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Show HN: Darklang

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Re: Show HN: Darklang

#31

Post by steveklabnik »

braythwayt wrote: post #24
muglug wrote: post #18

This project represents a stark tradeoff: lose some complexity, and lose almost all control. It feels like forcing users to learn a new language is a step too far here - I can't imagine a ton of people are so eager to build slackbots that they're willing to give up all their existing tools.

It feels like HN regular are unlikely to be the ideal audience for this. Reaching for a metaphor, it's like a bunch of expert Unix users gathering around an IBM PC or Macintosh in the 1980s. It's so easy to bemoan the control we lose (a major problem given our existing workflows) and have no use for the functionality it confers (simplicity, batteries included, lack of yaks that need shaving). A really great new idea…

As a concrete example of this: https://twitter.com/stevehind/status/1173643069347917824

> I’ve been lucky enough to be an alpha user of Dark. As a non-engineer, self-taught coder, I was able to build and deploy the back end of a react app, including a Stripe integration, faster on Dark than anything else, including Heroku + Flask. Real game changer.

Re: Show HN: Darklang

#32

Post by mattnewport »

braythwayt wrote: post #24
muglug wrote: post #18

This project represents a stark tradeoff: lose some complexity, and lose almost all control. It feels like forcing users to learn a new language is a step too far here - I can't imagine a ton of people are so eager to build slackbots that they're willing to give up all their existing tools.

It feels like HN regular are unlikely to be the ideal audience for this. Reaching for a metaphor, it's like a bunch of expert Unix users gathering around an IBM PC or Macintosh in the 1980s. It's so easy to bemoan the control we lose (a major problem given our existing workflows) and have no use for the functionality it confers (simplicity, batteries included, lack of yaks that need shaving). A really great new idea…

A better metaphor would be PC and Mac users gathering round a 90s 'thin client' and expressing the same concern. If you've never heard of the 90s thin clients there's a reason...

Re: Show HN: Darklang

#33

Post by pbiggar »

vemv wrote: post #26

From the landing page: > Speed of developer iteration is the single most important factor in how quickly a technology company can move. What? "Speed of developer iteration" barely makes any sense, it's poor wording. In any case that proposition seems dubious. Companies exist to please customers, not its own developers. Too often we (developers) conflate our happiness/productivity with that of the actual stakeholders.…

We've also built tools for guarantees around correctness. My video discusses our deployless tooling, and it's also discussed in the blog post: https://medium.com/darklang/how-dark-deploys-code-in-50ms-77...

We think a lot about how large teams build at scale, and while we don't support everything we'd need for large teams just yet, Dark is designed for this use case.

Re: Show HN: Darklang

#34

Post by steveklabnik »

vemv wrote: post #26

From the landing page: > Speed of developer iteration is the single most important factor in how quickly a technology company can move. What? "Speed of developer iteration" barely makes any sense, it's poor wording. In any case that proposition seems dubious. Companies exist to please customers, not its own developers. Too often we (developers) conflate our happiness/productivity with that of the actual stakeholders.…

"speed of developer iteration" is a phrase I've heard outside of Dark. Specifically, "developer iteration" is how fast you're able to iterate on ideas with your code. If you can ship stuff faster, you can iterate on your ideas faster.

Re: Show HN: Darklang

#35

Post by tiborsaas »

I applaud the effort for the project because it's really ambitious. The delivery at this point on the other hand makes me a bit skeptical. I've watched the hello world app a few times and my impression is that it relies on lots of convention over configuration (same reason I disliked Rails). The "cards" or files on the canvas look a bit chaotic and their relations are not clear at all what thing triggers which event. The slackToken thing is confusing too.

Have you tried user testing the platform with random developers, giving them a laptop with the instruction, "Here you go, this is the readme, getting started guide, go build a todo app"?

I'd like to see a more detailed look of the language itself with a slower pace of explanation.

Just by watching the video, Dark feels like I'm interacting with a cloud backend rather than building stuff in a programming language.

Re: Show HN: Darklang

#36

Post by bgnm2000 »

A little over a year ago I was building an app, and decided I'd have literally no backend at all. I wanted to build something fast and ship it to the appstores as quickly as possible to go through the process. After I launched, it was featured by apple and was getting thousands of downloads per day. Users wanted to be able to save their data across devices - but it wasn't something I really had time to build in the ways I had in the past. I had heard what Dark was up to, and was lucky enough to join the beta. Dark now powers the backend for my app (nzd.life) - and I really can't express just how amazing it is to use. We added the functionality in just a weekend with a handful of LOC. Dark really is a game-changer. For any entrepreneur / dev who wants to move fast and ship things, they should try Darklang ASAP.

Re: Show HN: Darklang

#38

Post by Stratoscope »

pbiggar wrote: post #25
Stratoscope wrote: post #19

Does (or will) Dark have a light mode? Given the name and seeing the dark mode screenshots in the article, I wonder. This is an honest worry for an older developer like me. When you're young, your eyes can focus on just about anything. This changes as you get older. A dark mode causes your pupils to open wider, where a light mode gets them to stop down. And if your lenses are imperfect, stopping down helps make thing…

We will absolutely support light mode, and we plan to deal with many other accessibility concerns (I touch on that very briefly at the end of my video). This sort of inclusivity is massively important to us. I hadn't realized Dark mode was tough for certain audiences - I'll add it to the list. (We also plan to get an a11y consultant in to make sure we get all of them)

Wonderful, thank you!

While I've got you, let me put in a word for proportional font support if you don't already have it. Proportional fonts are another thing that make it easier for me to read code.

Would be happy to chat with you about any of this stuff - contact info is in my HN profile.

Re: Show HN: Darklang

#39

Post by tempodox »

Stratoscope wrote: post #19

Does (or will) Dark have a light mode? Given the name and seeing the dark mode screenshots in the article, I wonder. This is an honest worry for an older developer like me. When you're young, your eyes can focus on just about anything. This changes as you get older. A dark mode causes your pupils to open wider, where a light mode gets them to stop down. And if your lenses are imperfect, stopping down helps make thing…

I second your request and I'm grateful for your comprehensible and respectful way of pointing out the problem. I usually just get frustrated and angry at software that only supports dark mode.

Re: Show HN: Darklang

#40

Post by pbiggar »

tiborsaas wrote: post #35

I applaud the effort for the project because it's really ambitious. The delivery at this point on the other hand makes me a bit skeptical. I've watched the hello world app a few times and my impression is that it relies on lots of convention over configuration (same reason I disliked Rails). The "cards" or files on the canvas look a bit chaotic and their relations are not clear at all what thing triggers which event.…

We have user tested, and a ton of people have built full apps with it. That said, you are correct that it can be a rough experience at times, which is one of the reasons we're in private beta.

We wanted to show people what we were working on, warts and all. We are super aware of what you're bringing up. The "cards" especially are not the metaphor we intend to use, just a shortcut to get this in front of people. I hope you'll bear with us :)

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