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Show HN: Haystack – an IDE for exploring and editing code on an infinite canvas

haystackeditor.com

31–40 of 227 posts

Re: Show HN: Haystack – an IDE for exploring and editing code on an infinite canvas

#32

Namespace conflict, and yes it does matter. Just as "mamba" was an anaconda package manager re-implementation before it got commandeered by the LLM research crowd, now Haystack is being stolen away from Deepset: https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack https://haystack.deepset.ai/

Also this older Python package: https://django-haystack.readthedocs.io/en/master/

Re: Show HN: Haystack – an IDE for exploring and editing code on an infinite canvas

#34
post #33

Looks a little like Labview without the data flow features. Interesting.

I don't and never have used Lab view, but I am interested in adding features to better visualize data flow. I feel like this can easily err on the side of being confusing/annoying, but do you like Labview's data flow features?

Re: Show HN: Haystack – an IDE for exploring and editing code on an infinite canvas

#35
post #25

I think the title should make it clear it’s macOS only, before getting my hopes high to test it out, it looks interesting nonetheless.

Very sorry about this. We hope to get in a Linux product soon (building now, fingers crossed).

Thanks Dan for the edit!

Re: Show HN: Haystack – an IDE for exploring and editing code on an infinite canvas

#36
post #32

Namespace conflict, and yes it does matter. Just as "mamba" was an anaconda package manager re-implementation before it got commandeered by the LLM research crowd, now Haystack is being stolen away from Deepset: https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack https://haystack.deepset.ai/

Also this older Python package: https://django-haystack.readthedocs.io/en/master/

i remember playing with this group’s work back in the early ‘00’s

https://haystack.csail.mit.edu/

Re: Show HN: Haystack – an IDE for exploring and editing code on an infinite canvas

#37

Namespace conflict, and yes it does matter. Just as "mamba" was an anaconda package manager re-implementation before it got commandeered by the LLM research crowd, now Haystack is being stolen away from Deepset: https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack https://haystack.deepset.ai/

Our intent is not to steal anyone's name, but I hope that by being a very different product nobody confuses us with this Haystack (or the older Haystack that other commenters pointed out).

I do think the idea of a "needle in a haystack" is fairly ubiquitous and makes sense for a ton of contexts to be fair.

Re: Show HN: Haystack – an IDE for exploring and editing code on an infinite canvas

#38
I'm not sure about the AI features but the concept of working with code on a canvas and having some sort of flowchart UI has been a dream of mine for some time. I mainly do data processing and draw lots of flowcharts for communicating pipelines and also for myself. Having a development UI which goes in that direction somewhat would be great for handling unwieldy codebases written by non-CS folk.

Re: Show HN: Haystack – an IDE for exploring and editing code on an infinite canvas

#39
post #9

So it’s a more fancy/cpu intensive neovim without the learning curve? I don’t know, looks cool. But seems like it would get annoying after a period of time. Too much dependency on a mouse for me.

Does neovim have a canvas feature? In what way is it similar to Haystack, apart from also being an editor?

Re: Show HN: Haystack – an IDE for exploring and editing code on an infinite canvas

#40
I've been wanting to try something like this for a long time! Is there any way to sign up for updates?

(In particular, I'm waiting for the option to turn off the AI stuff, at least for when I am trying things out.)

I especially love the ability to zoom into a function and hide the rest of a file. I've wanted that sort of thing a surprising number of times. I'm thinking one could also use this to virtually rearrange a single file by pulling the functions in that file that you are working on next to each other easily?

In addition to the editing interface, I think there are probably a lot of visualization opportunities in editors:

- what's the interaction between my code and third-party dependencies? - what are the dependencies/call graph of my code? or perhaps just a portion of it? - call graphs can be nested — perhaps you care for a dependency graph at the class or module level, or perhaps you want to "drill down" into the call graph inside an object

In all these cases, being able to seamlessly transition between the visualization and editing — like you seem to be aiming towards — seems like the killer feature.

And, of course, there are lot of other interesting visualization opportunities once you have any sort of graphics in your editor:

- heatmaps of code churn - heatmaps of code performance - tracing variable usage - and, of course, lots more (https://adamtornhill.com/articles/crimescene/codeascrimescen...)

One last thought: if you haven't read _The Programmer's Brain_, you should at least listen to this podcast. https://se-radio.net/2021/06/episode-462-felienne-on-the-pro... There are a bunch of editing ideas related to how our brain works that I haven't seen well supported in an editor yet. You took one step in that direction — maybe there are some more opportunities?

Looking forward to what you come up with!

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