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digego
extempore
C2011–2025
digego / extempore

extempore

A cyber-physical programming environment

Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
16Distinct people
20Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
1.5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A cyber-physical programming environment

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

There is also Extempore[0] and Overtone[1] in case anyone is interested. My favorite live-coded symphony is this[2] one. [0]: https://github.com/digego/extempore [1]:…

kuwze used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:03:16 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year20 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2011-10-09 20:14:21 UTC to 2025-12-04 10:37:48 UTC.

01232011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20112012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 2 submissions, 1 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC321
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

20 sources
eggy·Jan 28, 2023
I grew up in the 70s with the term cybernetics from Norber Wiener, and I liked it before Gibson's Neuromancer in the 80s, so I guess I was inoculated before the pandemic use of the word. Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) is a term being bandied about a bit now (reading Logical Foundations of Cyber-Physical Systems, and it is pretty cool [1]; Andrew Sorensen's Extempore as a CPS environment [2]). I also attended the first HOPE in 1994 in NYC and although the press abused the term cyber, it's still cool to me! But the Papa John's stuff was funny. [1] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-63588-0 [2] https://github.com/digego/extempore
In Cyber is a new language for fast, efficient, and concurrent scripting
clx75·Apr 10, 2022
I'm really fond of the idea of writing music like this. From all available implementations of the idea, I probably like Extempore (https://github.com/digego/extempore) the most. Extempore provides a low-level C-like language (xtlang) which compiles into LLVM and can be meta-programmed from a variant of Scheme (TinyScheme I believe). This arrangement makes it possible to generate the code for the audio graph from Scheme, compile/optimize it via LLVM, then drive it in a live-coding fashion from Emacs. Best of both worlds (high and low). My personal, much simpler attempt in this space is Cowbells (https://github.com/omkamra/cowbells) - with this one you can live-code FluidSynth (MIDI soundfonts) from Clojure + CIDER + Emacs, representing musical phrases either via Clojure data structures or an alternative text-based syntax (which is translat
Read the rest
ed into the former by a compiler).
In Starting Your Computer Music Journey with Clojure and Overtone in Emacs
eggy·Jul 25, 2019
Or not, since if something fails you have to ship it to TE and pay them IIRC $125 to look at it. I bought and own an OP-1, that still works great, however, the sequence you execute on boot up to get numbered list of options, such as update firmware, or factory reset cannot be reached. So now I am stuck with the last time I upgraded the firmware, and I can't get it back to the original state, so I can mess around with it again. I don't know, but to spend $800 on a synth, and have to ship it to Sweden, and pay that large a fee to simply look at it is a bit much. I then tried to simply buy a new board, so I could pop it in and be done, but they were sold out! I am sticking with Orca [1] and Extempore [2] for now. [1] https://github.com/hundredrabbits/Orca [2] https://github.com/digego/extempore
In Teenage Engineering has won over kids and professionals with a synthesizer
eggy·Dec 26, 2017
I can't go back and edit the spelling error, thanks anyway. I use J daily on my desktop as a calculator, and for more involved calculations. I am a senior project manager/technical designer/business developer at an engineering firm in the their Entertainment department. We do rock concerts, Broadway, film, live events, theme parks, stage machinery, art installation engineering and more. J is like my quicker-than-Excel-tryout-space. I have developed more mathematically-heavy applications in it, but when the need is for something beyond J's strengths of array handling and beautiful succinctness, I reach for Lisp for developing more of what people call apps, but they are for my sole use. Particularly SBCL. I also use Emacs Lisp a lot, since I am in Emacs all day for org-mode, writing, coding and LaTex. I am addicted to Emacs. It is the Lisp
Read the rest
Machine for me until another is developed, or I can afford a relic. I picked up Shen [1] a few years back to keep me from straying to far into Haskell/Idris, and I am working through The Book of Shen 3rd Edition. I had looked into Wasp Lisp years ago for fun, but I am now looking more into it since Chris Double ported Shen (and with it Klambda) over to the Wasp Lisp [2]. It made me leave any studies I started of Erlang or LFE, since my focus is on networking and distributed computing as a hobby. I always stay up to date with Racket, and use it for procedural geometry generation using Rosetta [3] instead of Rhino and Grasshopper. I actually used it to generate procedural truss for a sphere and then exported the centerlines to run analysis on the structure in RISA 3D [4]. I like to fiddle with Extempore for livecoding, but I am a mere dilettante [5] [1] http://shenlanguage.org/ [2] https://github.com/doublec/shen-wasp [3] http://web.ist.utl.pt/antonio.menezes.leitao/Rosetta/tutorials/introduction.html [4] https://risa.com/p_risa3d.html [5] https://github.com/digego/extempore
In Red Lang goes blockchain
kaoD·Sep 7, 2015
Keep in mind there are actually two domains in music: instruments (sound synthesis) and orchestration. Both Skoar and Alda (which was linked yesterday) are only orchestration languages. I've been researching about this and narrowed down by these criteria: (1) Modern and maintained (2) Open source (3) Multiplatform (4) Supports live coding (5) Not MIDI-only output (6) Text-based (7) Not Java (sorry JSyn :P) For me live coding is important since I prefer to compose music in an exploratory fashion. Also, live performances are cool. Read more about live coding and resources in http://toplap.org The list in no particular order (beware of the brain dump): · ## Overtone (https://overtone.github.io/) The coolest kid on the block is actually a frontend to SuperCollider. - Clojure based. - VJ-ready. Integration with Processing via Quil (https://git
Read the rest
hub.com/quil/quil) and GLSL shaders via Shadertone (https://github.com/overtone/shadertone). - Lots of tooling: https://github.com/overtone · ## SuperCollider (https://supercollider.github.io/) - Object-oriented functional language (similar to Smalltalk/Ruby/C/JS). - Basically Overtone minus Clojure minus VJ plus IDE. - Client-server architecture (which is what allows Overtone to use it as a backend). · ## Sonic Pi (http://sonic-pi.net/) - Ruby DSL + IDE. - Built for Raspberry PI (but runs anywhere SuperCollider and Ruby are available). - Another frontend to SuperCollider. - Designed to be suitable for teaching children. Teacher resources available (http://www.sonicpiliveandcoding.com/ http://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/sonic-pi-lessons/) · ## Extempore (https://github.com/digego/extempore) - Scheme-like. - Supports both audio and graphics. - Defines itself as a 'cyberphysical' programming environment (http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1869526). · ## ChucK (http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/) - Real-time sound synthesis and music creation (real-time meant it used to take a real amount of CPU time in non-RT kernels, not sure if it's changed). - Time-based, concurrent programming model (they call it 'strongly-timed'). · ## Fluxus (http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/) - Racket based. - Full-fledged environment. - Defined as 'a 3D game engine for livecoding worlds into existence', though it supports sound too. - Doesn't seem to be actively maintained (most recent release dates from April 2012). · ## Nyquist (https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/music/web/musi...) - (Still researching...) · ## Csound (http://www.csounds.com/) - (Still researching...) - Live coding added in a recent version. - Orchestration and synthesis are separate languages. · ## Tidal (http://yaxu.org/tidal/) - Haskell based. - Seems to support audio and graphics (defines itself as live coding of patterns). - (Still researching... I just came to know it in a link here.) · ## Skoar (https://github.com/sofakid/Skoarcery) - Another SuperCollider frontend. - Only orchestration, though I guess it supports different instruments created in SuperCollider. - Doesn't seem to support live coding? (Added to the list until I research more.) · ## MORE I just found these in the TOPLAP wiki (and Googling around) but had no time to comb through them. Listed in no particular order: - https://github.com/edne/pineal - https://github.com/createuniverses/praxis - http://charlie-roberts.com/gibber/about-gibber/ - https://github.com/LuaAV/LuaAV - http://hyperyarn.criticalartware.net - http://www.renickbell.net/conductive/doku.php/ - EXTRA: Live coding light shows https://github.com/brunchboy/afterglow
In Skoar – A musical programming language

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