Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

news.ycombinator.com

581–590 of 617 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#581
I wrote a basic static site generator [1] using Python (and Jinja) to spit out pages for my personal site [2].

1: https://github.com/RonitRay/ecstatic

2: https://ronitray.xyz/

I didn't know Ruby (for Jekyll) or Go (for Hugo) and while you may not need to know them to get started, I didn't want the learning curve or bulky dependencies to cause friction in the workflow. Also, I just didn't like any of the standard templates and didn't want to think about how I would edit them to suit my needs.

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#582
post #540
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if some explanatory texts, alongside usability improvements could help you get more users. I can’t tell if your website is useful since I know anything about DNA sequencing - but from a UX perspective there is room for some improvements.

I agree, it could definitely use a make over.

Let me know if you'd like some help sprucing and getting the word out!

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks really cool! Just added a reminder to check out in more detail when I get to a computer :) Thank you for sharing.

Thanks! We are having great fun building it and making it useful for others! Please reach out if you have any questions: https://discord.gg/WmcJgXt

I looked over your page, briefly through docs, couldn't find: what kind of code are the finishes webapps pushed out as?

Are exported projects cloud host agnostic?

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#584

A git script named wip-push that commits changes in my working copy with the message "WIP". A git script named wip-pop that undoes the head commit, leaving the changes in my working copy, only if the commit message is "WIP". I use these dozens of times every day. Also I've written my own logging library. Multiple times. Doesn't everybody?

Ahh, I’ve done something similar except I call mine “save” and “undo”. Basically I just define them as git subcommands so I just use “git save” to create a SAVEPOINT commit, and “git undo” to undo the last commit onto my working index.

Possibly stupid question: Did you guys both just independently clone the already-existing git stash command?

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! We are having great fun building it and making it useful for others! Please reach out if you have any questions: https://discord.gg/WmcJgXt

I looked over your page, briefly through docs, couldn't find: what kind of code are the finishes webapps pushed out as? Are exported projects cloud host agnostic?

Essentially we've written an engine which renders the YAML / JSON as a React app. So the backend serves the json config to the frontend which renders and interprets the app at runtime. There are 3 parts to the front-end, operators - which executes page logic, engine - which evaluates all page blocks, and renderer - which renders the components using react. The logic executes in a recursive loop, so if you look at the renderer [0] or operators [1] code it's actually quite simple. The engine part is a little more complex, but thats written in pure js, so it's easy to test.

All of this talks to a stateless node backend [3] which talks external connections or data sources.

> Are exported projects cloud host agnostic?

Yes. Open-source and self-hosted. We run apps on Netlify (with functions), Serverless, Docker etc. We'll probably include a static build version which will allow to host a Lowdefy app as a static site. The docs is also just a Lowdefy app, so we can easily make it interactive [4] and autogenerate much it from a JSONSchema.

[0] - https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy/tree/main/packages/render...

[1] - https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy/tree/main/packages/operat...

[2] - https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy/tree/main/packages/engine

[3] - https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy/tree/main/packages/graphq...

[4] - https://docs.lowdefy.com/ButtonSelector

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#586
post #287

In 2013, I started https://webtorrent.io the first torrent client that runs in a web browser. It’s open source here: https://github.com/webtorrent I built it to make torrent technology more accessible to the masses. We’re still actively building it and we even have a slick desktop app that uses the same engine for streaming. WebTorrent also powers https://wormhole.app an end-to-end encrypted file sending service that…

I'm looking forward to a npm ads follow up. I feel like opinions have changed around money and open source.

Say what now?

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#587
post #555

I made https://CampAlert.live , a notification service for last minute camp site cancellations. It sends you an email and text message when we find a free spot of your choosing. Currently, it supports only Canadian campsites in BC, AB and National Parks. I've looked into previous tools but their services were all too expensive. They also didn't have the granularity I wanted in the options you could choose for campsit…

would be great if you had parks in Washington state.

We did have USA up last year but nobody from the US used our site. The time upkeeping that code and managing it wasn't worth it unfortunately

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This solves a huge problem for me, and is easily worth three times the amount I paid for it. Thank you!

Awesome, thanks! Let me know if you have any feedback/feature ideas.

I don't make videos, but I'd recon that someone who makes long videos, doesn't have time to look at the result of all of the cuts.

Maybe a separate time line with just the cuts that you can fast forward through and see/hear if there's anything you still want.

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#589
post #136

Early 2017, I built Listen Notes [1] , so I can search podcast episodes by keywords and listen to individual podcast episodes without subscribing to the entire podcast. A few years ago, most podcast apps assume you wanted to subscribe to podcasts first then listen. Maybe I’m not a typical podcast listener. I don’t like subscribing to podcasts. I just want to listen to individual episodes then move on. Similar to cons…

The captcha experience was awful but the search was perfect.

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#590
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you also write bsdiff [1] or is that someone with a similar name? [1] http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/

Yes, that was also me. A very long time ago -- I wrote it in 2003 when I was at university and I've barely touched it in the past 15 years.

You don't say:

>bsdiff runs in O((n+m) log n) time; on a 200MHz Pentium Pro, building a binary patch for a 4MB file takes about 90 seconds.

Post reply on HN