Ideas for Processing I

Today, computer graphics is done by making geometry. Shapes like circles and rectangles, lines are placed in a canvas tagged with a (rectangular) coordinates. Colors and length are prescribed or calculated by providing numbers. In the 3D domain, the things work similar. Raytracing and other 3D to 2D renderings are based on geometric optics. Is there any problem ? Well, I will explain what I think about.

Since years, I was fascinated when Mr. Data in the Star Trek movies and serials said to the computer: "Computer, show me", and the computer draws the desired information in the best way, without being told to stretch, zoom or even use coordinates. From such scenes, I always got the vision of a computer kernel, which calculates, deduces, collects, and a graphical subunit, which does all the graphics. And the important thing for this is, both, the computer kernal and the graphics subunit, only *talk*. No API calls. In order to illustrate this, here is some example dialog:

"Hello Graphic Subunit, please display planet Venus, a starship type Klingon fighter in standard orbit"

"Hello Graphic Subunit, please display this 2D point set in a chart and this text"

In fact, the collaboration of the computer kernel and the graphics subunit should be the same as a customer which goes to an artist and says "Artist, paint a picture of me, embracing my power and glorious". Although many questions arise from this, I only want to point out the fact, that just the artist (the graphical subunit) has to bother about information which affects *how* the picture is drawn. He is the expert for graphics. The customer (the computer kernel), only should tell *what* to draw. In todays technical world, mostly the webserver or an application core has to deal with geometry and rendering. Of course, today graphics is described in abstract coordinates, presentation and content is divided by HTML and CSS. But that doesn't change the fact, that too many aspects of graphics and geometry are part of the application core. The latter has to call API by providing shapes, coordinates, colours.

Our technical possibilities are not powerful enough to come just closer to what I described above. At this point, I have to state a fundamental criticism: as far as our graphics technology is only restricted to geometry, it never will be powerful enough. Here is no place to provide reasons for this hypothesis, but it is my strong belief. To prevent misunderstandings, is important to note that, if I say geometry, I mean the mathematics as it is known and practiced today. I think it would extend our possibilities if we investigate more in things like image based rendering and to flip the human vision processing into the opposite direction. Vision then becomes rendering.

Well, I know, these are big mind steps and not a smooth chain of arguments, it is more a set of ideas. But anyway, this popped up some ideas to me for doing some experiments with Processing. The post is long already, so in a later post I will sketch some details.

Time to Change

In the last year, many things happened in my life as a computer professional. I am writing no code anymore, I am now working as a safety, quality and requirements engineer. And I am glad about it. Let me explain, why.

In the last years, more and more the doubt came up to me if programming is really that what I am strong in and if it is what I enjoy. Even working in different companies, where completely different software were developed, in Smalltalk, Fortran, C, C++ and and means, I always had the feeling that I doing the same frequently. The problems of software developing repeat, the kind of solutions were well-known. I met many people, all of their own style, I had bosses which could never be compared, which was and is good. But the game - software development - still was the same from my point of view. Different in colors, in tones, in details, but in fact the same. No big progress, as also some well-kown mastes of software told. And I had and have so much more interests.



I know, this picture is not objective, my losing interest and my perception of software buisness have impact on each other and are not decoupled. But which is really the cause of what doesn't matter in consequence. So I decided to take a way in my carrier which lead me away from software development. That's why I am happy to work as I told above.

But what about the hobby ? On the private side, I looked at many programming langauges, read about software processes, design patterns and new approaches in the software domain. But the doubts described above take place here again. And at the same time, old loves came back to me: philosophy, electromagnetics, teaching electronically, the question how a set of neurons can think and get insight.

I've just finished the great book "Coders at Work" of Peter Seibel, which contains interviews with some big persons of the software buisness. And the part with L Peter Deutsch, which leaves the software buisness at some late point in his life, convinced me to make this decision: even as a hobby, software development will no more the objective of my hobby activities. This means, to be precise, to look at patterns, architectures, languages for its own.

Of course, I will program to let my new ideas come to life, maybe games, graphics, experiments. But the ideas are now in front, not the question what is the best language, the best approach. I make no attempt anymore to make software development better (one exception: requirements and safety engineering). That let be the task of computer scientists, which I am not. Just be creative, as long it is possible.

For this goal, Scala and Processing had attracted my interest, which both working with the Java environment. The Java environment has so much possibilities. Erlang is nice for experiments in the artificial neural network field.

But don't misunderstand: I will not close my eyes. I will look how technology and software science is going on, because to track and judge the social impact of new things is important. But my role will be from now that of an observer, not an actor of the computer science.