[SC3K] Updates on implementation. Rationals aren’t about what people are discussing

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I am close to completing the integration of Rational numbers into Patterns. And I wanted to clarify some confusion that is the center of discussions.

It seems that, with Patterns, an opportunity to improve the messy discussion about it and make it more and more a discussion about what this is all about. Maybe we should probably provide an experimental ‘SuperCollider 3000’ (homage to Andre 3000) fork for easy testing of the changes (since compiling a ‘branch’ will restrict a lot of people who can try it out.

Features don’t always get rejected because they’re wrong, slow, or poorly engineered. Often they get rejected because they’re framed in the wrong terms, so they end up being judged by criteria they were never meant to meet. It can happen by accident, or even deception

[Concerning this, we are good: our implementation is already equivalent to production code, such as the boost rational library]

Rational durations are especially vulnerable to that. We need to step back a bit to question the questions I am receiving.

If they’re presented as “exact fractions” or “better numerical precision,” the discussion immediately turns into a comparison with floating point. Is it faster? Is it worth the complexity? Do we really need it? From that angle, skepticism is completely reasonable. Floating point is fast, familiar, and more than adequate for many uses.

But rational durations aren’t really just a numerical feature at all. They’re a semantic one.

The goal isn’t better arithmetic — it’s using the kind of arithmetic that preserves musical structure.

I will complete the implementation soon. I believe only after showing an introductory guide with examples of rational numbers that include all sorts of things, invluding Patterns, the direction of the conversation will change.

Things like exact phrase boundaries, guaranteed return points, stable long-horizon form, and operations of all sorts (and new ones targeted at this new feature) that behave structurally rather than approximately.

When musical time stays symbolic for as long as possible, it becomes easier to reason about. Polyrhythms either align or they don’t — there’s no tolerance threshold, no slow drift to manage. Long-running patterns stay coherent without constant correction. These are questions of precision on a very superficial level; in reality, they’re questions of meaning.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This will also be my farewell from the community. That’s my gift, made with love. I’m not comfortable, and this forum constantly takes away my joy and excitement to make music and programming. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I feel that the vibe now is very propitious to bad unintended consequences, and I don’t sense very good feelings about it.

The inability of people with just a pinch of power to hear their peers suggests a lot about the future.

I will be very glad to find other ways to keep in touch with many musicians and hackers from here. Please DM during this process. If we don’t coincide here until then, use this alias to reach me: supercollider_3000@protonmail.com

@asynth @dietcv @Yann_Ics @josh @semiquaver @Spacechild1 @prko @jamshark70

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7000 Million years away from now, 7000 Million years away, feels like i am stuck inside a time machine, voices playing round inside in my stationary dream, travel on, travel on…

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Almost. it’s Synthesizer 3000 – if you wanna

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Not everything is rational, homie. [Tupac and Kendrick in conversation, inside a song]

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Why were my posts tagged as “bot”? @moderators All moderators know me, I’m a person.

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(Yes, I wrote every single word with my own fingers. No accusations, I’m just reporting something after this work was mentioned many times on Github and here.)

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Speaking here as an individual and as a moderator: the response to a PR not being accepted right away has been out of proportion. I’ve had PRs rejected, and it stung, but to post repeatedly about it for over a week is not normal and I think likely to put off other forum users, if it were to continue. (Not to mention that – as I said a few days ago – it’s necessary for contributors to feel safe, yes, and it’s necessary for PR reviewers to feel safe to state their views without worrying about triggering days, or a week, or two weeks of emotional reactions on the forum.)

As a moderator – there’s not much to be gained from further posts on this topic.

As a friend, please do what you need to do to come back into balance. Your behavior lately is concerning. One rap was cute maybe? But it’s been going on for a little while. Something ain’t right, and I don’t think I’m the only person here who sees that.

hjh

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There is no PR. Only one in 2017. I have a local fork on my computer, James.

I am feeling weird here. I will log out and communicate elsewhere. I’m sorry, this is strange.

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What PR, @jamshark70 ?

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This was a misunderstanding on my part – there was feedback that was reposted in another thread, which looked to me like it was probably a comment on a PR, and it was in context of discussion of a new feature. So I am factually incorrect on that point.

Parts of the reply to that reposted comment, I think, exaggerated the nature of the criticism, which I noted at the time. Since then, I observed several oblique references to the same topic; most of these seem to have been removed, but note that the first post in this thread mixes excellent technical material with continued reference to misguided rejection of a feature, etc etc. This strikes me as unnecessary, and even likely to alienate people who might otherwise advocate for the feature (and also it shows that my concerns, registered at the time, were ignored).

If I’ve greatly misread the situation, I apologize for that. But, I don’t think it’s a good precedent to set, if someone receives what appears to me to be even-handed criticism and this results in ongoing public reactions to it. I’ve been quite uneasy about it for several days. I apologize for the factual error (and again, if I’m way off base, I’d apologize for that too) but I don’t think that’s the biggest problem here.

hjh

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You may have misread the situation in detail, but I think you got the big picture right, and your comment was good and careful. Thank you for making the implicit explicit.