for rapid iteration and reactive programming.
Obligitory disclaimer: this is an experimental and early project
Devolve is a node-based DSL like Node-RED or Unreal's Blueprints. Also known as Flow-based Programming.
Each node is an effectful computation (function), and nodes are defined in Rust using macros. .dvl files can also be converted into Rust functions using macros.
Each Devolve program is a function: it takes a set of inputs and a context, and produce a set of outputs. Devolve programs are instant: they have no poll or sleep and only iterate over collections, though they are not 100% pure. Devolve programs are strongly-typed and the type system interfaces with Rust's, although there are no linear types so everything must be Copy or a shared reference. Devolve programs are typically edited in the devolve IDE though they may also be edited directly.
devolve facilitates rapid iteration. A big issue with Rust is that you must recompile and rerun your program every time you want to make changes. .dvl files can be live-reloaded.
devolve facilitates high-level thinking. Visual languages are terrible for representing complex computations, but better than text-based languages at representing simple higher-level computations, as they are also diagrams.
devolve may facilitate collaboration with non-programmers, as visual languages may be more familiar to them.
- UI (reactive)
- Heuristics
- Shaders
- Low-code or high-level
Scenarios:
- Prototyping
- Collaboration with non-programmers
The primary use case for devolve scripts is devolve-ui, a UI framework. devolve-ui is designed to rapidly-iterable, low-code, functional, accessible to non-programmers - all use cases of the devolve language.
devolve-ui is more than devolve: it also includes the UI nodes, and a separate framework for building asynchronous UIs in Python. But devolve's design is tightly integrated with devolve-ui.