Oh wow!
And I did not expect to click on this and see a Tyne & Wear Metro project.
I can see why you may have wanted to create one though. Good luck with it!
Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
31–40 of 68 posts
Re: Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
#32This might be a serious problem for tinkering platforms such as Glitch and Kinopio [1]. They are awesome, but they strongly inspire me to take creativity just a little step further and build my own implementation. This then leads to a fragmented landscape of such services, and none gets enough traction to grow into seriously sustainable popularity. [1] https://kinopio.club/
Just build it for yourself and don't feel bad about not being a startup founder or something. I know it feels a little weird and it takes some adjustment time, but don't compare the joy of building software for yourself to business yardsticks. That stuff won't match anyway.
Re: Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
#33This is awesome. I’ve also built a number of services for myself (Pinterest style photo hosting for archival/research purposes, analytics service for my websites, tracker for the books I’ve read, message board for micro communities I’m a part of, etc). I also share them with friends who express interest in them. The costs are minimal (they all run on a shared $4/mo instance + $10/yr domain per project) and I get to c…
What service are you using that's 4$/month? I've used the free tier of Render on the past which I enjoyed but the lowest paid plan is 20$/month.
Some options that pop up frequently on HN: Vultr, DigitalOcean, OVH and Hetzner Cloud, all have cheap VPSes, $4-$5 per month for the cheapest I think. And usually if it's an app for just you/your small family, you can get away hosting multiple apps per VPS without suffering atrocious performance (depends on the apps/usage obviously).
The trick (and somewhat the drawback in many's eyes) is to rent a VPS (or dedicated/bare metal) instead of a "App hosting service" (what Render is). You'd need to know some basics about infrastructure and networking, but not anything too advanced and that's stuff will be useful regardless too, so not too easy to rationalize away :)
Re: Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
#34This looks fantastic, I'll make sure to try it! I've been working on a similar platform ( https://smallweb.run ), which allows me to host all my side projects from a single root folder. Each subfolder automatically becomes a subdomain, and I can just use vscode remote ssh or mutagen to live edit my websites.
> and I can just use vscode remote ssh or mutagen to live edit my websites
What is old is new again :) Back when I started development, we did this via git remotes, and some projects even did what you created and created environments mapped from git remotes to apps running with subdomains (like Dokku is probably the first/most memorable FOSS service for this back in the day).
And before that, I'm sure people were doing the same thing with Java WARs or similar, and before that, something else but similar.
Re: Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
#35This is awesome. I’ve also built a number of services for myself (Pinterest style photo hosting for archival/research purposes, analytics service for my websites, tracker for the books I’ve read, message board for micro communities I’m a part of, etc). I also share them with friends who express interest in them. The costs are minimal (they all run on a shared $4/mo instance + $10/yr domain per project) and I get to c…
What service are you using that's 4$/month? I've used the free tier of Render on the past which I enjoyed but the lowest paid plan is 20$/month.
Dreamhost shared unlimited is good for this I think. 3,95 - After 3 years the price triples but still worth it. Unlimited traffic, bandwidth, emails and subdomains.
Re: Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
#36This is seriously awesome! I made something extremely similar called Dock'n'Roll, but this looks far more polished. I think we should make our own tools more often.
Re: Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
#37This looks fantastic, I'll make sure to try it! I've been working on a similar platform ( https://smallweb.run ), which allows me to host all my side projects from a single root folder. Each subfolder automatically becomes a subdomain, and I can just use vscode remote ssh or mutagen to live edit my websites.
> and I can just use vscode remote ssh or mutagen to live edit my websites What is old is new again :) Back when I started development, we did this via git remotes, and some projects even did what you created and created environments mapped from git remotes to apps running with subdomains (like Dokku is probably the first/most memorable FOSS service for this back in the day). And before that, I'm sure people were doi…
Yeah dokku is an inspiration!
The main difference is that smallweb use deno instead of docker for sandboxing apps, and leverages url imports (which can be used to distribute complex apps like VS Code):
```
import { VSCode } from "jsr:@smallweb/vscode@0.1.7"
const vscode = new VSCode({ rootDir: Deno.env.get("SMALLWEB_DIR") });
export default vscode;
```
You can play with a live instance of smallweb at https://demo.smallweb.live
Re: Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and I can just use vscode remote ssh or mutagen to live edit my websites What is old is new again :) Back when I started development, we did this via git remotes, and some projects even did what you created and created environments mapped from git remotes to apps running with subdomains (like Dokku is probably the first/most memorable FOSS service for this back in the day). And before that, I'm sure people were doi…
Yeah dokku is an inspiration! The main difference is that smallweb use deno instead of docker for sandboxing apps, and leverages url imports (which can be used to distribute complex apps like VS Code): ``` import { VSCode } from "jsr:@smallweb/vscode@0.1.7" const vscode = new VSCode({ rootDir: Deno.env.get("SMALLWEB_DIR") }); export default vscode; ``` You can play with a live instance of smallweb at https://demo.sma…
> The main difference is that smallweb use deno instead of docker for sandboxing apps
Yeah, a single-runtime (smallweb) instead of any language (dokku) + I'd probably say the avoidance of using git for the delivery would be the two biggest differences I can glance.
Re: Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s also code-server by Coder, which you can just run on your own server and open in browser directly. It’s also open source (most tunneling features in VSCode aren’t). https://github.com/coder/code-server There’s a one-click setup for it in Lunni, a Docker dashboard I’ve been working on (shameless plug): https://lunni.dev/
As someone who doesn't code professionally, what is the primary use case that leads to significant daily enhancements for developers?
This is a multifaceted question, because there isn't one use case, it depends on who you are.
If you are somewhat nomadic and always moving systems, having a "home" you can dial back to and pick up where you left off from is a massive boon (with a remote system like this, my phone is now powerful enough to do pretty much any development task as now it's just rendering the front end and not doing real heavy lifting)
If you're an enterprise programmer working on locked down networks and devices with more end point protection tools than endpoints, an unencumbered authorized system with access to the right network assets, as well as standardized and project specific tooling is the difference between coding and coding with one arm tied behind your back and a blindfold on. (actually the benefits for enterprise are many and not just DevEx -- think security, network admin, vendor access, governance, AI rollout, reduction in project specific on-boarding documentation....)
I'm sure there are many other use cases, though these are just the immediate ones that spring to mind.
Re: Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
#40This is awesome. I’ve also built a number of services for myself (Pinterest style photo hosting for archival/research purposes, analytics service for my websites, tracker for the books I’ve read, message board for micro communities I’m a part of, etc). I also share them with friends who express interest in them. The costs are minimal (they all run on a shared $4/mo instance + $10/yr domain per project) and I get to c…
> I’m basically slowly working on replacing pretty much every 3rd party app I use with something I wrote myself (it’s going to take a while but that’s okay). My grandpa was a carpenter and pretty much every piece of furniture in the house was something he or his friends had made. As software craftspeople, we should strive to do the same with our digital houses. I do the same. Both with software and furniture in my ho…
For others of like interest, NHKOnline is an ever-growing and fantastic collection of videos in English (or at least subtitled) that showcase Japan's fascinating sub-cultures, many of them craft-oriented.
Our favorite is "Design Stories" (which used to be "Design Talks Plus") that features many such fantastic Japanese crafspeople. Our family hasn't missed an episode in quite a few years.
And, of course, there is the Canadian resident of Japan, David Bull, who does traditional wood-block prints in the style of the magnificent Hokusai. His attention to detail in his work is inspiring to us as well.