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Show HN: G-Script – Visual Scripting for the Web

g-script.io

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Re: Show HN: G-Script – Visual Scripting for the Web

#21

Post by tmikaeld »

llamaLord wrote: post #14
tmikaeld wrote: post #11

This looks great, reminds me of Yahoo pipes! However, are you sure that you can scale with only 5$ for the "unlimited" plan? I can imagine large bodies of JSON having to be parsed, could clog up quite a lot. Example: 33kb bodies, that would be +30GB of data exchange at 1M requests.

Yeah you raise totally valid points here. The current thinking is that the $5 tier would end up having a small set of "fair use" restrictions on it for things like max request payload, max workflow execution time, etc. Payload size is the big one, I'm less worried about execution time as the underlying engine that executes the logic is all Async & non-blocking so it's pretty efficient. I want to have a very clear lin…

I don't doubt that you'll be able to cover it on the large whole, since only a fraction of users would parse JSON bodies that large, however, those heavy users will probably use a large portion of the resources.

It's hard to weigh conversion numbers vs heavy usage, a low price like this will certainly help adopt new users and in large numbers. It might even make it worth tolerating the (few) heavy users.

Or you put it in cloudflare workers, which can parse 1.5MB of JSON within 50ms CPU-time and call it a day (10M requests/5$).

Re: Show HN: G-Script – Visual Scripting for the Web

#22

Post by p32y »

TheActualWalko wrote: post #9

Super cool! I was similarly inspired by UE and built a node-based editor into my in-browser DAW project ( https://wavtool.com/ ). It really is an excellent interface paradigm. I expected it to be daunting to first-timers but user feedback has been alarmingly positive. Many beginners find this more intuitive than the standard sequential list of effects, because the node-based interface reminds them of guitar pedalboar…

Cool, what techniques did you use to create this amazing work?

Re: Show HN: G-Script – Visual Scripting for the Web

#23

Post by pjmlp »

llamaLord wrote: post #20
pjmlp wrote: post #19

I suggest looking at other products for visual programming Web Applications like OutSystems, or PowerApps. Nice implementation and kudos for having modules capabilities from the start.

Two main differentiators: 1. Simplicity - both of those things you mention are painstakingly unintuitive if you want to do something fairly complex. 2. Price - Power Automate gets stupidly expensive at any kind of scale, the base plan is only $15 a month, but its capped at 5000 executions. Similarly, OutSystems gets REALLY expensive pretty quickly once you get over the smallest size plan.

I guess I am biased in what those tools can achieve, given the kind of projects I work on.

Naturally it is a matter of which market one cares about.

Re: Show HN: G-Script – Visual Scripting for the Web

#24

Post by lewiso1 »

llamaLord wrote: post #5
moglito wrote: post #4

I don't get it from your web page. What can I connect? Slack, Github, other APIs (like Zapier) -- or is it meant for running code on an existing page (automate front end)? I on purpose did not read your description above so I can give you feedback on the more important piece, your web page.

Yeah so this is an interesting point - it's not designed to be an integration tool, it's designed to be an automation tool - hence each workflow just has a HTTP endpoint and returns whatever your workflows output is to whatever called the endpoint. It can also make API calls itself as part of the workflow if you want it to send data or retrieve data from other sources. Think of it less like something like Zapier whic…

It would be really useful to see a real example of a use-case. Is there one available?

Re: Show HN: G-Script – Visual Scripting for the Web

#26

Post by tirpen »

llamaLord wrote: post #16
greatNespresso wrote: post #13

Had the same idea for a while, cool that you launched! I would double/triple the price though

This is an interesting take - the idea behind the pricing is to be so low that people will pay for it themselves rather than trying to get their workplace to pay for it. The idea being that for a lot of "productivity SaaS apps", one of the biggest friction points is the pain of having to expense the subscription on a corporate card or get it reimbursed via your work - so a $5 price basically side-steps that by being…

That sounds like a great way to get yourself fired quickly!

Or are there really companies that are so lax with security and sanity that they would tolerate their developer hooking in random SaaS services into the companies workflows without vetting.

Re: Show HN: G-Script – Visual Scripting for the Web

#27

Post by moffkalast »

> You don't need to know "Code", just how to express your logic visually

If shader nodes are anything to go by, it results in the equivalent of 5 lines of code taking up a full screen of incomprehensible boxes and lines.

A pretty bad trade-off, but I guess non-programmers can't really use anything else. Code is scary! /s

Re: Show HN: G-Script – Visual Scripting for the Web

#28

Post by pinoyyid »

llamaLord wrote: post #5
moglito wrote: post #4

I don't get it from your web page. What can I connect? Slack, Github, other APIs (like Zapier) -- or is it meant for running code on an existing page (automate front end)? I on purpose did not read your description above so I can give you feedback on the more important piece, your web page.

Yeah so this is an interesting point - it's not designed to be an integration tool, it's designed to be an automation tool - hence each workflow just has a HTTP endpoint and returns whatever your workflows output is to whatever called the endpoint. It can also make API calls itself as part of the workflow if you want it to send data or retrieve data from other sources. Think of it less like something like Zapier whic…

Your web page does very little to explain what it does. Before listing its features, you need a secion on what it is. I could list features like "large", "grey", "slow", "heavy" but without first saying "it's a large mammal", those features make little sense.

Re: Show HN: G-Script – Visual Scripting for the Web

#30

Post by TheActualWalko »

p32y wrote: post #22
TheActualWalko wrote: post #9

Super cool! I was similarly inspired by UE and built a node-based editor into my in-browser DAW project ( https://wavtool.com/ ). It really is an excellent interface paradigm. I expected it to be daunting to first-timers but user feedback has been alarmingly positive. Many beginners find this more intuitive than the standard sequential list of effects, because the node-based interface reminds them of guitar pedalboar…

Cool, what techniques did you use to create this amazing work?

Haha thanks! The big things:

- React as the core of the UI, with direct DOM manipulation and canvas stuff whenever the React lifecycle is too slow. - WebAssembly for any audio logic that happens at least once per sample - Lookup tables for almost all math that happens at least once per sample and is more complicated than multiplication - Use Web Audio as an interface layer, but do everything else manually. (Web Audio tries to help a lot of ways but often winds up making things worse)

If you're curious about anything specific I'd be happy to talk!

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