Coda: Functional Reactive Audio Development

Programming front-end human computer interfaces follows a unique approach of iterative design and testing to produce a creative model envisioned by the developer and designer. Small but frequent changes to visual or audio aspects of the program are commonplace in order to implement different design ideas, implementations, and adjustments. Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) acts as a compelling programming paradigm towards this iterative design process, following its strength in utilizing time-varying values. Therefore, this thesis will introduce Coda, a Visual Programming Language (VPL) focused on developing audio interfaces using FRP. Coda focuses on the goal of streamlining audio interface prototyping and development, through two primary features: rapid but sensible code hot-reloading, and the use of time and I/O as an interactive development tool. These features allow Coda to greatly reduce the development cycle time commonly seen in typical, text-based programming languages. Coda also comes in its own integrated development environment (IDE) in the form of a web-application.