Three steps towards a computing language | Hacker News Reader

Three steps towards a computing language

lambdaway.free.fr

1 pointmartyalain7 comments

The layout is so disturbing I could not read it, even though it's exactly my cuppa!

Please use a lot more space, especially between columns. Tilting text creates a sense of vertigo, making it really hard to concentrate, for some of us.

Please keep the layout simple, unless it is actually helpful to the content.

I'm sorry. Maybe it's the font, papyrus", so I changed it to "optima", I stopped rotating texts and put a wider space between colors. Is it better for you?

I have a wide screen and it shows as a bunch of columns that don't fit (there are a lot more on the right), and I have to scroll down for each column. At one point, the boxed text showed a slight rotation, possibly due to vertigo and I closed the site. Resizing the window makes a mess with columns of various height and empty columns.

For readability, you need a lot more space between columns.

Again, this looks like nitpicking, but in reality I am unable to read the content.

It appears you have something interesting to say. Why destroy that with terrible layout?

I have tried many presentations and never found the right one. Arranging the sections in columns, in two dimensions like a spreadsheet, seemed to me to be a pleasant solution. You can zoom out to see the plan, zoom in to focus on a section. Maybe easier on a tablet by double-tapping. And it's readable on a smartphone. Less easy on a station with a large screen where the manipulations are to be done with the mouse. Sorry if it disrupts the reading.

That said, I suppose the (aesthetic) choice of white text on a dark background is not the best... What do you think of this one http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/?view=sierpinsky_compar... ?

I am likely not your typical reader, and have my own issues. But since you have a technical presentation that needs to communicate meaning, it is a shame to obscure it with suboptimal visual design. You may disagree with my minimalist approach, but I would advise keeping a single-column presentation as it would work on any device the same way.

Who is your audience? If you are presenting an engineering concept, for god's sakes, just use plain html. Your goal is to have readable text and enough graphics to communicate. I think you have to decide if you have something to say, or be a really cool groovy genius with wacky text and layout. As a designer I have to tell you that no, it does not look cool.

The slightly-rotated text boxes are disorienting. Unless you are making a 'tech for dummies' book, there is no reason to assault the reader with distracting callouts. It's actually insulting.

I actually prefer dark background, by far. Until we all have E-ink displays, it is much easier on the eye not to have large glowing fields of white.

My immediate disorientation comes from the fact that even with my enormous display I have to scroll down and right. I start with 2 1/2 columns, and don't know what to do.

The layout code you have is buggy, at least in LibreWolf - upon screen resize (which is the immediate urge when seeing 2 1/2 columns) the display goes wacky - a lot of empty space appears in some columns. The vertical layout does not conform to the width - some text runs over boxes.

That is about as far as I get, without reading a single sentence!

Thank you for all your good advice. I finally chose a more readable font, spaced the columns, added a button to display the document in one column ... and even chose a light background, even if you don't care about the black background. Maybe the final result will be less "insulting" to your eyes and you can give me an opinion on the content?

So I concocted another approach, starting from a foundation as small as possible and defining a small set of bricks with which to build the data and control structures common to all languages, which will always serve as a guide in their learning. You will forget lambdatalk, the language that accompanies me in this journey, but you will keep in mind the essential concepts that underlie the act of coding. At least I hope so.

Your opinion is welcome.

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