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Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks

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Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks

#51

Post by shuckles »

IceDane wrote: post #35
thomaspaulmann wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with you that scalability is an huge point and that we need to tackle it. Two things: 1. We won't build all the integrations ourselves. There are just too many individual things. We'll provide an API that developers can use to cover their custom workflows. 2. Raycast doesn't replace your other tools. It makes the common interactions with them simple and fast. We believe that it shouldn't take plenty o…

Alright -- I wish you the best of luck, though I'm skeptical that you guys can sell this to businesses. Mostly because as I've gained experience working in the industry, it hasn't been my experience that corporations are willing to pay for something that can only give nebulous promises about increasing employee productivity. Doubly so if it's some kind of developer(or power user)-oriented tool whose benefit might be…

Counterpoint: my fairly large employer pays site licenses for Omnifocus, 1Password, and other productivity apps.

Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks

#52

Post by zmix »

rsp1984 wrote: post #40

Love the concept & the idea! But why did go for MacOS / Swift instead of something cross-platform, such as Electron or Qt? Many devs outside of SV aren't using Macs.

Applications like these highly benefit from deep integration into the environment. Also, keeping them native and easy on resources makes them using a snap.

You want these to come and go quickly, at the whim of a fingertip. You want them to connect to your local search services, reuse local components, etc.

The biggest problem for most of these "Launchers", is that they try to be cross-platform, making them slow and a pain to use, as soon as you want more than just basic seek&run. I am still trying to find a suitable on Windows, that would make me as happy and satisfied as Quicksilver does on macOS.

Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks

#53

Post by thomaspaulmann »

ianwalter wrote: post #44
thomaspaulmann wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a lightweight extension for GitHub and more will come. What would you like to do with an extension for GitHub? Plan projects? Search code? Manage packages?

1. Open repos. I have a lot of them. 2. Search code. 3. Open PRs that I need to review. 4. Create issues / Open issues that are assigned to me. 5. Search repos / starred repos

We cover already some cases of your named ones, such as the create issues and list your assigned ones but aren’t quite there yet for others. Seems like these are the common ones and we’ll take a deeper look into them.

Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks

#54

Post by smetj »

the-peter wrote: post #14

Is this integrated with the shell? Can I write shell scripts and python scripts to eg. grab today's entries from my gmail calendar, etc

Shameless self promotion but have a look at https://smetj.net/termfunk_bridging_the_gap_between_python_a...

Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks

#56

Post by colinhowe »

pitnikola wrote: post #16
sicromoft wrote: post #13

I like the idea. My feedback: the name seems like it's going to confuse people. I almost skipped by this post when I saw the name at a glance because I'm not particularly interested in 3D graphics.

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, it crossed our mind that some people familiar with 3D graphics term might get confused. I really hope that there are not too many people in our target audience familiar with it, though I might be wrong :)

If you're targeting developers then I suspect you'll find many of them have at least heard of the term raycasting from CS degrees at the least.

Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks

#58

Post by eliseumds »

I don't know what's being used to build the user interfaces, but I'd look at Shopify Polaris for some inspiration. It's been a pleasure to work with it. Although it's quite restrictive (no colour customizations, for ex), it gives users standardised and accessible screens. I wonder how debugging would work.
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