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I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

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Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#191

Post by olegp »

irq-1 wrote: post #182
olegp wrote: post #116

This is very similar to Akshell ( http://toughbyte.com/akshell/ ) which we worked on more than six years ago with @korenyushkin and that made the front page of HN on a number of occasions. Despite being promoted by Fog Creek, I suspect that Gomix will run into the same problem that we did: professional developers won't use it as they already have the tools they prefer, whereas hobbyists won't be willing to pay. Witho…

Don't people who are starting out find these systems to be too difficult? You have to know much more to use this, then the "view source" days: Http codes/headers, javascript, npm?, css... Those weren't things you dealt with when changing Html on your local browser. I'm sure I don't have a good perspective on what new coders can handle, but this seems like too much.

Good point. AppJet and Akshell had their own built in libraries and guides, whereas with Gomix you're expected to already know about Node, NPM and figure out which libraries to use yourself. This is likely to make this too complex for people just starting out, making the model even less viable.

On a somewhat related note, one thing I'd like to see is cheap Heroku like hosting for Node. Most Node web apps could get by with 64MB of memory and processes could be started quickly in response to incoming requests, making it possible to price this at 1 USD per app per month.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#192

Post by blakeyrat »

facorreia wrote: post #190
blakeyrat wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it that way. That attitude used to exist back in the 90s, with products like HyperCard, Filemaker, even Microsoft Access. There was a time when it was just expected that development software had a graphical interface builder for developers to use. (Heck, even IDEs for really difficult languages, like C++, had them.) But "real developers" crapped all over those tools, especially Access. And when "real developers…

The world I grew up on didn't have HyperCard, Filemaker or Access. I wrote code (as opposed to dragging and dropping, which I couldn't, because there weren't mouses our GUIs). I used primitive text editors to write BASIC, COBOL, C and Assembly code and I printed it on paper to better understand the whole program. I typed programs from listings on magazines. All of that as a teenager. The tools we have now, and the li…

Ok?

It's "easier" in that it doesn't cost money, I'll grant you that. It's not "easier" in the sense that development tools are more accessible, discoverable, or usable than they were a decade ago. How many of those YouTube videos only exist because the tools they're teaching have terrible usability?

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#193

Post by WhitneyLand »

irq-1 wrote: post #182
olegp wrote: post #116

This is very similar to Akshell ( http://toughbyte.com/akshell/ ) which we worked on more than six years ago with @korenyushkin and that made the front page of HN on a number of occasions. Despite being promoted by Fog Creek, I suspect that Gomix will run into the same problem that we did: professional developers won't use it as they already have the tools they prefer, whereas hobbyists won't be willing to pay. Witho…

Don't people who are starting out find these systems to be too difficult? You have to know much more to use this, then the "view source" days: Http codes/headers, javascript, npm?, css... Those weren't things you dealt with when changing Html on your local browser. I'm sure I don't have a good perspective on what new coders can handle, but this seems like too much.

Yes, this is a critical observation.

I think they are relying on the instant forking of a working app to save users. The idea being that even if you don't understand all the concepts, most people can muddle through and modify and enhance based on seeing what's going on inside an already working code base.

It's true that starting to code from a working example is a tremendous advantage. However it's also true you have to eventually grasp the concepts and node has never been the easiest backend to grasp.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#194

Post by hnbro »

statictype wrote: post #127
briandear wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Anil's history of tweets, his politics, his obsession with race and just general snark. That one tweet actually did mean something "30 year old white dude." That IS the very definition of inserting race into a discussion unnecessarily. In 2012 he called me racist because I opposed Obama during the election; since I am white, automatically that made me racist, according to him. He's a jerk, at least in my opin…

That IS the very definition of inserting race into a discussion unnecessarily. I was only trying to refute the accusation that he was racist. That seemed pretty absurd. Don't have anything to say about your position. I haven't spoken to him personally.

> That seemed pretty absurd

...why?

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#195

Post by jc4p »

therein wrote: post #61
jc4p wrote: post #18

I love Gomix. I spent the past weekend helping a friend migrate a static front-end only CSS skin they had made over to a live server on Gomix. That friend has moved onto running webpack and babel locally to do more advanced stuff, but Gomix was a godsend in helping demonstrate to him that the problemspace isn't as horrifyingly large as he expected. We communicated and "code reviewed" via writing comments to each othe…

This sounds forced/scripted beyond belief. It really reads like an Amazon review written in exchange of a product: > I love my FooBar 2001. I spent the past weekend migrating my dishwasher's contents into my new FooBar 2001 and it was a very pleasant experience. I was intimidated by how much work it would be at first but to my surprise it was A BREEZE. I'm so happy now with my new Foobar 2001 that I will probably use…

I mean... I work for a related company (as mentioned in the post)... sorry for being excited about something they're working on?

I just felt the need to comment because a lot of the comments remind me of my first impression of the product before I really gave it a chance.

I was so angry they were working on it, they started working on it after a quiet period following the Fog Creek / Trello split and my first impression was they were merely looking for something to waste their time doing, it just didn't make sense. But, I tried it, and damn I love it.

You can go look through my 5 years worth of HN comments if you'd like, when I like something I am always this excited about it.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#196

Post by blakeyrat »

protomikron wrote: post #183
blakeyrat wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it that way. That attitude used to exist back in the 90s, with products like HyperCard, Filemaker, even Microsoft Access. There was a time when it was just expected that development software had a graphical interface builder for developers to use. (Heck, even IDEs for really difficult languages, like C++, had them.) But "real developers" crapped all over those tools, especially Access. And when "real developers…

So, I had to learn some basic Access in my CS class in school around ~2000, and for me it was an absolute nightmare that I did not grasp (I was a teenager and had no coding experience). Now I am a developer and can handle direct SQL and in retrospective I think it is easier to setup sqlite and learn basic SQL than learning MS Access. > But "real developers" crapped all over those tools, especially Access. And when "r…

> I think they crapped over those tools, because these tools got the abstraction wrong.

If you identify a problem in a useful tool, the correct response isn't "throw it into the garbage and never make a tool anything like it ever again!" The solution is to research and iterate and try to fix the problem. The Wright Flyer didn't have much range. The Wright's solution wasn't "let's give up on creating airplanes forever!"

We'll never know if Access could be made better, because development on it stopped.

And in any case, for the point I'm making, it doesn't matter if Access is a perfect, or even a good tool. The point I'm making is that he developers of Access had a clear vision of how to make software development easier for the average person that now no longer exists. Maybe they weren't good at achieving that vision, but they had it. Modern software developers, by-and-large, do not. (HyperCard's a far better example, since it had the same vision and also more successfully executed on it.)

> The problem git solves is just non-trivial, so git itself has some learning curve.

Microsoft Word solves the same problem Git does with its "Track Changes" feature and is far easier to use. I'm not saying that "Track Changes" is sufficient for software development purposes, but it certainly points to a few obvious ideas that could make source control software far better.

But of course Git has none of that. It doesn't even try. It's simply bad software.

EDIT: BTW, the problem with Git isn't that it's too complex, the problem is that it's far too simple. It implements a few abstractions, then forces the user to deal with them even though those abstractions don't resemble human thought processes even slightly.

And for the record, Subversion solved the exact same problem and was far more usable. It also had more features. And was much easier to create GUIs for. Basically, it was better than Git in every measure that matters to me. And it was bad software. But it was way better than Git.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#197

Post by eldavido »

anildash wrote: post #186
joelcollinsdc wrote: post #148

Saw this on medium and got excited. Checked for commentary on HN, and found Gomix was posted to HN 4 times with little fanfare ( https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=gomix.com ). Now when a tech celebrity posts about it, the post blows up but is filled with discussion of the personality...

I wrote this post the same day as the rest of the announcements; I don't know why my personal blog post took off now, but I'd definitely prefer to focus on the product, not me.

Anil - not sure you're still reading here but the civility with which you've handled a lot of criticism really impresses me.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#198

Post by WhitneyLand »

facorreia wrote: post #157

> to stop coding from being an exclusionary priesthood for a small few Are there really people that see it that way? For me it's just the opposite, programming is a field that is easily accessible to anyone that's interested, with a very low entry bar. Since I learned to program when I was a teenager, by reading a book about the BASIC language and taking an introductory class where I could use a microcomputer, I have…

It is that way. I learned the same way you (without the class) and pretty quickly learned assembly after that.

The problem is the our universe was so small back then compared to what you have to know today. Networking, security, so many frameworks, the Internet. Even learning JS is harder than basic.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#199

Post by WhitneyLand »

facorreia wrote: post #190
blakeyrat wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it that way. That attitude used to exist back in the 90s, with products like HyperCard, Filemaker, even Microsoft Access. There was a time when it was just expected that development software had a graphical interface builder for developers to use. (Heck, even IDEs for really difficult languages, like C++, had them.) But "real developers" crapped all over those tools, especially Access. And when "real developers…

The world I grew up on didn't have HyperCard, Filemaker or Access. I wrote code (as opposed to dragging and dropping, which I couldn't, because there weren't mouses our GUIs). I used primitive text editors to write BASIC, COBOL, C and Assembly code and I printed it on paper to better understand the whole program. I typed programs from listings on magazines. All of that as a teenager. The tools we have now, and the li…

It's the scope (see my other comment).

When you learned it was possible to create and sell a commercial product by learning 1 simple language with no frameworks and no rest apis. That's just not possibly today.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#200

Post by hnbro »

anildash wrote: post #145
te_chris wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the thread, Marco was 'being indignant' on the day he struck it rich, Anil pointed it out and highlighted Marco's incredible privilege. Deeply creepy? I think you need to look at yourself before throwing accusations like that around.

For what it's worth, I bet if you asked Marco, he'd agree he's very privileged, just as I am. I certainly respect all he's accomplished, and have used every product he's put out.

well, you're presumably not as privileged as marco and can never hope to be. no matter how many cars you have.
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