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Scrappy – Make little apps for you and your friends

pontus.granstrom.me

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Re: Scrappy – Make little apps for you and your friends

#101

Post by bowsamic »

WillAdams wrote: post #95
bowsamic wrote: post #6

I would if Apple didn’t put such tight restrictions against hobby app creation

I had great hopes for Applescript Studio, and was very hopeful it would grow into a widely-used HyperCard alternative. https://macosxautomation.com/applescript/develop/index.html seems to show the current state, which is a heavy lift for most people.

Yeah a YouTube video on HyperCard made me realise that Apple just doesn’t care anymore and honestly neither do people, but I honestly think it is brainwashing. If you let people make their own apps then how do you serve them ads and take the 30% revenue cut?

Re: Scrappy – Make little apps for you and your friends

#102

Post by panphora »

slightwinder wrote: post #97
al_borland wrote: post #70

I like the spirit of it, but the execution isn't what I'm looking for. With this being a hosted solution, it makes me dependent on another SaaS tool for little personal projects. If it's a little counter needed for an afternoon, that's not such a big deal. However, if I'm looking for a scrappy little app I may use for years, this is a problem. Plus, no matter how low the learning curve gets, it will still exist, so I…

This looks like something that should be done like a TiddlyWiki. A TiddlyWiki is a whole Webapplication in a single HTML-File. Traditionally, when you change something, you just save the HTML-File and it self-replicates with the new data. There are now also TiddlyWikis which can save to backends and probably some other ways. Building a whole platform around self-replicating HTML-files with optional backend-access see…

I'm building a self-modifying HTML runtime inspired by TiddlyWiki [0]. It lets you build "HTML apps" in a single file with plain CSS/JS. These apps are shareable and hostable, but you can also download and use them locally as offline apps [1].

The cool thing is each HTML file is able to modify/overwrite itself, so users can use the app's own UI to modify it (e.g. a dashboard where users can add new fields by clicking a button to clone a DOM node, everything's persisted).

The key insight: collapsing the UI/state/logic layers into a single self-contained HTML file eliminates entire categories of complexity - no build steps, no deployment, no state synchronization. Everything you need is just right there.

[0] https://hyperclay.com/

[1] https://hyperclay.com/hyperclay-local

Re: Scrappy – Make little apps for you and your friends

#103

Post by WillAdams »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #7

CardStock[0] isn’t mentioned in this article, but seems broadly similar in goals and approach to Scrappy. Unlike Scrappy (so far as I can tell) CardStock is open-source and can be run locally.[1] Decker[2] (which is also open-source) has answers to several of the things outlined on Scrappy’s roadmap, including facilities for representing and manipulating tabular data with its query language and grid widgets and the a…

I've been looking for such a tool for a while now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44216943

and my thanks to you for mentioning it --- that it has a desktop app is _huge_.

Re: Scrappy – Make little apps for you and your friends

#105

Post by WillAdams »

etchalon wrote: post #98

We're just gonna keep re-inventing HyperCard.

It would be nice if we could be successful at doing so, and extend it into the modern world (I asked after it a while back, and this was one of the tools which was suggested). Elsethread, https://cardstock.run/ was mentioned which looks quite promising as well. Curious if any others (which I've not found despite searching) will turn up.

Re: Scrappy – Make little apps for you and your friends

#106

Post by parpfish »

sReinwald wrote: post #57

The core vision here is something I can absolutely get on board with, but the execution fundamentally seems to misunderstand why "home-cooked software" doesn't exist. The target audience problem is immediately apparent: they're building a product for people who can write JavaScript event handlers but somehow can't 'npx create-react-app'. This demographic is approximately twenty-seven people. More critically, they've…

i'd argue that the biggest hurdle to home cooked software is finding a way to distribute/deploy it among your friends. im a backend guy and can easily make a useful li'l executable to run on my work machine. but how do i share that with people that will only use their smartphone for computing?

i either have to: - make something browser-based, register a domain, and then pay somebody to host it. that's a lot of hoops (and unnecessary cost) just to access a little script that's just fine running locally. - make some sort of official developer account[0] for an app store and then jump through hoops to get my app approved. this would let me make a little app that runs locally, but it's even MORE hoops to jump through and it puts you on the hook for support because it's a wide public release instead of just sharing with a couple friends.

[0] tbh, I don't know how this works. I just hear mobile devs complaining about submitting apps for review and know it can be slow and frustrating.

Re: Scrappy – Make little apps for you and your friends

#107

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

slightwinder wrote: post #97
al_borland wrote: post #70

I like the spirit of it, but the execution isn't what I'm looking for. With this being a hosted solution, it makes me dependent on another SaaS tool for little personal projects. If it's a little counter needed for an afternoon, that's not such a big deal. However, if I'm looking for a scrappy little app I may use for years, this is a problem. Plus, no matter how low the learning curve gets, it will still exist, so I…

This looks like something that should be done like a TiddlyWiki. A TiddlyWiki is a whole Webapplication in a single HTML-File. Traditionally, when you change something, you just save the HTML-File and it self-replicates with the new data. There are now also TiddlyWikis which can save to backends and probably some other ways. Building a whole platform around self-replicating HTML-files with optional backend-access see…

Decker works like TiddlyWiki. I agree that a fully decentralized self-replicating approach is the ideal way to distribute this type of application/tool; even very restrictive environments would permit using and sharing single-file apps that run in a web browser.

Re: Scrappy – Make little apps for you and your friends

#108

Post by owebmaster »

panphora wrote: post #102
slightwinder wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like something that should be done like a TiddlyWiki. A TiddlyWiki is a whole Webapplication in a single HTML-File. Traditionally, when you change something, you just save the HTML-File and it self-replicates with the new data. There are now also TiddlyWikis which can save to backends and probably some other ways. Building a whole platform around self-replicating HTML-files with optional backend-access see…

I'm building a self-modifying HTML runtime inspired by TiddlyWiki [0]. It lets you build "HTML apps" in a single file with plain CSS/JS. These apps are shareable and hostable, but you can also download and use them locally as offline apps [1]. The cool thing is each HTML file is able to modify/overwrite itself, so users can use the app's own UI to modify it (e.g. a dashboard where users can add new fields by clicking…

Hyperclay is quite interesting, well done! But to use it we need to install an app? I think the UX of tiddlywiki that just work is better

Re: Scrappy – Make little apps for you and your friends

#109

Post by belmarca »

al_borland wrote: post #70

I like the spirit of it, but the execution isn't what I'm looking for. With this being a hosted solution, it makes me dependent on another SaaS tool for little personal projects. If it's a little counter needed for an afternoon, that's not such a big deal. However, if I'm looking for a scrappy little app I may use for years, this is a problem. Plus, no matter how low the learning curve gets, it will still exist, so I…

You should check out https://codeboot.org .

It's a fully client-side Python IDE with single-stepping, a virtual (non-hierarchical) filesystem, an FFI to call JS code and a few other things (see the docs). Sharing apps in CodeBoot is trivial: right-click the "play" button and copy a shareable URL. I have helped people solve data wrangling problems using CodeBoot and they now have their little app bookmarked. It works really well.

I could go on for a while. AMA if you're interested. We're actively working on it and some great new features are on the way!

Re: Scrappy – Make little apps for you and your friends

#110

Post by WillAdams »

bowsamic wrote: post #101
WillAdams wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had great hopes for Applescript Studio, and was very hopeful it would grow into a widely-used HyperCard alternative. https://macosxautomation.com/applescript/develop/index.html seems to show the current state, which is a heavy lift for most people.

Yeah a YouTube video on HyperCard made me realise that Apple just doesn’t care anymore and honestly neither do people, but I honestly think it is brainwashing. If you let people make their own apps then how do you serve them ads and take the 30% revenue cut?

That's an excellent point, that enabling app development by users reduces the monetization potential --- but maybe it's something which would work for opensource?

I'd be very glad to see a platform for the Raspberry Pi (and similar devices) which would simultaneously be simple and easy for folks to access and use _and_ create the kind of sophisticated user interfaces folks are now accustomed to/expect to use for even basic tasks.

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