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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

#161

Post by akshaysg »

ocean_moist wrote: post #87
akshaysg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually do try to make the canvas as keyboard navigable as possible. There are a list of keyboard bindings in the "Keybindings and Help" button on the bottom right. In terms of manually resizing, we actually do try to tile in the viewport. May I know what's causing you to resize it so I can fix it?

Sorry, I was just going off the demo. Maybe demo the keybinds briefly. If you get a demo of someone editing stuff super quickly using only keybinds I think it would look pretty cool. Right now I don’t know if the value prop is strong enough for me to switch editors and remodel/relearn all my keybinds. This is like a 10-15% improvement not a 1.5x or 2x improvement. An extension would probably help onboard users.

Hmm we do have a keybindings video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0MzADc0lV8 but I didn't want to overload the demo with this stuff. That's fair on the value prop!

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

#162

Post by akshaysg »

wanderingmind wrote: post #143

Digression, but among two contributors there are over 100,000 commits and the year listed is only 2024. That's an insane amount of commits (about 200 per person per day). Did they use autocommits? Would love to learn the tooling and devprocess that was used.

The majority of those commits are not ours! For the source-available version we squashed all our commits. This is a VS Code fork so the commits you're seeing are from the contributors of VS Code.

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

#163

Post by btown »

slightwinder wrote: post #151
btown wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VS Code extensions are pretty limited - you can override the renderer for an editor tab, but if you want multiple things within a custom interface to be treated as first-class editor tabs by the larger environment (and by the larger extension ecosystem), that's not really possible. Forks are a reasonable step as long as they don't fall behind!

Do you really need a first-class-editor for working directly from the canvas? Wouldn't it be enough to use the canvas just for navigation and show a rendered picture of the code, but open a separate editor (maybe side by side?) for the real work?

My understanding is that Haystack's mission is to explore this design space more fully than others have before, so I think they're making the right decision to be audacious here!

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

#164

Post by cdchn »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #67
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".

"In a tenuous state due to the biological factors" is easily the funniest SV euphemism for "can't be used by humans."

"Fixing our eyeballs is just an engineering problem."

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

#165

Post by cdchn »

groby_b wrote: post #117
akshaysg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who knows, one day it may be possible (hopefully without any dystopian updates to human biology)!

At this point, that seems dubious - your inner ear is going to go all inner ear on you, no matter what. Unless you get to turn that off, VR is not it.

I hope our code-editor-in-VR wouldn't involve flying around like hilarious depictions of "The Gibson" in bad sci-fi movies.

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

#167

Post by akshaysg »

DenisM wrote: post #130

How would you defend your business if/when IntelliJ implements a similar concept?

I think it would be great if other folks started building on the canvas for code. In terms of defensibility, the canvas experience is hard to get right and we believe it can't just be a second class citizen to the editor (i.e. a sidebar). That's not a very thorough answer but are just a few of my thoughts!

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

#168

Post by Scribbd »

akshaysg wrote: post #160
Scribbd wrote: post #146

I often use `code` command in the cli for a bunch of tasks. Mostly to just open an instance of vscode in a dir I am at. Is there a plan for such a command like that for haystack-ide? Meanwhile, an alias is easily created for macOS: `alias needle="/Applications/Haystack\ Editor.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron"`

Yeah I think we added this for Windows but neglected to do so for Mac. Will add a `haystack-editor` command!

Thank you very kindly.

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

#169

Post by pcarbonn »

Thanks! I'll certainly give it a try. Not sure what the business model should be, though.

You may want to take some inspiration from prezi.com. One could write prezi-like HS workspaces to document some particular workflows. You would want the possibility to add text to the canvas (outside of the code editors), and allow zooming in/out from editors. This could be a premium feature that large companies want to pay for.

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

#170

Post by pcarbonn »

pcarbonn wrote: post #169

Thanks! I'll certainly give it a try. Not sure what the business model should be, though. You may want to take some inspiration from prezi.com. One could write prezi-like HS workspaces to document some particular workflows. You would want the possibility to add text to the canvas (outside of the code editors), and allow zooming in/out from editors. This could be a premium feature that large companies want to pay for.

In fact, one approach could be to sell a premium version with collaborative tools (such as sharing workspaces with colleagues).
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