seal the deal. It would be pretty awesome if it looked like Code Bubbles though...haha ( this video )
There is code bubbles. Early demo: this video current site (eclipse plugin for java projects?): [LINK] . Maybe also inspired Visual Studio debugger exploration. I haven't used it (but have wanted to)