WHICH DIRECTION FLOWSTONE FLOWS?

[gvalletto]

Hi all,
When I discovered Synthmaker, seemed a revolutionary program. I could give great solutions in any area, inside or outside sound, increase my productivity and enjoy their results. So I devoted myself to Synthmaker with all my passion, and achieved undreamed things in sound, music and even petroleum industry until pool game.
Then I bought Flowstone. Many modules that could disarm them and modify them according to my whim, now had only a huge block of text of Ruby code. That code must be great, no doubt. But I don't desire to learn it. I don't have time to do so, and without Ruby, I achieved what I wanted. Originally SM/FS were dedicated to users who did not work with codes. That was the reason why I bought them. But I see that now, the trend is to do everything with Ruby. For example, there is no knobs nor meters without Ruby in the Toolbox already. Thus, on certain areas in which I acquired skills for 6 years, I am now a beginner again. The learning curve changed its slope, and now asks me something that I don't have. My future projects and updates of my already released projects become complicated.

A friend told me: It is as if you had bought a program requiring knowing English, and soon the developers say "now you must know Chinese".

I have used several software during 20 years for office, drawing, music, video, industry. All their developers generated new versions without losing the philosophy of their origin. And 20 years later, these software still active in the market.

The developers of Flowstone:
are abandoning certain users?
Why not develop something like "Visual Ruby" as a new program and continue with Flowstone according to its original idea?
Why not to continue in Flowstone improving the DSP code, which is easy to learn for new users, and with which the old users are already familiar?

Flowstone can still take into account these things for their future versions, unless the interested users are few. I will wait for opinions from the users and from FS team.
Gustavo Valletto

[Nubeat7]

i cannot understand what you mean? ruby is just a new extra feature and nothing was abandoned because of ruby, you are not forced to use ruby or the dsp and asm code modules, the code modules are just extra features to create your own functions, also the idea to write your own codes with code modules is nothing new and always was part of SM / FS...

Why not to continue in Flowstone improving the DSP code, which is easy to learn for new users, and with which the old users are already familiar?

i cannot agree with this, writing a simple if statement with "&" operators and braces isn't simple and isn't readable, i'm still having problems to write and read code like this after 3 years... but i also would like to see improvements on the dsp area (which btw was improved during the last updates!) this is discussed in several threads on the forum where you can participate with your ideas.

[tulamide]

Hey gvalletto,

I don't know what exactly frightens you? Ruby is just another option to the already existing prims and modules. Nobody forces you to use Ruby. It is just another way to achieve something.

The green prims and modules are still there, still working and still doing a great job. That DSPr decided to showcase Ruby in the factory modules is probably just to give examples of usage at hand, very much like it was done with the prims for a long time.

I've made some examples you'll find around here, that ignore Ruby completely. Still they do something new. I think that's proving the "power of green". Just don't be frightened because of something new. It won't fight you. It might even become your friend someday.

[KG_is_back]

Currently Flowstone is aimed at robotics and external hardware device control and education. There are several things, that are extremely complicated in green (although still possible) like loops and array management. Ruby was added to provide alternative. The old green connector solutions are still there - nobody prevents you form using them.

I had the same concerns when I switched to Flowstone, and they dissolved once I've found out I can avoid Ruby in every situation without any regrets. Later, when I decided to have a look at the ruby and learned a few tricks here and there, I've noticed how it can speed up my workflow and simplify my schematics.

Ruby basically lets you write "your own green prims" with exactly the functionality you require. No longer you have to wait for developers to add the green prim with the exact feature you currently need. DSPRobotics is a very small company and therefore Flowstone development is very slow. They just gave more power to the users to write "their own prims" by adding Ruby and DLL component (which allows you to use code written C++).

You may have a look at http://flowstone.guru/downloads/. Less then 15% of the schematics, we have gathered/uploaded actually require Ruby to work.

[gvalletto]

Thank you all for the quick answers.
Yes, now Ruby is a powerful alternative, and anyway, I can work with the "green" resource instead of Ruby. Perhaps I misspoke. I'm talking about the rhumb of Flowstone. Imagine how important it could be: a few years ago, at the Synthmaker era, I suggested to the Outsim team to make a program for automation using the resources of Synthmaker. Immediately they answered something like "no thanks, we work on music." But after a while appeared Flowstone, and then disappeared Synthmaker.
Often I use "reverse engineering" to learn the operation of certain modules. This involves disassembling a module and analyze the relationship between its components. That way I improved the Step Oscillator that brought SM.
As another example, there are new knobs with Ruby as a showcase, that's fine, but there are no knobs without Ruby already. I made my own knobs capable of sub-presets, MIDI Learn, etc., modifying all the knobs without Ruby. Of course I can still using them today. Just I think that if these are no longer included in the toolbox, it is because it is no longer considered important. So new users today have a harder learning curve to learn about knobs and another modules.
As another example, the new arpeggiator module is based on Ruby, so I can not modify it without learning Ruby. You can say, "build it yourself", but the resource of reversal learning could drastically improve my own designs without extra spent time.
I repeat, I am not talking about a situation of Flowstone TODAY. I am analyzing the course of Flowstone in the future, according to the title of this topic.
I am pleased by the interest generated by this topic. Greetings to all, and thanks again by any comment.
Gustavo

[KG_is_back]

I guess, thy have remade the knobs in Ruby to showcase the ruby as a new feature. Yes, the old knobs are no longer in the toolbox, because it might be confusing to users, that there are two essentially identical modules. Yes, I agree nowadays people have harder time learning basics of using prims. Perhaps tutorials on these topics will be helpful for new users (work in progress at FSguru).

It is hard to answer the question in the title of this topic... Clearly when synthmaker switched to flowstone, developers changed their aim more towards robotics, because that is more perspective market for them and audio-part is kind of pulling the shorter end today. There is nothing to blame them - they go where the money is coming from, because they put a lot of time in the development and as we all know "time is money".
Nevertheless, audio part of the flowstone features is not abandoned - new features like ruby and DLL component may also be used to process audio. Also we have asked developers to add a few more opcodes to Assembler, to improve its possibilities, perhaps even DSPcode component revision. I'm also attempting to write a new compiler as an alternative to DSPcode in FS (with no luck yet though), with things like code branching, custom function declaration etc.

[gvalletto]

It is hard to answer the question in the title of this topic... Clearly when synthmaker switched to flowstone, developers changed their aim more towards robotics, because that is more perspective market for them and audio-part is kind of pulling the shorter end today. There is nothing to blame them - they go where the money is coming from, because they put a lot of time in the development and as we all know "time is money".

I agree on the need to expand the market. That is the reason why I suggested to Outsim the development of another software for the industry. Music and robotics are two areas too large to be included in a single software.

First, if DSProbotics wants to expand for more money, they are losing the best area. My desire was a software for laboratories and industry, not for hobby. I worked on DasyLab and Labview, which while they cost around $4000, them are popular in the industry for more than 15 years, and Flowstone has greater power than them and it is graciously cheap (… for industry, not for me!). I know about a Company that spent U$D 200000 per year in a data acquisition software that does far less things that SM/FS.

Second, many potential customers are musicians who don't know anything about codes or want not to do it. When they try a demo of FS and see Ruby everywhere, they will not buy it.

Third, if the objective of DSProbotics is still to exploit the music market, it will keep these things that I fear losing. But if only interested in money, sooner or later they turn fully to what most sell, and probably not in the area of music.

Obviously, I'm not a market analyst, is only my humble opinion and I want to share it with you, as a way to collaborate with Flowstone.

[gvalletto]

You may have a look at http://flowstone.guru/downloads/. Less then 15% of the schematics, we have gathered/uploaded actually require Ruby to work.

Thanks a lot by the link!
Best regards,
Gustavo

[ErvSoft]

mm, interesting
I come from older softwares including Synthmaker when I bought FL Studio 12.
I love Ruby, and I love FS,
And the learning curve was never a problem for me
the pace of learning is a virtue that one must keep in mind when faced with tools and novelties in which one has the freedom to choose to enter,

I think that all potential people know what they are buying, and they know that there are complexities in development software as in everything else.

then the problem is not Ruby, nor the news in future versions, but rather, the learning disposition of the person himself.

To say that no one is going to buy FS because it has Ruby does not make sense.

simply if you don't like something, try to adapt, well, adapting is also part of learning, and it is what we all do.

what can help a lot for you, is a manual or a ruby code book oriented to FS, something that I have also looked for,
but still, I managed to learn a lot in the community, simply I just love FS.