eti is an interactive textual programming environment I developed to support the creation of three-dimensional geometry. In an ordinary programming environment, a designer writes code and then they press a button to run the code. They wait for the computer to first verify the code, and then compile the code, and then execute the code. Only then can the designer see the output from their code. Yeti circumvents this process. When a designer writes code in Yeti, they instantly see the geometry the code produces. Code writing becomes interactive, designers no longer need to guess and check what their code does.
Besides the interactivity, Yeti contains a number of features not commonly found in programming environments used by architects:
- Autocompletion – including autocompletion on user defined objects.
- Robust error handling – Coding errors do not prevent Yeti from running.
- Interactive debugging – Clicking on code in Yeti reveals the geometry the code generates.
I stated Yeti as an opensource project, and continue to contribute to the code base. Download Yeti as a Rhino3d plugin or get the Yeti source in C#. More information about Yeti can be found in Yeti: Designing Geometric Tools with Interactive Programming, published at DesForM 2012.