I moved! After ~7 years in Jersey City I’m now officially a Marylander and between selling a condo, getting rid of (almost) all of our stuff, and starting to get settled in a new state there’s been a lot to focus on other than Pebble Graphics. Fortunately things didn’t completely stall out and I made the first “real” program using the system: drawing a square (check out the description on YouTube for a timestamped commentary on what’s happening).
I’ll continue to test the system by making more complicated drawings and programs, but I think at this point I’m going to say the “language” is complete in the sense that I’m not going to add major features or try to make it more powerful. I’ve been following Y Combinator’s Startup School with some Recursers and there’s a big emphasis on getting a minimum viable product out early. My motivations are probably different from most entrepreneurs in that my main goal is to build a tool for myself, but I still think there’s value in making successively powerful systems that are more than just prototypes (and extra money to speed up development doesn’t sound too bad). Planning and telling people you’re going to release an app seems like a good way to do that. I have a ton of stuff I’d like to eventually have like arrays and the ability to do some sort of meta-programming, but first I’ll try to hone what I have and get it out there.
Speaking of MVPs I’m leaning towards having the first app be just a drawing program. One idea for a future app is to build a game around the programming system where you start in a farm that is static and lifeless and you go around programming behaviors into the animals and objects around the farm to make it come alive (I call this asset store sale driven development 😅). Focusing on some simple AI problems should be a good way to shape the programming system towards making the perfect tool.