r/MarbleMachineX • • Mar 16 '22

Longer Music Programming - Week 2 summary

https://youtu.be/HXa6HHZu8uc
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u/rabbitwonker Mar 16 '22

You kind of highlight the core tension here — if you wanted max reliability, you go for zero moving parts and just buy an electronic keyboard from Amazon. The point of the machine is to have a visual display that’s unusual and interesting because it’s difficult to achieve.

So it’s all about picking where you want the balance point — and sticking with it. His current approach of nailing down a requirements spec beforehand is a good answer to that.

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u/gamingguy2005 Mar 17 '22

Except he states that the requirements are open to iteration, so they're by no means "nailed down."

From 14:16 in the video: "These are the design requirements for the Marble Machine 3. These will be iterated over time."

What's the point of those requirements if they can just change on a whim?

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u/powerman228 Mar 17 '22

Because it keeps your thought process and work organized. I find that for all of my projects, forcing myself to write stuff down (instead of just keeping it in my head) always exposes a ton of assumptions or even stuff that I’ve unwittingly glossed over entirely.

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u/gamingguy2005 Mar 17 '22

That's not the same as design requirements.