NDZTHE NODE EDITOR AT THE ROOT · TX-2 1966 / RAND 1968
DATA-FLOWnode & wire · 1966
CONTROL-FLOWflowchart · 1968
Drop a node
Drag a node by its header. Drag from a right-side port into a left-side port to wire them — a pulse runs the wire when a value moves. A node recomputes the instant its inputs arrive; there is no order and no run button. Click a wire to cut it.
Live value
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The graph holds no clock. Change any Number and every value downstream re-settles at once — that is the data-flow idea William Sutherland put on the TX-2 in 1966, the same machine that, three years earlier, drew his brother's Sketchpad.
Stamp a symbol
Drag a symbol by its body; drag from its bottom handle to another symbol to draw a control arrow. Double-tap to edit its text — a Process holds a statement like n = n - 1, a Decision a test like n > 0, an I/O a print n. A Decision takes two arrows: the first is YES, the second NO. Then RUN — and a real little interpreter walks the chart you drew.
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Variables
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Output
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GRaIL — Ellis, Heafner and Sibley at RAND, ca. 1968 — let an analyst draw a flowchart on a tablet and then run it. Unlike the wire graph next door, this one is all about order: do this, then that, branch, loop back. The countdown below really counts.
Two playgrounds, one screen, a toggle between them — because the node editor everyone uses now forked at the root into two ways of thinking. Drag-and-wire on the left is data-flow: a value just is, and everything downstream follows at once. The flowchart on the right is control-flow: do this, then that, branch, loop back — and it really runs. William Sutherland drew the first on Lincoln Lab's TX-2 in 1966; Ellis, Heafner and Sibley drew the second on RAND's tablet around 1968. Houdini, Nuke, Grasshopper, Substance, Blender's shader graph — descendants of the green side. Scratch, the no-code builders, every branching wizard — descendants of the cyan.
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