Flowex - Flow-Based Programming framework

Hi @synthslave!
Thanks for the information.
Yeap, know about J Paul Morrison and have read his excellent book “Flow-Based Programming”, but haven’t communicated with him.

Hi @antonmi !
Thanks for elaborating on the music analogy. That helps put it into more context. Just as an FYI, here are two technologies that actually synchronize the notes for different instruments that are very commonplace in music production/performance:

MIDI Clock

Ableton Link

As an FYI, after learning of Flowex and FBP, I actually reached out to J Paul Morrison and he was very kind and appreciative. Not sure if you ever communicated with him but he’s very cool. Am excited to learn/practice Flowex/FBP.

@dom
Here’s a video from Paul Morrison himself where he explains the origins of FBP:

And for more detailed explanation, here’s his website: http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/fbp/

What’s the appeal of having a different process do each step, rather than have a pool of processes that execute all the steps in sequence? I had a look through the examples, but I didn’t find a clear answer.

Hi, @synthslave!
Your analogy is very interesting. I can imagine two ways of using Flowex that can be interpreted in musician way):

1. There are several pipelines, one for each instrument. IPs (informational packets) are the notes. You pass the notes to these pipelines and they are played in parallel.
2. There is one pipeline where each component is a note. And each component consists of several processes. IPs are the instruments. You pass the instruments into to pipeline and enjoy music.
   It sounds cool, but the main problem in both cases - how to synchronize all the instruments. BEAM VM under the hood does not evaluate all the processes in parallel, but frequently switch between them. You can’t be sure that all the notes are played simultaniously. So, in both cases, you need a mechanism of synchronization.
   The good news is that a real program is not a music and it is ok if some parts are not synced well.
   And I agree with you that FBP is very convienient approach to right software.

Thank you!

@antonmi

Hello Anton,

I just found out about Flowex and FBP from one of your Youtube videos that led me to your thread on this forum.

I am new to Elixir and programming in general but this idea of FBP sounds very exciting to me as I am a musician so am curious if I am understanding the core foundation of what Flowex/FBP offers?

Would the following example of writing a song be a good analogy?

Instead of focusing on writing one melody on a piano and ONLY on that melody sequentially, Flowex allows a programmer to have the freedom to write not only the piano but the guitar parts, then perhaps the drums, then back to the piano, then the drums, simultaneously?

If so, I will be your most ardent fan and tester as frankly, I’ve found most languages extremely painful and uninspiring (for me at least) with exception of Elixir (obviously) so FBP seems much more suited to my brain where I’m accustomed to jamming on different aspects of a song/project to complete the required goal.

Thanks in advance

You are welcome!
Thank you for the issue which makes Flowex better!

@antonmi

Yes, it works as I expected. I appreciate your quick help!!!

ikim.

@ikim
I’ve changed starting strategy for pipeline.
Please, try the new 0.5.2 version of the library.

Thank you @antonmi
I created an issue in the github.

Hi @ikim
Seems like you kill the supervisor of the pipeline. This is very unexpected case. Current implemetation start supervisor with producer only and then adds stages one by one and subscribe to each other. So it will fail to restart all the stages after supervisor crash.
But I think this can be changed. May I ask you to create an issue with the example?
Thanks!