--- title: Show HN: Impossible Machines: declaratively program the... description: This is an interactive prototype exploring declarative programming applied to the physical world. You describe what you want, and a mechanism appears to... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/show-hn-impossible-machines-declaratively-program-the-physical-world-agfg355tt twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Show HN: Impossible Machines: declaratively program the physical world | daily.dev og:description: This is an interactive prototype exploring declarative programming applied to the physical world. You describe what you want, and a mechanism appears to... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/show-hn-impossible-machines-declaratively-program-the-physical-world-agfg355tt og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/AgFG355tT.png og:image:alt: Show HN: Impossible Machines: declaratively program the physical world og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Show HN: Impossible Machines: declaratively program the physical world **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 1 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary This is an interactive prototype exploring declarative programming applied to the physical world. You describe what you want, and a mechanism appears to connect cause and effect. You can move a sink, place an obstacle, or change a shape. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 17 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-23). **TL;DR:** Commenters are enthusiastic about the demo, drawing comparisons to classic inspirations like The Incredible Machine and prior research projects, and are curious about the technical implementation and possible extensions. **Sentiment:** 85% positive · 15% mixed · 0% skeptical **The case for** - Several found the prototype genuinely fun and cool to play with. - People appreciated the creator's responsiveness and willingness to open source the code. - Commenters enjoyed connecting the project to past work they loved, like The Incredible Machine and Disney's path-following linkage research. **The pushback** - One commenter noted the current interaction model is limited to basically binary inputs. **By community** - hackernews (positive): Warm, curious reception with comparisons to prior art and friendly back-and-forth with the creator about implementation details and future extensions. **Open questions** - How might the system support continuous or recorded inputs rather than binary interactions? - Could simulated annealing or more sophisticated search methods improve the mechanism-finding process? - How feasible would it be to physically realize some mechanisms (like belt drives) via 3D printing? **Highlights** > This is cool! I think it would be interesting to expand the language of the world. Right now the interaction with the bell or door is limited (basically binary). Even with binary it would be cool to say ring the bell three times or play shave and a haircut and then a mechanical device that could generate that frequency would be created (for ex a simplistic one would be to skip every other ring for ringing the bell). I guess that would require the world/the objects to account for interactions over some recording period. > — [skinfaxi on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50213480) > Disney's research lab did something along these lines some years ago for making a point follow a path. You draw a path, and it generates the linkages required to match that path as closely as possible. They've had a lot of follow-up work since, but I remember this video for it: https://youtu.be/DfznnKUwywQ?si=F-5NZxKu4hP_mand > — [mcphage on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50214170) > It seems people think alike. Something that inspired me in the past also had a similar implementation. [1]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/motion-... > — [jdw64 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50213622) > Happy to open source, the code is a little messy right now, so I’ll clean it up and post a link in a few days! High level: I’m using ThreeJS for the rendering and Rapier (https://rapier.rs/) for simulating bodies, joints, collisions, forces, etc. The mechanism is solved for using a simple heuristic search (eg constraints, etc that you introduce in the scene) and then run through Rapier to find a configuration that works, though there are definitely more sophisticated ways to do this. The audio is based off a sound pack which I tried to make physically realistic so impacts are panned relative to the camera, with compression and a small generated reverb. > — [bhaprayan on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50215232) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50202746) · 46 points · 17 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [This design software reimagines everyday objects as self-aware devices](https://daily.dev/posts/this-design-software-reimagines-everyday-objects-as-self-aware-devices-b2nqjjlh6) · MIT News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Quantum Mechanics Experiments](https://daily.dev/posts/quantum-mechanics-experiments-8ecd1l4m4) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Interactive Rubber Ducking with GenAI](https://daily.dev/posts/interactive-rubber-ducking-with-genai-qv8afucya) · Architecture Weekly · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#creative-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/creative-coding) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/show-hn-impossible-machines-declaratively-program-the-physical-world-agfg355tt) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Show HN: Impossible Machines: declaratively program the physical world","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/show-hn-impossible-machines-declaratively-program-the-physical-world-agfg355tt","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/show-hn-impossible-machines-declaratively-program-the-physical-world-agfg355tt"},"datePublished":"2026-10-23T19:28:17.651Z","dateModified":"2026-10-23T21:43:45.149Z","description":"This is an interactive prototype exploring declarative programming applied to the physical world. 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