Csound is more analogous to GCC than it is to Vim, though. I'd say something akin to Vim would be a tracker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker

Agreed, if PCM [0] is assembly, Csound certainly could be C.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-code_modulation

What's pure data in this analogy? https://puredata.info/ A hex editor?

I'd imagine a hex editor for music would be like a chiptune tracker.

Pure Data's domain is digital signal processing, with an emphasis on sound. It's good for prototyping because one edits the signal graph, GUI, and event-triggered scripts in the same visual window using the same event loop.

So in a way it's good for building idiosyncratic little "musical hex editors": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz1uNLHorEs

I say idiosyncratic because when you can connect anything to anything else, weird things start to happen. (For example, adding two more boxes to the diagram to control the crossfader with the pitch of someone's voice.)

Well, pure data is a 'higher-level' sound programming environment, so it could be emacs.

+1 Best analogy. The interface actually reminded me of emacs when I used to use PD.

Out of curiosity, what did you graduate to?

Switched to Sublime Text years ago. I just have my configuration, and it works fine for me, so no need to change it for the rest of my life. I don't even care if it's not updated ever again.

Oh, I thought you had graduated from pd.

Oh right, in that case, I use mostly C++ for that, along with my own platform I'm developing.

I don't know about that. I think the visual programming aspect is the most defining trait, in which case...? I don't know any general purpose non-toy visual programming languages/interfaces. Scratch exists but likening PD to Scratch doesn't seem fair to me.

Its hard for me to think about it as high level when you're adding sine waves together to make sounds.

My only knowledge of PD is from graphical interfaces that implement components using it, so my assumption was that Csound was lower-level due to my (brief) experience writing on it.

Eve. http://witheve.com/