Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

ternjs.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 82 posts

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#71

Post by antirez »

marijn wrote: post #48
antirez wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, this is not a model at all IMHO, since a model requires the ability to work in the long run. So you know wrote code for 1 month, and you want to be crowdsourced. Ok, what's the plan for the continued development of the project? Code as it is is worth zero without bugfixes, evolution, and a community.

A) I have written some software B) I'm debating whether to take the OSS or commercial route, since I do need money to live C) I have a reputation for maintaining software in a serious way So I'm asking people "If this is worth 10k to you, let's go the open-source route". So far, it looks as if it is worth that to people. Unless I'll turn around and act like a complete bandit, destroying my reputation, the model works…

I'm not hostile about you, I'm hostile about your model, since I care about open source, and OSS for me is not a license, but a culture and a model for the development of the computers industry.

I think there are things that play nicely with the open source model, that is, ways to make money that don't interact in a bad way with the culture of free software. I don't think that to ask to be payed to open source stuff is in line with the OSS movement / culture.

Ok, now that the hostile bit is discussed, my argument is that it makes more sense IMHO if you say, there are N people willing to donate me 10$ per year if I open source this stuff? It's still wrong IMHO as a model, but at least makes sense, that is, you will get money to provide the software relevant, updated, documented in the future.

The una tantum system instead is broken, how you'll make money in the future in order to continue the development, since it is clear you don't write this software if you are not backed in some way?

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#72

Post by robbrown451 »

antirez wrote: post #71
marijn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) I have written some software B) I'm debating whether to take the OSS or commercial route, since I do need money to live C) I have a reputation for maintaining software in a serious way So I'm asking people "If this is worth 10k to you, let's go the open-source route". So far, it looks as if it is worth that to people. Unless I'll turn around and act like a complete bandit, destroying my reputation, the model works…

I'm not hostile about you, I'm hostile about your model, since I care about open source, and OSS for me is not a license, but a culture and a model for the development of the computers industry. I think there are things that play nicely with the open source model, that is, ways to make money that don't interact in a bad way with the culture of free software. I don't think that to ask to be payed to open source stuff…

He's already shown that he is willing to support his stuff without additional payment, he's done so with CodeMirror.

When taking on this project, he presumably factored it in, that he'd want to continue to support it. If not, well, those of us who chipped in probably won't chip in on the next thing he does. I'm willing to take that risk.

And even if he doesn't...so what? It's open source. Other people can continue the work, and if they want to do something ambitious enough to justify crowdfunding as well....more power to them.

You may be right that what he is doing isn't "in line with the OSS movement/culture." Richard Stallman would likely agree with you...he was never one for shades of gray. I would argue that if that is true, that the OSS movement/culture is the thing with the problem.

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#73

Post by thadk »

adlpz wrote: post #4

Well, that looks really nice. I am not a IDE type, but I do enjoy nice coding helpers when I write. This, well integrated into say, Vim, would make Javascript programming really comfortable.

The cloud9 ide's open source javascript-based editor, [Ace](http://ace.ajax.org/build/kitchen-sink.html) can mimic vim mode.

Though ternjs's developer created CodeMirror, the platform would be agnostic of editor and could easily be ported to that.

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#74

Post by bsimpson »

marijn wrote: post #64
gruseom wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to mention what you found clever in their approach?

They basically run the scripts, instrumenting their Chakra JS engine to automatically abort overlong loops and overdeep recursion, and preventing all side effects outside of the DOM/JS runtime. And then use the actual types that occur in this run to do the completion. Plus, I guess, some added tricks that the talk doesn't go into, but which are necessary to make sure execution actually reaches the part of the program…

Interesting. I wonder what they do to prevent side-effects. Perhaps it just knows to avoid any call that hits network or filesystem.

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#77

Post by marijn »

aerique wrote: post #65
marijn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They basically run the scripts, instrumenting their Chakra JS engine to automatically abort overlong loops and overdeep recursion, and preventing all side effects outside of the DOM/JS runtime. And then use the actual types that occur in this run to do the completion. Plus, I guess, some added tricks that the talk doesn't go into, but which are necessary to make sure execution actually reaches the part of the program…

Does it ever get the types wrong? Just curious, I assume one wouldn't want to see the kind of code where VS gets the types wrong.

I was able to create situations where it failed to find any type for a variable, and when you have variables that may contain multiple types it appears to only find one type, but I wasn't able to make it report any actually wrong types. (But I haven't used it very much.)

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#78

Post by marijn »

bsimpson wrote: post #75
ScottSauyet wrote: post #38

Just contributed, as I'm intrigued. Have you seen Chris Granger's LightTable? ( http://www.lighttable.com/ ) I think there's some overlap, although his vision is much broader.

Chris commented above that Marijn is working on LightTable.

Not on LightTable itself, but on the editor component they use (http://codemirror.net)

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#79

Post by marijn »

jokeofweek wrote: post #40
marijn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is fixed now, so the fact that it works shouldn't come as a surprise.

The demo doesn't seem to work on Chrome 25.0.1364.152 m. I'm getting this error whenever I try any of the shortcuts (or when I select a command from the drop down): Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property 'curOrigin' of undefined (infer.js:489) Looks interesting though!

That was another quick update that broke things. I fixed it ~20 minutes after I pushed it, but I guess you exactly hit the window where it was broken.

Re: Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing

#80

Post by marijn »

antirez wrote: post #71
marijn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) I have written some software B) I'm debating whether to take the OSS or commercial route, since I do need money to live C) I have a reputation for maintaining software in a serious way So I'm asking people "If this is worth 10k to you, let's go the open-source route". So far, it looks as if it is worth that to people. Unless I'll turn around and act like a complete bandit, destroying my reputation, the model works…

I'm not hostile about you, I'm hostile about your model, since I care about open source, and OSS for me is not a license, but a culture and a model for the development of the computers industry. I think there are things that play nicely with the open source model, that is, ways to make money that don't interact in a bad way with the culture of free software. I don't think that to ask to be payed to open source stuff…

I've been doing something like that (try to get people to make regular payments) with CodeMirror, in the form of selling commercial support. I've found it hard to get people to continue to pay, and a major time drain to keep track of all the paperwork involved. A crowd funder driven by a short hype is simply much easier to manage.
Post reply on HN