there are about 20 others, and i am not even including realbasic or synthedit in the count.
the big sister of puredata,
max/msp, was the very first enviroment which gave access to the creation of VST plug-ins
without any knowledge of a high level language such as C++ or java, the first plug-ins made with this graphical dataflow programming enviroment (some might call max/msp a "language", see below) came out some
17 years ago and still work in many VST host programs dated 2010 or so.
max made audio plug-ins also supported
MAS (digital performer) and
RTAS (protools) beside VST.
VST plug-ins made with max supported vst 2. for effects and vst 2.1 for instruments - so you could do anything except adding MIDI to effect plug-ins. which most native, C++ coded plug-ins also did not offer in these days.
they brought experimentalists among the programmers as well among the normal users several revolutionary new features, such as
hosting VST inside VST plug-ins,
inter-plugin audio and control,
parameter syncing and parameter morphing, and the option to easily implement things
like OSC or internet connections into your audio plug-in.
except for inter-plug-in audio, which has been used for the orange vocoder before, max-made plug-ins were the debut for all these new options.
I would be interested in comments from 'real' programmers regarding something like PureData out of curiosity.
many kids on the internet will tell you that one is "real" programming and the other one is not.
"real" programmers, who use high level languages themselves, usually know it better and will grant us that max, pd, supercollider, the lisp family or visual studio - or flowstone - also allow you to program, "really".
these enviroments have the same long learning curve like C++, but you can have
visual and aural feedback from the beginning on. in the days of max/msp, supercollder 2 and lisp languages there was absolutely no chance to run the audio software while you were programming it using C++ in codewarrior - you always had to
compile and export the binary in order to test the new version.
this was in my opinion always the
main difference between these two approaches to create audio software.
in my opinion it is a fundamental misunderstandment that programmers who use graphical languages wouldnt need to know about DSP, math, physics, or video... and that C++ users would regulary code everything from the scratch using only 0s and 1s.
almost noone writes his own FFT tool library or his own boolean operator in C++, and organizing processor optimization and memory handling (which is only possible in high level languages ) is only a small part of building a bigger app. the rest is the same effort and brainfuck in any language.
and where most C++ programmers only have to write "
p" and their editor automatically suggest them to write "
pi", most max and pd users will have to write "
expr acos(-1.)" or ask
google for the right value of "3,141592".
last but not least, you can "program" HTML or a preset for your dish washer as well, it would be silly to artificially create a border where programming stops beeing "professional".
i know so many people who are incapable of programming their dish washer because it is so difficult. and they are not even VST.
