It's a crucial optimization to enable the kind of live programming environment you're talking about here, especially since some nodes ("components") are much more expensive to execute than others. The DAG of the program is laid out in the workspace, and it means users can smoothly drag sliders downstream even if re-executing the whole program from scratch would be prohibitively expensive. It's a lovely way to iterate on creative visual programs.
aebtebeten•4d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_(programming_language)
https://billwadge.com/2022/07/17/we-demand-data-the-story-of...