Getting started

From Impure Wiki

Your first steps

Welcome to Impure!

This is a short summary of resources to guide your first steps within the application. After you learn some basic concepts, you'll be creating your own information flows in no time.

Impure is a visual programming language for the processing and visualization of information. If you want to know more about the concept behind it, please visit the Introduction.

Information flows within Impure are defined in an easy and intuitive way through the arrangement of processing blocks in space, called 'modules'. Learn how to start working with them in Modules and connections and this video-tutorial shows the interface basics in action.

The environment of the application is very simple - a few elements give you access to all the necessary operations, while leaving most of the space free for your work. Take a look at Stage and Menu for a few tips about this.

There are lots of modules available for almost any information loading, processing or displaying function you may imagine. All of them are accessible in the Library, and there are several ways for you to find what you need. Read the Library page for more detail.

Once you get hold of the basic process, you can improve your workflow and speed up development time by using the available Keyboard shortcuts.

You can quickly jump from theory to practice by launching Impure and looking at the spaces in the Examples interface menu (top right of your screen). They will give you a good idea of how the interface works and what you can achieve within Impure.

That's about all you will need to get you started. As always, there's no best way to learn than playing and experimentation!

Going deeper

When you feel curious or have a specific doubt, you can return to the different sections of this wiki and find the answers you need.

• Main concepts goes into more specific detail about certain characteristics of Impure as a programming environment.
• How to is the place to go for getting started with some common tasks that are typical of many projects in Impure.
• Working with is a good place to begin when you are working with a specific type of data and want to know what you can do with it.
• Featured modules focuses on some modules that are especially representative of the way of doing things and the power of Impure - taking a look at them might give you ideas for your projects.
• Examples and code snippets is a growing repository of reusable code. Do not hesitate to browse it and borrow what you need to solve many common tasks in Impure spaces.
• Tutorials is a collection of interesting spaces, explained step-by-step, so you can follow the process of development and use them as a model to build your own.

Happy data crunching!