Josh Justice 2023-07-17 16:51:50 Hey folks, I’ve just launched the beta of the side project app I shared a video about a few months ago. I’ve settled on the name Riverbed. It allows you to create mini-apps to track your personal information on cards, including columns that automatically filter your cards and buttons that allow you to configure simple actions on them. It’s maybe an “almost-no-code” system? You can choose actions from a list instead of typing in scripts.
Some of the things I’m exploring include:
- How many types of app this card-and-column UX is helpful for,
- How much we can accomplish in this domain in an “almost-no-code” approach, where instead of a scripting language we have a set of actions to choose from a dropdown, to make it more accessible to non-programmers, and
- To what degree a focus on matching the UX of non-user-configurable apps is achievable or the best use of effort
It’s free to use and OSS. More info and video here, including ideas for how I might develop it in the future; I would love any input folks in this community would like to provide! about.riverbed.app
Josh Justice 2023-07-17 17:10:29 thank you, i will check chorus out! it’s certainly not the most innovative idea out there. in fact the main innovation may be “i’m hoping this can actually be sustainable for one OSS maintainer on the side indefinitely” 🙂 (not sure if chorus is still maintained, but similar proprietary apps have been discontinued)
Josh Justice 2023-07-17 17:12:14 Got it. Yup, this one is available for folks to use right away and I hope to maintain it as such for the long haul
Jonathan Edwards 2023-07-18 09:32:31 Nice. Personal info processors like this have been built a lot but don’t seem to catch on. I recommend moving towards asymmetric multi-user experiences.
Josh Justice 2023-07-18 12:08:42 Jonathan Edwards What’s your thinking behind that recommendation? What that idea brings to mind for me is the idea that, the people who are motivated enough to build with it can then create something that others can benefit from with minimal effort. In other words, equipping people to “code” with it, and equipping people who don’t code with it to still benefit.
Something related that I want to put in before 1.0: the ability to share templates that others can use. This is directly HyperCard-inspired: I make something, share it, you use it, then tweak it when you find a need, then you have the option to share it back to the community again.
Jonathan Edwards 2023-07-18 12:17:41 Yes, and where the point is to share information between people playing different roles in some group.
Josh Justice 2023-07-18 12:32:47 I had on my backlog the idea of sharing a board read-only with someone else, or “edit content but not configure”. This makes me think that per-field permissions could provide even more flexibility
Brian Hempel 2023-07-18 17:26:18 I think you can make different edit views in Coda.io. Not sure if you can explicitly limit users to only certain pages.
Mariano Guerra 2023-07-18 13:27:36 Today with Patrick Dubroy we are officially launching the Early Access of our book WebAssembly from the Ground Up: wasmgroundup.com
We decided to go "digital first" to support features like interactive inspectors, code highlight on hover, REPLs for examples and other ideas from the Explorable Explanation world.
The book explores the fundamentals of WebAssembly by building a compiler for a simple programming language step by step using JavaScript and OhmJS
We would love to get your feedback!
Nicolae Rusan 2023-07-18 15:40:11 (I shared a very early version of Magnet when it was just a Mac Desktop app - but now it fully runs on the web)
We just shipped a web version of 🧲 Magnet magnet.run - an AI coding assistant.
The sign ups are growing pretty quickly and there’s a lot of love from the early users. We think you’ll like it too. It’s free to use if you put in your own OpenAI API key, and over time we’ll charge for more advanced features like integrations and access to the latest unreleased models.
If you’re using ChatGPT to help with coding tasks, and finding yourself copying and pasting, Magnet is similar, but built specifically for working with code. You can open local code repos, connect GitHub issues, and pick files and issues as context of for the task at hand.
Try it at : magnet.run
loom.com/share/3c5563abb08c454fabfa51ba8fcce139?sid=685cd391-86d1-49ee-ae7a-8b1dc9e9afc1
There are lots of interesting future of programming explorations we’re thinking about in the context of Magnet, and hoping to write more about it soon. Would love feedback from folks / suggestions on what you would like us to build next!
Nicolae Rusan 2023-07-18 15:41:09 Also, we’re hiring for both full-time and contracting roles - so please feel free to DM me if you are curious about working on new AI coding assistants like Magnet :)
Mariano Guerra 2023-07-20 13:26:53 Some reasons to make WebAssembly from the Ground Up a digital first book:
Code highlight on hover
Interactive WebAssembly binary module inspector with "hexdump" and outline views
Copy code snippets as you go or "Copy up to here" on checkpoints
Open checkpoints in Stackblitz, run tests and play with the code
An interactive Wasm interpreter with builtin spec instruction reference (GIF in replies, can't attach after creation)
Marcelle Rusu (they/them) 2023-07-20 13:40:54 Wow this is really cool.
How did you define the mapping between the comment & the code in 1?
Marcelle Rusu (they/them) 2023-07-20 13:45:02 Oh so this is parts of your digital book "WebAssembly from the Ground Up" ?
Marcelle Rusu (they/them) 2023-07-20 13:45:39 Very cool, wish all technical books were like this
abeyer 2023-07-20 15:59:18 So does "digital first" mean not digital only and we can expect an official offline version of some sort?
Don't get me wrong, the interactive stuff is cool and well done and was the first thing I looked at when I opened it up... But realistically the second thing I did was figure out how to munge the dom/css/js to make it format nicely to convert to PDF for reading on an offline eink screen. 🤐
Nick Main 2023-07-20 16:31:30 Seconding that - the only way I can read anything with a narrative flow is to take it to a zero-distraction device or paper.
Mariano Guerra 2023-07-20 16:32:54 once we have the final version we will try to make a "static" version, if it's still useful we may release it
Mariano Guerra 2023-07-20 16:33:28 probably will get a static version out for everyone who bought it to avoid the bus hitting the domain factor 😄
Peter Saxton 2023-07-20 22:09:23 I love the interactive interpreter, I first though was I need something like this for my language. But I guess if I choose web assembly as a target then I already have this as an interactive interpreter for my language
greg kavanagh 2023-07-21 15:37:49 QuickPoint. Adding a video while editing on mobile while thinking about Alan Kay, images, symbols, chickens and eggs.
