Show HN: Geomatic – a command-driven geometry studio enabled with autodiff
37 points
5 hours ago
| 6 comments
| tinyvolt.com
| HN
All commands have the format `output = \func inputs` or just `\function inputs`. Points and scalars are built on the fly. Eg `\line a b` to an empty canvas creates points `a` and `b`, and joins them with a line.

One can use broadcasting semantics similar to NumPy and PyTorch in a visual setting (imagine creating a list of circles where one dim corresponds to radius and another to the center). One can also use backpropagation, run gradient descent or visualize vector fields. Almost everything is reactive so changing a variable updates all of the downstream geometry. It also allows anyone to write and load their own visualization, which can be broadcasted and differentiated through.

sowow
4 hours ago
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I liked this one, but it took me a while to understand, I think this page is a much better intro: https://www.tinyvolt.com/geomatic/examples/getting-started
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roger_
1 hour ago
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Cool idea but not very mobile friendly it seems.
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felooboolooomba
4 hours ago
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Bug: https://www.tinyvolt.com/geomatic/examples/broadcasting-in-g... Click "Draw a single n-star" Results in a message popping up "unknown command: n-star"
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galaxy_quest
1 hour ago
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You have to load the extension, the instructions are in the text above the button.
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hbwang2076
3 hours ago
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Clean implementation. One thing I always look for: how does this degrade when things go wrong? Good error handling is what separates weekend projects from tools people actually use.
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dmos62
3 hours ago
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Pretty cool. Curious, why a one time payment? Why not, say, a smaller monthly payment?
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sowow
1 hour ago
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Not OP, but for me personally I’m tired of subscriptions. I’m grabbing the one time payment before OP changes his mind.
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ddxv
5 hours ago
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What is autodiff?
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nivter
5 hours ago
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Automatic differentiation. For any DAG with a scalar output, it allows calculating its partial derivative wrt the input parameters.
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