i'm not really sure ChucK gets a lot of real use. it seems libraries like overtone have surpassed it in popularity, i assume because of the language accessibility.
it has some really interesting concepts built into the language, like time. but in my experience this doesn't provide huge value for the purpose of composition, especially since when you are writing code livecoding is typically loop based.
i'd love a ChucK VM for the web audio API. on the back burner; things i should do but won't.
I took a course in ChucK at university. It was such an awful way to make music that all but three or four of around 20 people in the class dropped out.
Interestingly enough, I have the opposite mindset. I never learned to play any instruments (although I would still like to buy a keyboard/synth one day), but I came across a reference to music programming the other day, which led me to ChucK. I'm intrigued by the idea of learning this (or one of the similar products) as a way to explore creating music without needing to learn to play guitar or whatever.
I thought the same many years ago and spent lots of time with trackers and more programmatic methods of music production.
Then I bought a hefty synth and after about 6 months of sounding like a tramp bashing a trash can lid, I finally clicked and it's an extension of my mind now, much like whistling a tune or tapping one out on your knee with your hand.
Very cool. I do still want to buy a synth/keyboard eventually, although I'm afraid that I'll wind up buying one then never find/make time to actually invest in learning to play. :-)
The Smule music apps (Ocarina, Leaf Trombone, etc.) are all written using ChucK, IIRC.
Outside of that, you're right -- it's not widely used -- although, at CalArts (where I currently go to college, http://www.calarts.edu), it's extremely popular in the Music Technology department. We use it mainly for handling MIDI->OSC translation to control robotic instruments (http://www.karmetik.com/media) and interfacing other electronics, like custom built musical interfaces and controllers, with music software.
What makes it so awesome is really the way it handles concurrency and automagically synching a bunch of different "shreds" at the same time. Its deeper than say the web audio api. Where it is lacking is in mobile support. The ancient Csound has an android version that actually enables you to develop the live code on your android device. While with Smule you had a cool adaptation for ios, Csound still seems to be more forward thinking in that it already supports android and chromeos.
it has some really interesting concepts built into the language, like time. but in my experience this doesn't provide huge value for the purpose of composition, especially since when you are writing code livecoding is typically loop based.
i'd love a ChucK VM for the web audio API. on the back burner; things i should do but won't.