Kodelife is a real-time GPU Editor that allows you to create shades. It was created with the purpose of rapid prototyping without having to use heavy software or builds in compilers. Kodelife’s main programming language is OpenGL GLSL, but it can also be used with platform-specific shading languages such as the Metal Shading Language and DirectX HLSL.

Kodelife was designed to be a teaching tool for beginners, but it was also created with enough industry-standard for experienced shader developers to work with. However, Kodelife couldn’t keep up with modern shader engines, so it was re-framed as a prototyping tool for developers and a platform for live coding visuals.

The editor runs your code at real-time without any need to evaluate functions. It mainly uses vectors to create textures that can be modified to make visuals. Kodelife also comes with a panel that manages the inputs and outputs that the program can receive and this can be defined in the preferences.

Cool Things About Kodelife:
– Code evaluates automatically, no need for any commands
– Based on C so it’s easy to use glsl
– Very easy to control and create variables
– Very easy to get input and output from other sources
– Has a MIDI bus
– Flexibility to how simple or complex projects can get
– Can be easily used in the web with the library GLSL Canva
– Has a mobile editor app on Android and iOS

Downsides
– Free version always asks if you want to purchase a licence
– Since code evaluates automatically if something crashes it takes time to figure out what provoked it
– You can’t have more than 1 project open
– No actual documentation
– Sometimes the code loads after you type
– Could be too mathematical for some people
– Lots of stuff going on in the backend that you can’t control
– Mobile app is paid

I found Kodelife to be quite user-friendly. Despite the fact that documentation does not really teach how to use the software and that I mainly used YouTube Tutorials to learn after you get a hang of how to use the software, it becomes very easy to experiment.

Before trying Kodelife, I actually spent a lot of time trying to use other live coding platforms. However, I had a lot of issues since many of them are either not updated or work only on specific computer models.

Comments on other Live Coding Platforms:
– tidal-Unity doesn’t work anymore because it was created using Unity version 5.4 which is very very old (older than 2016)
– Tidal-Unity is missing some declarations in the code so the OSC does not work correctly
– Gideon is pretty bad
– Ciryl doesn’t have a working version for M1 Macs
– Arcadia: install is very fidgety and though I was able to compile the UNITY project, it only works with Miracle for Clojure, which needs Clojure-mode (that is not working on my computer even though Clojure itself is fine)
– The Force is good but documentation is a bit lacking