I linked to Strudel before, but this 6-minute video is even better – it shows a musician named Switch Angel constructing a trance track from scratch:

This is of course competence porn, made even better by the droll Polish lektor-like delivery. But it’s also a puzzle. I watched this so many times. There are so many great UI lessons in here:

• You can absolutely put graphics inside a textbox
• Sparklines rule
• Slider is still the best UI element in history
• Previews don’t have to feel like training wheels
• Synchronizing sounds to visuals is so powerful (see: turn signals on a car dashboard)

I found myself thinking about how you’d design something that feels real-time, but also needs to be resilient against typos, and has a distinct “commit” moment (which is what I think those yellow flashes are); some of the best moments in the video are the quick fixes that aren’t narrated.

Ultimately, this also shows how powerful and underrated plain text can be as interface. It’s a bit like designing straight in CSS, operating at the weird intersection of motor memory, creativity, and abstraction. (Is there a CSS editor that feels more like this?)

On top of all of this, the act of building the track this way is also how the finished track would sound like. Amazing stuff.

Remember all these jokes that went like this?

[God looking at a pug dog for the first time] What the hell did you humans do with my bad ass wolf I gave you?

Imagine sitting the creators of the typewriter in front of YouTube and having them watch this video.