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Show HN: Dowe – A full-stack language for server, web, desktop, Android, and iOS

dowe.dev

21–29 of 29 posts

Re: Show HN: Dowe – A full-stack language for server, web, desktop, Android, and iOS

#21
I can see this was largely AI written. There is nothing wrong with that, but how much did you test and vet what the AI wrote?

Looking at the compiler, it doesn't make much sense. You have an AST that is rather minimal and I can't seem to find an IR. There are files, such as cron.rs, which have very little code relating to what I would expect, and the tests seem to test very little that is worthwhile.

Some of these are absolute monsters, like this one: https://github.com/usedowe/dowe-lang/blob/main/crates/compil...

The codebase seems tightly coupled and to cover specific cases, as if something was off and more features were requested. I think a 12k line file is evidence of that.

Perhaps it is a useful tool for you but I would have trouble using something like this with just my quick skim because it seems a mile wide and an inch deep.

Also, because of the sheer size of it, it would be extremely difficult to have an agent properly comprehend much if anything. Which I would want in order to audit the internals.

The language itself seems minimal, but then I look at the skills, like this one for example: https://github.com/usedowe/dowe-lang/blob/main/skill-data/do...

That is a lot of tokens. The problem here is that you have a compiler; why are you encoding standards as a prompt instead of as compiler errors?

You can use linting and static analysis to force conformance with agents instead of suggesting with a prompt.

I wish you luck with the project. I'll have to pass, too much code for me to follow when I could simply have an agent directly write the html now days.

Re: Show HN: Dowe – A full-stack language for server, web, desktop, Android, and iOS

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dowe generate a native mobile or desktop application no webview

Very frankly, I’m assuming that you typed something sloppy into AI and asked it to make a big project and a big web page for it, and now you have little or no idea what it did, except that it strung programming concepts together.

I understand why the current website might give that impression, but Dowe was not produced from a single prompt. Before arriving at this architecture, we experimented with several languages and rendering approaches, including using WebViews for mobile. We ultimately rejected that approach. Dowe now maps its UI components individually to Jetpack Compose on Android and SwiftUI on iOS. The generated mobile applications are native and their source can be inspected. Desktop is currently different: it packages the generated web/static output inside a native platform window. I don’t want to misrepresent that distinction. The component model grew out of what we learned while building UiSvelte https://ui-svelte.sappsdev.com, our earlier Svelte UI library with around 80 components. Dowe does not depend on Svelte; that work provided much of the design experience behind its component contracts. I invite you to evaluate the implementation directly. After installing Dowe, creating and running a project is simply: dowe init dowe dev You can inspect the generated Jetpack Compose and SwiftUI projects under .dowe/apps/android and .dowe/apps/ios. Feedback based on the actual output would be genuinely valuable.

Re: Show HN: Dowe – A full-stack language for server, web, desktop, Android, and iOS

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dowe generate a native mobile or desktop application no webview

Thanks for answering. Is there an example project you can share? I'd love to see this in action.

Of course — the Dowe docs are built with Dowe itself: https://github.com/usedowe/dowe-docs

Re: Show HN: Dowe – A full-stack language for server, web, desktop, Android, and iOS

#24

I can see this was largely AI written. There is nothing wrong with that, but how much did you test and vet what the AI wrote? Looking at the compiler, it doesn't make much sense. You have an AST that is rather minimal and I can't seem to find an IR. There are files, such as cron.rs, which have very little code relating to what I would expect, and the tests seem to test very little that is worthwhile. Some of these ar…

[dead]

Re: Show HN: Dowe – A full-stack language for server, web, desktop, Android, and iOS

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very frankly, I’m assuming that you typed something sloppy into AI and asked it to make a big project and a big web page for it, and now you have little or no idea what it did, except that it strung programming concepts together.

I understand why the current website might give that impression, but Dowe was not produced from a single prompt. Before arriving at this architecture, we experimented with several languages and rendering approaches, including using WebViews for mobile. We ultimately rejected that approach. Dowe now maps its UI components individually to Jetpack Compose on Android and SwiftUI on iOS. The generated mobile applications…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Dowe – A full-stack language for server, web, desktop, Android, and iOS

#28
post #16

How do people publish these websites that are full of Claude-isms and slop-writing and feel proud of themselves? A single cursory read of this page with fresh eyes would tell you that the page manages to communicate zero useful information, while also being written in a way that brings a bad taste to your mouth if you can recognize AI writing. Who is this for? Why would anybody want to try a project that has such lit…

They are also responding with AI generated comments. I think projects like this are being sold as some sort of engagement marketing, or maybe for something more insidious like supply chain attacks.

Re: Show HN: Dowe – A full-stack language for server, web, desktop, Android, and iOS

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for answering. Is there an example project you can share? I'd love to see this in action.

Of course — the Dowe docs are built with Dowe itself: https://github.com/usedowe/dowe-docs

I mean an application that does more than what I can do in a mobile web browser. If it's just a web page I'd rather just do responsive web design. Presumably you've developed this to build native apps with rich functionality.
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