Live data from Hacker News

Prompt debuts “a command line for the real world”

techcrunch.com

11–18 of 18 posts

Re: Prompt debuts “a command line for the real world”

#11
I don't see a support feature on the site, but since this is a YC company, I figure I can list an issue here:

@whois google.com is not working. It just replies: "@whois: Please enter a valid domain name. Example: @whois google.com" Same for other domains.

Edit: This only occurs over SMS, not through the site. My guess is that my carrier (Fi) is doing something to munge the domain name that Prompt needs to parse correctly.

Re: Prompt debuts “a command line for the real world”

#12

Surely they're going to have to change the name. https://panic.com/prompt/

There's very little overlap between the two products, and for that overlap, "prompt" is a generic term.

ISTM "Panic Sync", the first listed feature at your link, by which private keys are transferred all over, is actually a mis-feature, a bad idea that shouldn't be made easier for the user.

Re: Prompt debuts “a command line for the real world”

#13
I'm not sure I buy the idea that there's a market for this.

The main argument for CLIs over GUIs is that they're faster to use (assuming you know what you're doing). I don't imagine typing out commands on a smartphone touchscreen is faster than using that same touchscreen to navigate an app.

I only see this appealing to the kind of people that read Hacker News, and even then only those who use CLIs because they find them more fun/interesting than GUIs, rather than for utilitarian reasons.

Re: Prompt debuts “a command line for the real world”

#15

I'm not sure I buy the idea that there's a market for this. The main argument for CLIs over GUIs is that they're faster to use (assuming you know what you're doing). I don't imagine typing out commands on a smartphone touchscreen is faster than using that same touchscreen to navigate an app. I only see this appealing to the kind of people that read Hacker News, and even then only those who use CLIs because they find…

[deleted]

Re: Prompt debuts “a command line for the real world”

#16
post #9

Will it include programming structures (loops, conditionals, etc) and documentation (i.e. @prompt help @prompt)? Would then also need to handle 'weird' cases that can dos a service, such as the silly: @uber While True { from x to y; cancel;} Could services be compounded? What if I want my domino's pizza delivered to a location, picked up by an uber and delivered to my work address? (maybe dominos doesn't service my a…

Don't forget the great fun to be had with out-of-order SMS messages. I really don't get this app. All the macros advertised in the article are so basic I can do (or already do) them via voice activation, which is so quick I don't even need to grab and turn on my phone's display. For more interesting stuff I want to have block diagrams for flows and triggers (kind of like the Automate app actually). Another downside is the likely closed or at least very opaque nature of the commands. Dominoes is gross, I want anything else. No one wrote a plugin for Papa Johns, and I don't know how or it would take forever, and even if the Dominoes plugin was open source I doubt it would be very enlightening for writing one for another pizza place. Guess I'll go hungry. Or, how about something as dead-simple as recording a workflow with hooks for interaction like password entry so that I do it once myself and then afterwards it replays it, even alerting me if during a future replay things aren't as expected? That might not be allowed on the app store though, because god forbid our phones be general purpose computational devices.

Re: Prompt debuts “a command line for the real world”

#17

Surely they're going to have to change the name. https://panic.com/prompt/

There's very little overlap between the two products, and for that overlap, "prompt" is a generic term. ISTM "Panic Sync", the first listed feature at your link, by which private keys are transferred all over, is actually a mis-feature, a bad idea that shouldn't be made easier for the user.

I don't know why you felt to bash the product. That seems irrelevant here.

When I first saw the headline my first thought was that maybe it was a new version of Panic Prompt, so clearly there is scope for confusion here.

Post reply on HN