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Launch HN: Haystack (YC S24) – Visualize and edit code on an infinite canvas

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Re: Launch HN: Haystack (YC S24) – Visualize and edit code on an infinite canvas

#101

Post by [deleted] »

jitl wrote: post #11
candiddevmike wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many YC folks are forking VSCode for various reasons that mostly revolve around "can't monetize extensions, want to own the platform". I don't think any of them will be successful, IMO. You want to be an extension because getting software approved is _hard_ at bigcos, it's much easier to trojan horse on an existing tool.

I think Cursor is already looking successful. Most VS Code people I know (including myself) have switched over. I love the idea of Haystack (I was a fan of Light Table back in the day) but if I have to pick between a better UI and an assistant who perform most simple code transforms by English language request, saving hour(s) per day, I’m picking the assistant.

[deleted]

Re: Launch HN: Haystack (YC S24) – Visualize and edit code on an infinite canvas

#103

Post by verdverm »

yatvij wrote: post #23
valianter wrote: post #19

I get that this is a completely new idea so adoption is going to be slow but I'm curious to see how your user interviews and user research is going. I'm a young dev but I'm not even sure if I would use this because the way I've learned to code is already so ingrained into the traditional IDE. Nevertheless, congrats on the launch!

Jake from Haystack here! Thanks for the interest. We've been doing a lot of user interviews with folks on our discord (and folks we know in real life) to understand issues in the onboarding process, find problems that make people churn off, etc with the long-term goal of increasing retention. A lot of our time lately has been spent on fixing these bugs and improving the new-user experience. As a result of this we fou…

Have you done user research outside your fan base to show this experience is something developers want?

Is it desirable enough to get them to switch IDEs?

Re: Launch HN: Haystack (YC S24) – Visualize and edit code on an infinite canvas

#106

Post by hyggetrold »

eep_social wrote: post #73
akshaysg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people mentioned Light Table, but I didn't know about it until post-launch! It's interesting that you mention a more 3D view. We were ideating on this, but it's really hard to get right in a way that the user can understand. This is definitely part of our vision for the future though! EDIT: Deleted the bit about my speculation regarding Light Table since it's false.

For 3D I’d run a clustering algo across the graph and use the Z axis to background “far” clusters. I’m imagining a typical graph might end up looking a bit like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/07... in which case I’d want to have whatever cluster/file/method/object I’m focused on front and center with some visual cues like low-contrast and z-axis perspective that preserves edges to sho…

Interesting idea and curious - because when I look at that visualization, the first thing it reminds me of is gource.

Re: Launch HN: Haystack (YC S24) – Visualize and edit code on an infinite canvas

#107

Post by akshaysg »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #97

Interesting - though it probably just soft of devolves to using hot keys (hopefully those exist) to jump between files after a few editors are open. Panning around with even half a dozen files open would get tedious.

What I do personally is I try to keep all relevant code in my viewport and jump around using shortcuts (are hotkeys a gaming term? I used to say hotkeys all the time!). The visualization is still really helpful for me so that I can quickly orient myself with which functions/classes relate to each other.

Re: Launch HN: Haystack (YC S24) – Visualize and edit code on an infinite canvas

#108

Post by akshaysg »

azhenley wrote: post #105

Beware, canvas-based code editors (like Code Bubbles) have problems. A 1d carousel/ribbon performed better in some initial user studies: https://austinhenley.com/pubs/Henley2014CHI_Patchworks.pdf

Thank you for the flag! Our intention is to try to "tile" the viewport so that it resembles this grid format (i.e. the carousel/ribbon), but we've found the canvas is still useful folks who want to go that extra mile to organize their editors.

Re: Launch HN: Haystack (YC S24) – Visualize and edit code on an infinite canvas

#109

Post by akshaysg »

doctorhandshake wrote: post #99
akshaysg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the idea of a Haystack VR world! It's a shame that VR software is in a tenuous state due to the biological factors, but I believe it's the future "one day".

Check out SoftSpace https://soft.space … not an IDE but similar idea for knowledge mapping

This is actually really cool!

Re: Launch HN: Haystack (YC S24) – Visualize and edit code on an infinite canvas

#110

Post by chairmansteve »

akshaysg wrote: post #8
candiddevmike wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many YC folks are forking VSCode for various reasons that mostly revolve around "can't monetize extensions, want to own the platform". I don't think any of them will be successful, IMO. You want to be an extension because getting software approved is _hard_ at bigcos, it's much easier to trojan horse on an existing tool.

I could be wrong but I don't believe it's difficult to monetize an extension. The reason I think there has been an explosion of VS Code forks (e.g. Supermaven, a very successful extension) is that being an extension in VS Code is limiting insofar as what you're able to change in terms of the UI and UX. You are right about the difficulty of getting into big companies. However, we developed a standalone editor because…

Bigcos not that hard to get into. It's just an entirely different process. You would need to hire someone with that kind of experience.
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