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Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

ponymessenger.com

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Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#81

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

yitchelle wrote: post #72

Could you just turn off the notifications on your messenging apps? That is what I do for all messenging apps except for SMS. I would check them in my downtime in the evening.

That's a great question—thank you for asking.

In my view, turning off notifications (or using something like iOS 15's "Focus" feature), though superficially in the same sphere of concerns, is actually an orthogonal concern. The purpose of Pony not just to limit distractions, but to create a space that naturally keeps out transactional (security codes, shipping alerts) or low-effort (tweets, funny pictures) messages. These messages are usually time-sensitive and often fun and enjoyable, but they also have a tendency to bury messages you may need some time to think about. So while I enjoy getting links and pictures from friends, I've always wanted a space that's on a more "human" timescale—that is, a space that isn't instant but more attuned to our non-instant cognitive processes. Turning off notifications kinda, sorta gets you there, but not really.

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#83

Post by airstrike »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #4
gotostatement wrote: post #3

I think it's a really cool idea but you have a network effect issue. I would expect it to be hard to get enough of my friends on it for it to be useful. Integrations with existing message apps and environments would be ideal, though I'm not exactly sure how that would look.

Hey thanks a lot. Network effects will definitely be the #1 challenge. I considered integrations—I first tried Pony as an email service, actually. I wanted it to be as accessible as possible. This led to a lot of problems, specifically you get this asymmetry and confusion of some people being on Pony and others being in instant real-time. All of our existing platforms come with norms and expectations, and using a non…

Now I feel like building a small device powered by raspberry pi or something similar that lets one send and receive ponymail thrice a day so that I have a separate device / activity that is markedly different from simply checking my phone

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#84

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

criddell wrote: post #80

This is really cool. What frameworks or technologies is this built on?

Thank you! And thanks for asking! I could go on about this forever :).

I started working on this many years ago at this point trying to build the backend with Java/event sourcing[0] and the frontend as an SPA React app. I took the unfortunate/fortunate approach of building a webpage first[1]. I learned a lot from this experience and the result was something that worked okay but was terribly inflexible and difficult to work with. (The other problem was that it was an email service, but that's a whole other matter).

I realized that if I wanted people to use this, I needed to have mobile apps and I needed to have a server-rendered frontend, at least the public facing pages. So for my second attempt (which is what you see here, a standalone messaging platform), I did the right thing and transitioned to Postgres/Hasura for the backend (with a NodeJS-based API that fills it out). On the front-end, for the web, I transitioned to NextJS which is wonderful. Eventually I transitioned entirely to TypeScript, and my stack if entirely typed from DB schema to UI. It's just great. I was able to do something like transition serial int identifiers to UUIDs in two hours without introducing a single bug anywhere in the stack.

Since I had started with a webapp, I was able to build the mobile apps out of the same frontend codebase by wrapping the core of the webapp in an SPA that is delivered with Capacitor, which is also pretty excellent. Building a nice mobile experience with web technologies proved very difficult, but I think I did a pretty good job with it. But it is really, really nice having one, single codebase for the web and mobile.

In addition to the tools I've already mentioned, I'd like to make a couple shoutouts to these indispensable libraries and the people behind them:

- ProseMirror — a rich text editor. Thank you Marijn!

- Framer Motion — an animation library for React. Thank you Matt!

- Apollo Client — a JavaScript GraphQL client. Not as robust as Relay in some ways, but actually better in my opinion (having spent a lot of time with Relay). Thank you Ben and the entire team!

(You can get a complete list of frontend libraries by clicking "Credits" in the footer on the homepage or in the menu inside the app.)

Edit:

I almost forgot: the backend is running on GKE. Kubernetes hosted by other people is a wonderful thing! This morning I woke up, ran:

    gcloud container clusters resize cluster1 --node-pool default-pool --num-nodes 3
Tweaked some resource requirements in my a couple YAML files, ran

    helm upgrade prod .
And here we are! There was a post on here the other day about how the hermit developer is dead but that post was very wrong, and I am living proof :). One person can do so much in 2021 with all the tools we have. (That said, I would love to work with other people on this.)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28702975

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18824993

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#85

Post by jarnagin »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #27
steelbrain wrote: post #10

Thanks for working on this. It reminds me of a social app called Slowly ( https://slowly.app/en/ ) where you write "letters" to people and they are delivered based on the approximate physical distance between them. It's common for letters across countries to take >12 or sometimes even >24 hours. It's led people to a lot of meaningful relationships/friendships, they publish some as stories: https://slowly.app/en/story…

I hadn't seen Slowly. That's awesome—thanks for sharing. I really like how it's tied to physical distance. I really want to add more delivery modes, with geographical distance being one possible factor. For me a big deal is not just the slow delivery, but the inability to instantly send as well. The presence of a send button has this effect of making me send things that aren't ready. I don't intend Pony to encourage…

One of the remarkable things (in the context of this age) about reading history is that you see just how many people used to write letters in heated moments and then choose not to send them once they'd cooled down. The histories of presidents are littered with such moments, and I often juxtapose that fact with social media. How often has the ability to send something instantly allowed each of us to expose our worst self to people?

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#86

Post by weird-eye-issue »

ISL wrote: post #47
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't seen Slowly. That's awesome—thanks for sharing. I really like how it's tied to physical distance. I really want to add more delivery modes, with geographical distance being one possible factor. For me a big deal is not just the slow delivery, but the inability to instantly send as well. The presence of a send button has this effect of making me send things that aren't ready. I don't intend Pony to encourage…

The ability to edit really is a wonderful feature. I find that I perpetually tweak forum/social media/Slack posts a minute or two after posting, just to improve clarity. The idea of email (even if it carries with it some versioning history) that is editable is really nice. Is there a way to interface Pony with email directly, so that an app isn't required? I can imagine giving ISL@ponymail.com out to people with the…

It drives me crazy when people post in Slack and then often edit their message after sending. Just edit and then send. Otherwise people will have to basically ignore your first message and try to remember to check back in a couple minutes when you are done editing...

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#88

Post by idiotsecant »

finnh wrote: post #54
ISL wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to edit really is a wonderful feature. I find that I perpetually tweak forum/social media/Slack posts a minute or two after posting, just to improve clarity. The idea of email (even if it carries with it some versioning history) that is editable is really nice. Is there a way to interface Pony with email directly, so that an app isn't required? I can imagine giving ISL@ponymail.com out to people with the…

I am constitutionally unable to proofread before sending, and conversely unable to _not_ proofread after sending. It's bizarre. I wish GMail's "delay send" feature had a much longer maximum time...

I also identify with this 100%. It's probably a personality flaw of some sort.

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#89

Post by NoGravitas »

Alternative: share email over UUCP with your friends, only run uucico once a day. You can edit your outgoing mail spool until uucico picks it up!

(For bonus modern security and convenience, use NNCP for this; possibly have packets delivered by an urchin with a thumb drive.)

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#90

Post by dexterdog »

tomaskafka wrote: post #24
gotostatement wrote: post #3

I think it's a really cool idea but you have a network effect issue. I would expect it to be hard to get enough of my friends on it for it to be useful. Integrations with existing message apps and environments would be ideal, though I'm not exactly sure how that would look.

It's very simple - just open your email client once per day. 100 % a same thing, with an existing network, using a tool you already have. That's what I do anyway :).

It's not the same when the recipient is not bought into the same delayed concept.
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