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Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

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Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#71

Post by yingw787 »

I wonder if there's room for a software deployment model for SMBs. Create a GUI on top of Ansible so customers can configure their build, build/deploy a software tarball to a VM, and provide data and code migration tools to your local community colo - all open source. Company offers upgrades, security patches, operations/customer support, and occasionally new features - no mandatory subscription fees, no forced cloud-native stack, and no VCs demanding 20x returns. Something friendlier to programs than Microsoft Excel and XP, and friendlier to SMBs and end users than Slack and G-Suite. Almost like a neighborhood Red Hat, with shims for toy shops, bakeries, and bookstores.

I think a bootstrapper could pull it off, or a small team of two/three funded by a friendly angel.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#72

Post by iraldir »

ohnoabigshark wrote: post #64

Former CS major, current chef/owner checking in. Restaurants feel pretty ripe for voice assistants/AR but unfortunately lack the necessary technological and financial capital to make it happen, imo. Being able to record and retrieve important information without stopping your work (pulling up and scaling a recipe while chopping onions, for example) saves an immense amount of time in the kitchen. This is especially tr…

Not a chef or anything, but wouldn't reliability be absolutely necessary with no mistake whatsoever? I mean, when I ask alexa to play a song, and she gives me the wrong one, it's cute. If in a restaurant you order 500 kilos of flower instead of 500 kilos of flour, that's more problematic (except maybe on valentine's day). Same goes for any sort of vocal "note" you would like to make. if it has to be absolutely reliable, I gotta think that voice recognition is not there yet.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#73

Post by drieddust »

I keep coming back to Emacs reading these stories but it never became a habit primarily I have to work across many desktops/laptops computers with Windows & Linux as well as Android mobile.

Emacs not being usable on mobile is a big problem and biggest roadblock in the path.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#74

Post by lm28469 »

nickjj wrote: post #67
rekshaw wrote: post #41

As people flock to become programmers, as a population we will become increasingly technologically literate. Sooner or later we will enter an age where programming is as second nature as writing. Communication at the end of the day is a way to get people to understand what we want. Programming is very similar only directed at machines, and as machines continue to replace people in trivial (and not so trivial) tasks,…

Lots of people are already really good programmers, they just don't know it. I know a few people who are really good plumbers, electricians and general contractors. Basically, they can see a problem and have the skills to break it down and then create a solution. None of them can type very well and barely know how to use the internet but I bet if they focused on learning the basics of computers they would end up bein…

Or maybe you'd be a top notch electrician.

Some people enjoy their craft (or don't want to sit at a desk all day), in the past few decades programming became really hyped but it's not some kind of goal everyone should try to attain.

At some point we'll have to stop with that "technology can and will solve everything" mentality.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#75

Post by ams6110 »

drieddust wrote: post #73

I keep coming back to Emacs reading these stories but it never became a habit primarily I have to work across many desktops/laptops computers with Windows & Linux as well as Android mobile. Emacs not being usable on mobile is a big problem and biggest roadblock in the path.

I can't imagine editing any document longer than a sentence or two on mobile, regardless of the editor.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#76

Post by ams6110 »

rpod wrote: post #5
seanwilson wrote: post #4

> The key insight is that a bakery formula is so cliched that it can be represented as data. Here’s the formula for seedy malt loaves: > Of course, that’s not the full set of formulae, because it doesn’t tell you how to make ‘Seedy malt dough’, but that’s just another formula, which consists of flour, water, starter, salt and a multiseed ‘soaker’, where the starter and the soaker are the results of other formulae, wh…

Especially since org-mode has a built-in spreadsheet system that supports formulas written in emacs calc or even arbitrary elisp: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro...

I really should learn that. I often find myself maniupulating text data in emacs, turning it into CSV or something that I can then copy/paste into a spreadsheet for calculations.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#77

Post by hombre_fatal »

intertextuality wrote: post #42
rekshaw wrote: post #41

As people flock to become programmers, as a population we will become increasingly technologically literate. Sooner or later we will enter an age where programming is as second nature as writing. Communication at the end of the day is a way to get people to understand what we want. Programming is very similar only directed at machines, and as machines continue to replace people in trivial (and not so trivial) tasks,…

I think you have a biased outlook, to be honest. For every handful of programmers I know, I know at least 100 others who maybe can barely use their computer besides basic apps. Programming is still not intuitive (nor enjoyable) for the vast majority of people, and I believe it will stay that way.

I look at how much time (and Friday nights) I sacrificed to get into programming and think life is too short for everyone to be a programmer.

And I don't see why programming has to be the ubiquitous pipedream over any other field, like philosophy. Of course, the main issue is that everyone is different and only a fraction of people are going to have an interest at all in a given niche.

The majority of people can't even do something that is universally uncontroversially good for them like exercise or stay a healthy weight. So I always thought it was funny to think that we'll all sing kumbaya over something that requires effort but with even less global appeal like programming.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#78

Post by lm28469 »

rekshaw wrote: post #70
lm28469 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's the opposite, just like everyone has a car but barely anyone could do the most basic maintenance on it. This is arguably getting worse in every sector because of increasing complexity. (trade off for increasing convenience, as usual) Familiarity is not knowledge. I'd even say that technology sets us back because know we're all thinking we're much smarter than we are, I can google any issue I have and fin…

Valid counterpoint. However, we could still be witnessing metaphorical "acne" resulting from instant communication. With no more time-delays or costs associated with communication, the threshold for what makes something worth communicating drops. What I'm speaking of is not 20 years from now, but 500. When we've moved past the banal, when people have assimilated instant communication but have also learned the preciou…

Only the future will tell. Maybe it's me being pessimistic but so far tech (for the masses) is mostly used for:

- making money through ads.

- enabling people to live their shallow ego trips on fb / ig / whatever is used these days. (influencers, &c.)

- drown people in endless entertainment to make their work/sleep cycle tolerable.

None of this is helping society is a whole, but, sure we have nice electric cars 90% of the population can't afford and we'll soon send rocket to Mars.

Do we need $2.6k foldable phone ? pizza delivery drones ? same day delivery ? slaves delivering food through apps like deliveroo ? Is that the best we can do with tech today ? Or is it just enabling our mindless consume / produce cycle with no end goal ? For every meaningful tech advance we have 10 startups raising millions to press a fruit bag [0] or be a rental agency [1]. It's like a sad and lame black mirror episode.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/01/juicero-s...

[1] https://www.wework.com

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#79

Post by paddy_m »

I'm trying to help my girlfriend manage the inventory for her cactus business. She raises cacti from seed, cuttings, but mostly from wholesale suppliers. She has a square account and store. I’m trying to set up inventory tracking for her. There are couple of things that make her business different than most inventory holding businesses.

1. Generally her inventory increases in value over time because it grows. Over time a plant will grow from a smaller pot to a larger pot, plants in large pots sell for more. 2. She wants to track which suppliers provide better quality plants (do the plants die quickly?). She also wants to track how fast different plants grow.

I could pretty easily write a django app that tracks this stuff.

Any recommendations for a platform I could build on top of (airtable? google forms+sheets?). Maybe some type of marketing automation platform.

Custom business apps are tricky. As a programmer it's easy to turn my nose up at excel based solutions, but I totally see how they end up being built.

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