Oculus Connect 2: Live Coding Session with John Carmack
Meta VR3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2016–2023
demo · intermediate · 2016–2023 on HN
John Carmack live-codes a simple VR application at Oculus Connect 2 using a Racket-based environment for rapid development and deployment on Gear VR.
Cited for watching Carmack code fluently and for the fast iteration cycle of Racket-based VR scripting.
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12 comments from Hacker News
Actually I really like the format of your presentations: just yesterday I watched your live coding session with vrscript ( ▶ this video ) and it was fantastic because, first, you were showing to your audience how to work with Racket (and some of the features in DrRacket), and second, you build from zero a demo in a very casual, easy going way. I honestly don't think that a standard slide-based presentation would have been better in any way...
He also did a live coding demo showing off this VR scripting concept. Having such a fast iteration cycle is very compelling. Hopefully at least some Javascript version of this will exist, even though this seems like a perfect application for a Lisp. ▶ this video I wish he did live coding. Jonathan Blow's Twitch channel (naysayer88) is very compelling. Carmack's would be as well.
Checkout the VR script by John Carmack ▶ this video It's on racket (scheme dialect). There are no language which can make you more efficient. But some languages open your mind. Just read SICP and find out what makes language EPIC. Many big projects are in Php. But surely no one would claim that it makes php "the EPIC" or even great.
There's a live coding talk by John Carmack where he uses Racket for making small programs for the Oculus: ▶ this video He seemed happy enough with the language.
the biggest adoption it would have gotten is that it was going to be used the main language of vrscripting ▶ this video but it seems like john couldnt push it everyone into it
> What was Carmack's development focus during Oculus? I'm not sure exactly but there's a bunch of keynotes from Carmack around Oculus Connect on YouTube. Here's one from 2014: link , and another one from a year later where he's live coding in a VR environment ▶ this video . You'll find a bunch more if you search too. I remember skimming through them years ago not because I'm into VR development but I've been a life long fan of Carmack's work and like listening to him talk about things.
I suspect the majority of programmers who say this have internalized the core api features they depend on (function calls, syntax, common algorithms, etc.) that make them super productive. Whereas average programmers and below need all the help they can get from their editor to tame the wild goose chase of looking up common functions, scouring StackOverflow, and even looking for random snippets on long abandoned blogs, etc. In other words his mastery greatly reduces his dependence on IDE/editor features so this makes perfect sense. Watching Carmack live coding, he types with conviction and gets things done: ▶ this video Sitting down with OpenBSD during a cabin retreat: link
This is exceptionally cool. Thanks for sharing and building! When I'm using Sketch or Movie Maker or Logic or some other GUI-based >>x<< editing tool, the thing that keeps going through my head is: "Dammit I wish I had the abstraction tools that I have as a programmer. It would literally make this task 100x faster." To me Ronin is some strong validation that all these editing tools would be much improved by a human-readable and programmable intermediate representation of what you're doing with the GUI. The GUI is just an editor for modifying this representation. John Carmack did some work when he was at Oculus on something like this for VR: - ▶ this video These ideas are all in their infancy, but really excited to see people starting to make moves in this field. Thanks again!
Sounds like you're remembering John Carmack developing VR using racket: ▶ this video edit: Also check Arcadia for Clojure: link And developing flappy bird in clojurescript (canonical figwheel example): link
related: live coding session from Oculus Connect 2 (in 2015): ▶ this video previous discussions on the live coding session: link (2016) link (2015)
John wanted racket to be the main scripting language for vr apps that are lightweight and don't need a lot of horsepower. ▶ this video
> On a more general note, I am still waiting for the world to fall for lisp in general. Gah, aren't we all? Watching John Carmack push Scheme for the Oculus Rift 2 [ ▶ this video ] made me feel like something was right in the universe.