Hi Friends—
Andy Payne is an architect and software developer at McNeel, the company behind Rhino and Grasshopper 3D.
I met Andy in the summer of 2016. Autodesk had acquired Monolith (a voxel-based editor) from Andy and Pan earlier that year. I joined them as an intern to build a generator of 3D-printed material gradients and play with a Zmorph 3D printer.
We recorded a podcast conversation in New Orleans in September 2022, where I learned about Andy's latest adventure.
Enjoy this episode on the origins of Grasshopper, Grasshopper 2, Rhino.Compute, teaching, learning to code, generative AI, open-source code and monetization, and Andy's journey.
Thanks to everyone who chatted with us during the YouTube premiere.
Let us know your thoughts on the video comments.
Submit your questions at gettingsimple.com/ask.
Warmly,
Nono
Chapters
00:00 · Introduction
00:35 · Andy Payne
04:11 · Grasshopper origins
07:23 · Andy meets Grasshopper
09:19 · Grasshopper Primer
10:26 · Grasshopper 1.0
13:22 · Grasshopper 2
15:11 · Developing Grasshopper
16:59 · New data types
18:57 · Rhino Compute & Hops
22:32 · Cloud billing
27:05 · Teaching
30:07 · Visual programming
36:23 · Open source & monetization
42:03 · McNeel Forum
50:07 · Connect with Andy
51:57 · Learning to code
58:00 · Generative AI
01:02:09 · The IKEA effect
01:05:38 · Authorship
01:08:56 · AI trade-offs
01:12:58 · Panagiotis Michalatos
01:16:02 · Advice for young people
01:17:08 · Success
01:18:35 · $100 or less
01:20:12 · Outro