Hoodie – Fast web app development • Hacker News Board

Re: Hoodie – Fast web app development

#131

Post by Arkadir » Tue, May 20, 2014, 8:37 AM UTC

owenwil wrote: post #110

barce wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hood.ie is open source, and your code is not. Any chance you can open source your code?

Our client library is entirely open source, but our platform itself is not as it's a commercial no-backend offering. This allows us to offer production-grade hosting for these types of no-backend apps.

Many companies offer production-grade hosting for open source applications. The fact that you are keeping your source closed tells me that you are afraid a competitor (or your clients themselves) could achieve an equivalent quality of hosting for less than they would pay you. To a customer like me, this is bad news.

Re: Hoodie – Fast web app development

#132

Post by tenmilestereo » Tue, May 20, 2014, 9:40 AM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #13

>It took less than 15 minutes for a person with no experience in any part of the stack to take an existing single user app and make it a multi-user application with robust security and data storage. […] Bravo, hood.ie, brav-fucking-o. I find that extremely hard to believe.

You might like to see two of the Hoodie-ers talking at LXJS, and taking a skeleton app to supporting multiple users with data storage, the whole talk is 20 minutes, but the coding part is much, much less. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyjwlvwOoA4&hd=1

Re: Hoodie – Fast web app development

#133

Post by itsbits » Tue, May 20, 2014, 9:49 AM UTC

I see you can add , update data to the db using javascript...is it using nodejs?

Re: Hoodie – Fast web app development

#134

Post by janl » Tue, May 20, 2014, 10:02 AM UTC

itsbits wrote: post #133

I see you can add , update data to the db using javascript...is it using nodejs?

End users only ever see JavaScript in the frontend. Some backend heavy lifting is done in Node and developers can extend that writing plugins in Node as well.

Re: Hoodie – Fast web app development

#135

Post by owenwil » Tue, May 20, 2014, 10:05 AM UTC

Arkadir wrote: post #131

owenwil wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our client library is entirely open source, but our platform itself is not as it's a commercial no-backend offering. This allows us to offer production-grade hosting for these types of no-backend apps.

Many companies offer production-grade hosting for open source applications. The fact that you are keeping your source closed tells me that you are afraid a competitor (or your clients themselves) could achieve an equivalent quality of hosting for less than they would pay you. To a customer like me, this is bad news.

We absolutely think that open sourcing code is important, but not just a giant lump of all of it; a mountain of code not always useful.

It's still early days for us but we are considering open sourcing reusable parts of our platform or allowing people to host their own if they wish, but we haven't yet decided on which we will pursue yet.

Re: Hoodie – Fast web app development

#136

Post by justincormack » Tue, May 20, 2014, 10:30 AM UTC

talideon wrote: post #94

josephjrobison wrote: post #32

Just realized .ie is an excellent TLD for cute website names

Less than you might think. It's not a trivial matter to get an .ie domain. The IEDR's rules make things difficult if you can't either (a) demonstrate a connection with Ireland the reviewer will accept or (b) demonstrate that you trade in the Irish market. There are ways around some of their rules, such as getting a registered business name from the CRO, but it really is a pain in the backside. I write this as somebod…

Isn't creating an Irish company relatively easy (if you are in EU)? I guess its a fair amount of work and cost to get a nice name if you dont want a company...

Re: Hoodie – Fast web app development

#137

Post by camus2 » Tue, May 20, 2014, 11:45 AM UTC

billyhoffman wrote: post #37

janl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoodie works no different than Gmail. What’s the worst that can happen there?

Well you sure as shit aren't going to see "hoodie.account.signUp(username, password);" in Gmail's client-side code. Gmail's code base is not a "offline first, mobile first" platform. The API that is exposed to the client-side is fairly light (watch the traffic). I highly suggest use research "business logic flaws" in web apps. Anything Jeremiah Grossman has said on this topic is good stuff.

the signup seems to be handled by couchdb.

Re: Hoodie – Fast web app development

#138

Post by _urga » Tue, May 20, 2014, 11:56 AM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #69

janl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it’s a document database, uses UUIDs and revisions for identification and does HTTP-based P2P replication. In Hoodie we abstract that away in a simple to use `hoodie.store` object with the usual `add()`, `update(), `find()`, `findAll()` methods for operations. No need to know about the CouchDB/PouchDB specifics, just store your objects :)

Okay, but the key design decision in any data syncing library is how it resolves update conflicts. Is it last-one-wins, report an error and try again, diff merging, or maybe some kind of operational transform? Since that's the heart of the problem being solved, it's weird when the docs leave it out.

Operational Transformation does not work offline at all, and offline seems to be at the heart of Hoodie. OT requires a central point of coordination. That's why the current Google Docs freezes editing if your connection goes. For offline syncing, you need to use CRDTs.

Re: Hoodie – Fast web app development

#139

Post by conoro » Tue, May 20, 2014, 12:41 PM UTC

talideon wrote: post #95

janl wrote: post #8

Team Hoodie here. Happy to answer any questions you might have :)

How exactly did you convince the IEDR to let you have hood.ie?

Well given that one of the hood.ie developers is called Caolan McMahon, I'm guessing there's an Irish granny involved somewhere ;-)

Re: Hoodie – Fast web app development

#140

Post by spacemanmatt » Tue, May 20, 2014, 1:11 PM UTC

gaadd33 wrote: post #74

leorocky wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Desktop clients have been delivering business logic to clients for a very long time with few problems. Web powered apps are similar. The issues involve protecting data stored in the cloud, communicating over secure channels and client security. JavaScript powered applications running in a browser have many security considerations, but they're manageable if you have security aware engineers building your application.…

Are there any e-commerce platforms that trust the client to do all the business logic for an order/checkout? If so how do they prevent client side tampering with the business logic without redoing it on the server side?

It seems a naive proposal at best to suggest the client would get business logic in lieu of the server. Typically clients need to assist users and they do that by use of business logic based validations and constraints.