Lab Talk: joreg about developing the software environment vvvv

Last week we were really happy to welcome joreg from the vvvv-group for a Lab Talk about the concept and development of visual-based programming languages. joreg is one of the co-founders of the hybrid development environment vvvv – a visual and textual based realtime programming environment. He and his development team, named vvvv-group, are currently based in Berlin. The software vvvv finds its fields of application in 2D/3D animation, multiscreen setups, motion graphics, projection mapping, data visualisation and physical prototyping.

Creating User Experience for Programmers

As joreg told us, he has always been very impressed by the idea of using graphical and abstract elements to generate computer programs. The whole vvvv story started with his thesis he wrote at our good friends MESO in Frankfurt, where the first draft of vvvv’s graphical interface was built. Now, about 12 years later, joreg talked about his thoughts, the early years of these special developing environments and were he is taking inspiration from, like Alan Kay’s GRail, ProGraph, MaxMsp, LabView Touch Designer, Houdini … (get an overview here on interfacevision.com) Like he said: “Creating User Experience for Programmers”, he gave us insights into his philosophy of visual programming and the interaction paradigms in vvvv. Joreg told us about the complicated shift to develop and design a fast and effective way to work with a visual based programmimng language.

The future of vvvv

Finally we got a sneak peak into the completely restructured release of the new, object oriented vvvv, which is currently in developement – WOW. We are exited to get this in our hands to play with and test the benefits of this vision. And we saw some really exciting features!

Thank you joreg for this inspiring talk.