ANandsoitis·Dec 5, 2025Submission
Unit – Next Generation Visual Programming System
2 points · Open discussionsamuelmtimbo
unit
TypeScript2021–2025
samuelmtimbo / unit
unit
Next Generation Visual Programming System
13Distinct people
14Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
4.9KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Next Generation Visual Programming System
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
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 year14 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-12-19 18:07:43 UTC to 2025-12-05 15:33:54 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 2 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
14 sourcesUnit – Next Generation Visual Programming System
2 points · Open discussionUnit – Visual Programming System
3 points · Open discussionLooks promising. I would love to see a tool to convert existing programs to Unit.
This readme gives a much better idea of how it works: https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit/blob/main/src/docs/star...
In Unit is a general purpose visual programming systemUnit – Next Generation Visual Programming System
2 points · Open discussionWell, for a node oriented approach we could have standard auto layouting that we could augment with hints for grouping, layouting prioritization etc. to achieve some kind of "universal editing" approach for visual programming.
After all, we use lots of comments to give some structure to text-based coding.
There was a post about
https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit recently, which at least uses some kind of hinted auto-layout (besides the more propriety fancy)
I really want to see more graphical coding for years, but node/graph-based and blockly seem to be the only approaches that got sone traction so far. So I like this thread and it seems at the right place.
I'd wish to see
more use of 2D and now 3D space for structuring, annotation and overall overview and navigation. Text plus a directory tree view can't be everything, especially sinc
Read the rest
e we have so many structural views for coding, runtime, versioning that basically are connected in our mind, but also could be in a space with more dimensions. Not sure if we could find/agree on a common denominator, though. Text is one because it's basically the bottom of common ground. Not sure if that's not just the trivial solution (ok, I am).
Unit: Next Generation Visual Programming System
1 points · Open discussionInteresting, and clearly a lot of work's gone into this (60,000 lines of Typescript), particularly the UI, which is impressive (if, sometimes, over the top). I've been developing a similar system (http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/tutorials/TOC.html) and it's interesting to note the similarities and differences.
Similarities: code as directed graphs (less obvious in FMJ); can only connect outputs to units of compatible type; if and wait (looping is handled differently); sticky values; sliders. These design decisions are practically forced on you, but are often absent in earlier visual dataflow languages (e.g. Prograph, LabVIEW).
Differences: (1) inputs are named in Unit, ordered in FMJ (though they're named in formulas and edges can be labelled). (2) I experimented with automatic code layout but found this was too slow and not always wha
Read the rest
t I wanted. Well done for getting this to work. (3) FMJ is now fully homoiconic - this maybe isn't a priority for Unit.
The Unit design philosophy is explained in https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit/blob/main/src/docs/conc... . This doesn't mention earlier approaches (e.g. the Manchester Dataflow Computer, Prograph) and it seems to be based on vaguely similar ideas developed more recently (Morrison's Flow Based programming; possibly React and similar systems for web development - I'm unfamiliar with these).
I have a number of questions:
(1) How does the type system work? Is it Dependently typed, Hindley-Milner, or something more basic? (FMJ is Hindley-Milner, with dependent typing partially implemented). How are new types be defined?
(2) How is the visual representation stored? One criticism I faced was that people wanted a readable textual representation which would work well with existing version control systems, a problem I have now largely solved.
(3) How are runtime errors handled?
(4) Is recursion supported? (I assume yes, but I didn't see any examples.) What about macros?
(5) What does Unit compile to? (FMJ has an experimental compiler where programs are compiled by running their source without evaluating their inputs, output is Lisp.)
I enjoyed reading this. I knew of quartz composer but I never did anything with it.
I love visual tools and I think they are underutilized today. I cut my teeth in ~2005 with Houdini[0] and Fusion[1] which are both heavily graph / node based (and procedural).
Most recently I have been rekindling my love for visual programming and flow based programming and plan to spend some time in January and February doing more research around flow based programming for infrastructure management.
I plan to get this sort of info published on my website which I have neglected for half a decade or more but if you are interested in visual programming you might enjoy checking these out:
Unit from Samuel Timbó:
https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit
https://ioun.it/
A video of me exploring what I figured out about it (while also learning to stream) https://www
Read the rest
.youtube.com/watch?v=vwknTfGVDq8
Behave-Graph from Ben Houston:
https://github.com/bhouston/behave-graph
And the products I learned so long ago
[0] Houdini https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini/
[1] Fusion https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion
unit: Next Generation Visual Programming Platform:
https://github.com/samuelmtimbo/unit
- A code drawn in unit is simply a Directed Graph.
- Programming can be partially performed by Gesture and by Voice.
In Ask HN: More “experimental” UIs for editing/writing code?Unit: Next Generation Visual Programming Platform
4 points · Open discussionUnit: Next Generation Visual Programming Platform
4 points · Open discussionUnit: Next Generation Visual Programming Platform
6 points · Open discussion