[rpmuller]

I love the tools coming out of the Julia ecosystem, and am excited to see what comes next. I’m hopeful that we’ll see the development of tools to think with rather than tools to solve problems you’ve already thought through. I still reach for a pad of paper when I have a new problem. Given the flexibility and the sophistication of the tools I see being developed, it seems like we have the elements necessary to take the next step.

I’d be interested in hearing what the HN community thinks.

[fault1]

I agree! As a start, Pluto is quite cool for thinking/learning/discovering/exploring, imho: https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl

3blue1brown helped teach the "Computational Thinking" class at MIT using it: https://computationalthinking.mit.edu/Fall20/lecture2/

[rpmuller]

Big fan of Pluto, and I’ve watched the Computational Thinking videos several times already.

What I’m looking for when I talk about tools for thinking are the same type of sketching out a problem I do on paper. My first-year physics professor said (many years ago) that the way to start solving a problem is to make a well-labeled figure. I’m looking for something like MathCAD where you can label a figure with equations, or in COMSOL where you can start with a parametric description of a problem.

[O_H_E]

You just reminded me of this link/series I found yesterday through HN Blogs newsletter[1]: https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-4

[1] https://hnblogs.substack.com/p/hn-blogs-211121-bae

[rpmuller]

Thanks for this. What I’m thinking of.