A question for the Ableton developers (or anyone interested)

[Decepto]

Hey decepto thaks for teh advise buddy. Where can I learn python? ANy links you can provide or books? Is it self learnable or I need to go to school? I'm not from a programming background- am an accountant! so is it something easily learnable? ( I know its not a very objective question, sorry)

Also whats your view about learning Max/msp?

thanks very much for the helpful comments.

There isn't anything in computer science that you can't learn on your own. Sure, if you need to do some hardware fabrication or run your software on a cluster of 10,000 processors, you might need the backing of a university. But I wouldn't worry about that.

Learning a language is interesting in that when a programmer picks up a new language, they do so in the hopes of applying the new language to a certain application. So before you start with python, I would ask: What do you want to build?

Here are some popular topics that most new people want do as their first project:

* A simple game (like pong or tetris)
* A web application (think Twitter, Facebook. Both of which started as simple web applications)
* Solving a math problem

Writing an audio application is fine, but you first need to understand how digital audio is represented in software. It's not difficult to learn, just keep that in mind when you start.

First things first though. You need a text editor and Python. There are a lot of free editors out there, but if I find one I like, I don't mind paying for it. If you're on a Mac, pick up textmate. If you're on windows, pick up E Text Editor.

Next, download and install python 2.5. Python 2.6 and 3.x are available, but the libraries for python always lag behind by a couple versions. If you want to create a simply game or graphical application, check out PyGame.

I'm not sure what libraries are available for real time audio processing in python, but I do know that you can do preprocessed audio in pure python without an libraries. In fact, you can do preprocessed audio in any language that will allow the output of a binary file (in this case, a WAV file). Again, here's where knowing how audio in digitally represented comes into play.

If you just want to play around with the language, google "Python tutorial". There are hundreds of great tutorials out there.

[Trip Downtown]

If you want to learn how to program your own plugins or audio apps C++ is the language to learn. As for the best way to learn, imo buy a book. Learning from scratch is a lot easier if you're going through a book. The internet is great for looking up how to do specific things when you hit a problem. I can't recommend any specific books off hand but Amazon should see you right and tbh most programming books on a certain subject are pretty similar.

It'll take a while to be able to code some really crazy stuff but not very long at all to do something little that you can be proud of. If you're on Windows, Microsoft Visual Studio Express is the best software for writing C++ (industry standard and it's free). Be warned, it's similar in complexity to learning a full featured DAW for the first time (but that not impossible is it? )...

Feel free to ask questions, programming is a big world that can be pretty overwhelming at first. (I program audio applications and have worked in the games industry btw. )

[hereschenes]

Just run

Code: Select all

strings

on the Live executable (in Cygwin for Windows, or in OS X) - more evidence of OpenGL.

[Anand]

decepto, Trip downtown

you guys are terrifc. Thanks for the helpful and friendly advise. I'll PM you if i need further help. I'll get started with some of your inputs.

BTW is Max/MSP a program worthy of learning, is payback equal to that of python or C++?

[Ed J]

If you want to learn how to program your own plugins or audio apps C++ is the language to learn. As for the best way to learn, imo buy a book. Learning from scratch is a lot easier if you're going through a book. The internet is great for looking up how to do specific things when you hit a problem. I can't recommend any specific books off hand but Amazon should see you right and tbh most programming books on a certain subject are pretty similar.

It'll take a while to be able to code some really crazy stuff but not very long at all to do something little that you can be proud of. If you're on Windows, Microsoft Visual Studio Express is the best software for writing C++ (industry standard and it's free). Be warned, it's similar in complexity to learning a full featured DAW for the first time (but that not impossible is it? )...

Feel free to ask questions, programming is a big world that can be pretty overwhelming at first. (I program audio applications and have worked in the games industry btw. )

+777million

C++ is the best language for anything audio- or graphics-related, and it's a good starting point cus it's got the power to do almost anything you want, and forces you to learn things like memory-management, which is what shit coders often overlook -> every time you notice a website randomly running slow, someone's building strings using string concatenation or declaring variables in inner scope without thinking what they're doing!

also, Visual studio is quite possibly the best code editor around, we use it at work, when you have things like reshaper (C# only I'm afraid) and various other plugins, it really is a one-stop-shop for coding

[noisetonepause]

C++ is the best language for anything audio- or graphics-related, and it's a good starting point cus it's got the power to do almost anything you want, and forces you to learn things like memory-management, which is what shit coders often overlook -> every time you notice a website randomly running slow, someone's building strings using string concatenation or declaring variables in inner scope without thinking what they're doing!

And when you spend a few decades (and counting) waiting for software to stop crashing and leaking memory everywhere, it's probably because most everyone didn't have the good sense to learn Lisp.

[leonard]

i just looked back though some the live 6 crash logs i have here.
there's no reference to opengl frameworks at all.
perhaps it's used for something else?

[atsutomo]

OpenGL is a graphic library. It is not a GUI library. GUI library uses graphic library.
and OpenGL is the most popular cross-platform graphic library.
So I can guess Ableton uses a GUI library that based on OpenGL, like Qt or something.
Or they may make their own GUI library using OpenGL.

About audio, im sure they uses at least these.
http://www.steinberg.net/en/company/developers.html