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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

#72

I hope you guys succeed. It’s aggravating having to stop and use my mouse all the time. Feels like I’m constantly stuck in traffic while coding.

> Feels like I’m constantly stuck in traffic while coding.

Nice metaphor!

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

#73
post #61

Maybe it's because I'm a Windows user so I'm not your target audience Mac user, but my IDE already does all of this. From my IDE , I can already interact with GitHub, JIRA, search stack-overflow, and pretty much anything else either natively or through the plugin system.

Fair point and I absolutely agree, VSCode has some great integrations with other services and in fact solves similar problem of context switching. However there are quite a lot of people that don't use VSCode, not to mention you're not always in your IDE when you need to perform these tasks. Having said that we want to explore some ideas where we integrate deeper with IDEs like VSCode and provide commands based on the context (e.g. provide documentation search based on the coding language, suggest filing a task for TODO comments, etc).

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

#74

This sounds similar to another tool called Linear [0], as described in this TechCrunch article [1]. Though it seems that they're only primarily focused on work issue tracking (GitHub, Figma, etc.). [0] https://linear.app/ [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/21/linear-lines-up-4-2m-led-b...

Yeah, Linear is a great tool and has an amazing UX, though as you correctly noticed they are building standalone issue tracking tool while we're building an app that sits on top of other web apps allowing you to use them without going to a browser.

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

#75
post #64

I wish you would just let us download it instead of getting added to some early access list. I'm probably going to forget about this by the time you let me download it...

We want to open it up as soon as possible. The main reason behind the private beta is that integrations such as Jira are fairly complex due to different setups and a lot of customisation so currently we're in the process of "onboard new company -> fix bugs -> try again" and so on. It's getting better on each iteration and as soon it reaches certain level of stability on the integrations side, we're going too open it up to everyone.

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

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair enough! Hopefully it will not become a problem. In the end, it's just the name and we want to be defined by the product and its value rather than by the name itself.

As to why exactly we picked it: as ray casting is a way to instantly query information about closest objects, we thought it would be a good metaphor for instantly querying and accessing different third party services. Rays represent speed and focus.

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

#77

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.

Nice, consistent design system and guidance is definitely something we want to have for the future platform. Thanks for pointing out to Shopify Polaris, looks very interesting!

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

#78
post #62
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wox+Search Everything is my spotlight/alfred replacement for windows. Not on the same league, but the ux/ui at least does the job. Also use SmallWindows for a Mission Control like interface.

Wox seems to have a clever way to do user plugins by just using a JSONRPC interface.

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

#80

Heads-up! Is the site down, seems to be loading forever for me. Want to check it out more, since it seems like I am the target market.

Hi! Thanks for the heads up, could you please check if the website loads for you now?
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