ScalaVis

This year I have become really fond of the Scala programming language. It is a better Java than Java with functional elements that make it highly expressive. I expect that there will be a lot more posts on this blog related to Scala in the future. Also, for the last decade or so, I have been working on a data analysis, exploration, and plotting package to use with N-Body simulations called SwiftVis (page, Wiki). I am very fond of SwiftVis and use it for all of the data analysis on my ring simulations. It is also used by a number of other researchers and some of my former students.

The original design goals of SwiftVis included that it be free, multiplatform, have fairly good speed, and not require users to program. The first three requirements made Java an obvious choice for the development. The last requirement, while very beneficial can be a limitation if taken too far. SwiftVis is very flexible and easy to extend. However, the only way to interact with it is through the GUI. Many of the components in SwiftVis could be more useful than they currently are if they weren't locked into this one GUI.

While there are many things I like about Scala, one of the things I caught onto later, especially as it pertains to education, was the power offered by the fact that it has a REPL and scripting capabilities. It also has the ability to call Java code directly. Putting all of these things together I've been picturing in my head a new program that has all the power and extensibility of SwiftVis, but written in Scala in a way that also brings in serious programming interactivity. I'm also hoping to simplify the way in which GUI controls would be written.

I intend to keep the current data flow system that is in SwiftVis in this new work. One of the big questions is how to deal with the data. SwiftVis sends everything around as DataElements. A DataElement has an array of ints and an array of floating point numbers. Having the int is a bit of a pain in the code, takes memory, and in practice it doesn't add all that much to the code. On the other hand, there have been times when it might have been nice to have other types of data in the elements. My current thought is to start with just having double values. I'll have to do some memory testing to see if it is better to use a Vector in Scala or if I should create my own type that wraps an array to make it immutable. The answer to that depends on whether the Vector class will compile to primitives the way the array does.

At this point I have pretty much convinced myself that this is a project I would enjoy and that is worth my time. Now I just need to play with it some to get the design off the ground.