Coding with blocks

I don't like to spend my leisure time with videogames as much as I used to. Instead, I like hacking and audio programming with a visual coding language called Pure Data. Yep! I couldn't move away from audio programming completely and Pure data made it even harder. I guess that relaxing with connecting its blocks of all sorts with my Xbox controller is the reason behind that.

I didn't start having fun with Pure Data straight away. It all began with wanting to perform electronic live music with code. My first attempt was with Sonic Pi which relies on Ruby programming language to play short audio clips called samples. Its long startup time and heavy UI put me down day by day so I moved on to Super Collider.

Super Collider is a complex programming language that offers lots of possibilities to work with audio. I got hooked by it when I read about making music with a pattern syntax that could be changed on real time. Also, I loved to know that there was a Neovim plugin that could autocomplete my code and run the Super Collider server instance with a shortcut. Composing patterns was fun at the beginning but the more complex they became the more problems came to my head. I just wanted a relaxing mini hobby for my spare time not lots of thinking, you know? So, this is why I considered Pure Data for my next attempt.

Pure data didn't come into scene for the first time after my troubles with Super Collider. I'd already had a bit of experience with it at Uni although I had completely different interests as a musician. For that reason, I never touched it again but oddly it remained present in the back of my head. Maybe Pure Data was waiting for the perfect time to show up and Super Collider thankfully opened a door for it. That was what happened anyway.

I work with Pure data for around thirty minutes a day. That's enough time for having fun with dragging blocks around and connect them. Right now I'm building a pattern system similar to that one I played around with on Super Collider. This time however, I'm doing it with meta programming, that concept I'm learning with Rust macros.

There's no repo just yet but the project will be available for you to check out in the future.