Devlog: what is a module?

Time for devlog #2! Last week's was here.

I've spent a bunch of time refactoring and hardening the code to better reflect the data model of this application.

After using it a bit, I felt that the cells were a bit constrained. They only had a "Value" and a "Display" associated with them—and both were special values. You could only read "Value" and only view the results of the "Display".

What if a cell needed intermediate calculations as part of it?

What if you could read (and write to) other properties of a cell, like its X/Y position?

So I've updated the code (but not the UI) so that these are configurable and accessed in the same manner. And access is a bit more straightforward. If you have a cell named "color" which has a "$value" and "$x" property, then you can access those via: color.$value.get() / color.$x.set(100). And they also a .subscribe() method on them, which allows them to be bound directly to JSX: <input type="color" value={color.$value} />. How handy!

Check out today's build here!

But instead of using my written words to describe how to use it, here's a brief (6min) screen recording showing how to use it (and with me talking about what I'm doing).

I hope this makes things a bit more clear than the last one:

What is a module?

This'll make a bit more sense if you watch that video. But I've been thinking that this collection of "cells" in this tool are a bit like variable declarations in a module.

I'm talking specifically about JavaScript here, but a module is a collection of named variables. Outputs of the module are variables marked for export. Inputs to the module are declarations imported from another module.

And similarly for functions: A function is a collection of named variables. The output of the function is a returned variable. Inputs to the function are its parameters provided by a caller.

I want to see if both functions and modules can be manipulated in this same visual, reactive, dynamic manner!

I want to be able to create a function by creating a "cell" for each function parameter, create intermediate "cell" values that the function needs to do its thing, then create a "return value" cell which calculates the result of the function.

So I think that's where I'm headed next.

Also, I'll hopefully fix some of the (many) bugs that are lurking in there.

Stay tuned for more!