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Show HN: Code2flow – easy flowcharts with no mouse, no dragging and no hassle

code2flow.com

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Re: Show HN: Code2flow – easy flowcharts with no mouse, no dragging and no hassle

#51

Post by hacker_9 »

1. Smart. Plays to the strengths of the keyboard by using text input, vs awkward dragging of elements with the mouse (especially with big graphs).

2. Is 'pseudo code' the best description to use? Even the word 'code' can put non-technical people off as they associate it with complexity.

3. The pricing: hosting and support are good reasons to pay, but 'full confidentiality'? It seems you are going out of your way to make the product insecure because the user is not paying. It comes across as a bit money-grabbing.

4. The gif on the front page works well to show off the product simplicity in an intuitive way. My only thoughts is the flowchart could do with looking a bit more 'web 2.0'; SVG elements so you can have rounded corners, shadow effects, colours that work together, arrows that look more professional etc.

Re: Show HN: Code2flow – easy flowcharts with no mouse, no dragging and no hassle

#52

Post by otahi »

endergen wrote: post #23

I've been playing with a real time visualization of various graph visualizations that have nice text DSLs. Current progress is open source and includes an Atom Package for editing and visualizing results on the fly, as well as a command line tool for generating SVGso from the textual representations. https://atom.io/packages/diagrams and https://www.npmjs.com/package/diagrams Desktop oriented for offline use.

Looks great!

I think StackEdit is another tool to create flowcharts and sequence diagrams.

https://stackedit.io/editor

https://github.com/benweet/stackedit/blob/master/public/res/...

We can create a flow chart with following markdown.

```flow

st=>start

e=>end

st->e

```

Re: Show HN: Code2flow – easy flowcharts with no mouse, no dragging and no hassle

#53

Post by RushPL »

hacker_9 wrote: post #51

1. Smart. Plays to the strengths of the keyboard by using text input, vs awkward dragging of elements with the mouse (especially with big graphs). 2. Is 'pseudo code' the best description to use? Even the word 'code' can put non-technical people off as they associate it with complexity. 3. The pricing: hosting and support are good reasons to pay, but 'full confidentiality'? It seems you are going out of your way to m…

Great feedback. Thank you. 2) Probably not good for nontechnical people but on the other hand most accurate for technical people. 3) Your point sounds reasonable. How would you describe the need of some companies need to host 100% of their data? Medical companies for example. This is the point I was trying to convey in the pricing. 4) Square is the new web 3.0 :)

Re: Show HN: Code2flow – easy flowcharts with no mouse, no dragging and no hassle

#56

Post by antisthenes »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #41

How do you arrive at the pricing model for this? $100 per month $300 per month? How is that justified? Also how do you win against competitors? Is this project something that couldn't be duplicated in a week or so? No disrespect intended, maybe there is more to it that I'm seeing.

To take the capitalist/libertarian side of things, which I rarely do: feel free to make a clone of it and charge $99/month?

Generally, you can charge whatever you want in capitalism so the pricing structure is justified apriori until it fails.

*Clarification: in the software market, which is generally very low barrier to entry (provided you already have programming knowledge)

Re: Show HN: Code2flow – easy flowcharts with no mouse, no dragging and no hassle

#57

Post by ephemeris »

heh I knew them lines looked familiar

    digraph  {
            "Hey" [shape=circle]
            "Welcome to graphiz" [shape=box]
            "You are new" [shape=diamond]
            "How are you" [shape=box]
            "It's super easy" [shape=box]
            "write plain english thats code like" [shape=box]
            "wanna do a condition" [shape=diamond]
            "editing"[shape=diamond]
    
            "Hey" -> "Welcome to graphiz" -> "You are new"
            "You are new" -> "It's super easy"[label=True]
            "You are new" -> "How are you"[label=False]
            "It's super easy" -> "write plain english thats code like" -> "wanna do a condition"
            "wanna do a condition" -> "Just write an if"[label=True]
            "wanna do a condition" -> "editing"[label=False]
            "Just write an if" -> "editing"
            "editing" -> "How are you"[label=False]
            "editing" -> "see stuff update via entr"[label=True]
            "see stuff update via entr" -> "editing"
            "How are you" -> "goodbye"
    }
Now I want to study up on parsing to build my own ast to dot generator

Re: Show HN: Code2flow – easy flowcharts with no mouse, no dragging and no hassle

#58

Post by rhardih »

sedachv wrote: post #39

If you are looking for a way to generate flowchart diagrams from a DSL description, the classic is Brian Kernighan's PIC: http://doc.cat-v.org/unix/v8/picmemo.pdf I am surprised at the amount of people that have never heard of it. It is probably already installed on your Unix system. There are several implementations with various improvements, such as https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~aplevich/dpic/

Maybe it's just me, but if it takes more than five minutes, to figure out how to go from the example chart to a png, perhaps there's a reason no-one knows it.

Re: Show HN: Code2flow – easy flowcharts with no mouse, no dragging and no hassle

#59

Post by ephemeris »

sedachv wrote: post #39

If you are looking for a way to generate flowchart diagrams from a DSL description, the classic is Brian Kernighan's PIC: http://doc.cat-v.org/unix/v8/picmemo.pdf I am surprised at the amount of people that have never heard of it. It is probably already installed on your Unix system. There are several implementations with various improvements, such as https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~aplevich/dpic/

there was figr a web based realtime version.

I think it is dead now last known location http://figr.bzero.se

Re: Show HN: Code2flow – easy flowcharts with no mouse, no dragging and no hassle

#60

Post by hacker_9 »

RushPL wrote: post #53
hacker_9 wrote: post #51

1. Smart. Plays to the strengths of the keyboard by using text input, vs awkward dragging of elements with the mouse (especially with big graphs). 2. Is 'pseudo code' the best description to use? Even the word 'code' can put non-technical people off as they associate it with complexity. 3. The pricing: hosting and support are good reasons to pay, but 'full confidentiality'? It seems you are going out of your way to m…

Great feedback. Thank you. 2) Probably not good for nontechnical people but on the other hand most accurate for technical people. 3) Your point sounds reasonable. How would you describe the need of some companies need to host 100% of their data? Medical companies for example. This is the point I was trying to convey in the pricing. 4) Square is the new web 3.0 :)

I suppose it depends if you selling flowchart software to mainly technical people? Else if it is more like Excel users, you may want to go with 'as intuitive as Word' or something similiar.

I'd just list 'fully secure' or 'encrypted' as one of the features, and not put it in the price plan at all.

True enough on the Web 3.0 look! I'd recommend using one of the many colour palette tools on the Web though, just to get a more natural softer look between the various hues.

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