The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week
Latest posts:
DALL-E for Playlists
Natural language playlist is an AI tool that generates a Spotify playlist based on your prompt.
Show HN: Retool Mobile
Hi all, founder @ Retool here. We initially launched Retool on HN five years ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14515494" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14515494</a>. The feedback was extraordinarily helpful then (e.g. we launched source control, on-prem, etc. based on HN comments), and we’re grateful for all of it.<p>Today, we’re excited to get HN’s thoughts on one of our new products: Retool Mobile. It lets you build and deploy mobile apps in minutes, not days. The idea is there is a large class of line-of-business mobile apps, and the process of getting a simple form + button on a mobile device, in a native app, to POST back to an API endpoint, is startlingly difficult. (As a web developer myself, it has for a while been shocking how hard it is to build and ship something useful onto the app store.)<p>For us, it was important that we build a native mobile app. That’s because although the web as a platform has come a long way, we think Apple / Google are — to some extent — anti-web, in the sense that they hamstring web developers in an attempt to get more apps on their app stores. With a native app, we were able to ship a brand new set of mobile-specific components, drive substantially more performance, and frankly — deliver much more delight.<p>The team is currently hard at work on white labeling, offline apps, and push notifications. We expect to ship all that in the next few months.<p>If you have any feedback on the product, please do comment in this thread! HN is a particularly valuable source of product feedback for us, and the team is very eager to please HN readers. (Since if we can do that, we can surely please any developer, hah!)
Show HN: Retool Mobile
Hi all, founder @ Retool here. We initially launched Retool on HN five years ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14515494" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14515494</a>. The feedback was extraordinarily helpful then (e.g. we launched source control, on-prem, etc. based on HN comments), and we’re grateful for all of it.<p>Today, we’re excited to get HN’s thoughts on one of our new products: Retool Mobile. It lets you build and deploy mobile apps in minutes, not days. The idea is there is a large class of line-of-business mobile apps, and the process of getting a simple form + button on a mobile device, in a native app, to POST back to an API endpoint, is startlingly difficult. (As a web developer myself, it has for a while been shocking how hard it is to build and ship something useful onto the app store.)<p>For us, it was important that we build a native mobile app. That’s because although the web as a platform has come a long way, we think Apple / Google are — to some extent — anti-web, in the sense that they hamstring web developers in an attempt to get more apps on their app stores. With a native app, we were able to ship a brand new set of mobile-specific components, drive substantially more performance, and frankly — deliver much more delight.<p>The team is currently hard at work on white labeling, offline apps, and push notifications. We expect to ship all that in the next few months.<p>If you have any feedback on the product, please do comment in this thread! HN is a particularly valuable source of product feedback for us, and the team is very eager to please HN readers. (Since if we can do that, we can surely please any developer, hah!)
Show HN: A version control system based on rsync
Hi everyone! I'm trying to create a version control system that solves some of the problems that Git and other version control software has when working in a team. Let me know if you have any feedback!
Show HN: A version control system based on rsync
Hi everyone! I'm trying to create a version control system that solves some of the problems that Git and other version control software has when working in a team. Let me know if you have any feedback!
Show HN: Vento, a screen recorder that lets you rewind and record over mistakes
Hey folks, we made this screen recording tool to fix one simple problem - fixing your mistakes easily when recording so you don’t have to constantly restart or stitch.
I’m not particularly great at presenting and so mistakes will inevitably happen during a screen recording, and it’s worse when you’re already 5 minutes into your recording, forcing you to restart completely.
Please check this out and let us know what you think!
Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshots
Show HN: Sketch – AI code-writing assistant that understands data content
Hey HN!<p>I’m excited to share sketch: a tool to help anyone who uses python and pandas quickly iterate and get to answers for their data questions.<p>Sketch installs as a pandas extension that offers utility functions that operate on natural language prompts. Using the `ask` interface you can get answers in natural language. Using the `howto` interface you can get get python and pandas code directly. The primary benefit of this over copilot and chatGPT is that this adds data-content based context so that the generated answers are much more accurate and relevant to the data problem at hand.<p>Check out the demo video[1] and try it out using the colab notebook (on github)!<p>[1] <a href="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/916073/212602281-4ebd090f-09c4-495d-b48d-0b4c37b9f665.mp4" rel="nofollow">https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/916073/212602281-4...</a>
Show HN: Terra Firma, a playable erosion simulation
It's free to play on steam, but you'll need a computer with a dedicated graphics card.<p>I just released a new version after first releasing it 18 months ago. It's been a hard slog to scrounge time as it's not my day job but that's life.<p>There's a ton of obvious improvements in the future (weather systems, temperature, varying rainfall, ice/snow, more biomes, more plate tectonics, lava, etc) but all suggestions/feedback is welcome.
Show HN: Create your own video clips with Stable Diffusion
A few months ago, I started making video clips with stable diffusion and noticed that the tools to do this were too complicated for everyday people. That's why I built neural frames. Enjoy.
Show HN: Create your own video clips with Stable Diffusion
A few months ago, I started making video clips with stable diffusion and noticed that the tools to do this were too complicated for everyday people. That's why I built neural frames. Enjoy.
Show HN: Hacker News Without News
Show HN: ToolJet 2.0 – Open-source alternative to Power Apps and Retool
Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable
Show HN: Val Town – A Cloud Scripting Site
Hey HN! We're so excited to show you Val Town (<a href="https://val.town" rel="nofollow">https://val.town</a>)! A "val" is a JavaScript/TypeScript function or value that runs on our servers. We aim to get you from idea to running code in seconds: type code, run it, get its API endpoint, schedule it - all from the browser, in a couple keystrokes.<p>We're a startup of 4 people, mostly in NYC. We've been working on this for 6 months and are eager for feedback from the HN community.<p>Why do we need yet another online coding IDE? While researching devtools[1], I found myself wanting something halfway between Replit and Zapier: a tool that makes hosting, deploying, scheduling, and authenticating easy, but is first-and-foremost a programming tool.<p>We added `console.email` to the runtime to make it incredibly easy to email yourself. We don't have npm imports yet, but we do have a low-friction system that treats every user as a namespace, so you can refer to `@me.foo + 1` or `@yourFriend.bar()` right in your code. There are a lot of thorny implications this newfangled import scheme creates, but also many joyous and carefree coding experiences! One of my favorite features is that we store every evaluation, up and down the callstack, including inputs, outputs, logs, etc, which has been an amazing aid to debugging.<p>So far, Val Town is mostly used for what we're calling "programmatic notifications": query a data source for new items on an interval and email them to yourself.<p>Get notified when users you "follow" post on Hacker News: <a href="https://www.val.town/stevekrouse.hnFollowPollJob" rel="nofollow">https://www.val.town/stevekrouse.hnFollowPollJob</a><p>Get notified when to close your window during fire season in SF: <a href="https://www.val.town/stevekrouse.aqi" rel="nofollow">https://www.val.town/stevekrouse.aqi</a><p>Get notified when there are new citations on a paper: <a href="https://www.val.town/ernest.newCitationNotification" rel="nofollow">https://www.val.town/ernest.newCitationNotification</a><p>Subscribe to RSS feeds: <a href="https://www.val.town/stevekrouse.pollRSSFeeds" rel="nofollow">https://www.val.town/stevekrouse.pollRSSFeeds</a><p>A good place to get started would be forking one of those vals and modifying it to suit your needs. Some folks are using the tool in other ways, such as in webhook contexts, and we encourage those uses as well. We'd LOVE to pair-program with anyone looking to try out the tool and give feedback. Email steve@val.town :-)<p>Main site: <a href="https://val.town" rel="nofollow">https://val.town</a>
Docs: <a href="https://val-town.notion.site/Val-Town-Docs-01c8eb9c534b4899802f3a9e31d540ab" rel="nofollow">https://val-town.notion.site/Val-Town-Docs-01c8eb9c534b48998...</a>
Discord: <a href="https://discord.gg/dHv45uN5RY" rel="nofollow">https://discord.gg/dHv45uN5RY</a>
Blog & Newsletter: <a href="https://val-town.notion.site/Blog-6d3ef714d0c849e9be71b3986a1dcd46" rel="nofollow">https://val-town.notion.site/Blog-6d3ef714d0c849e9be71b3986a...</a><p>[1] - Whole Code Catalog: <a href="https://futureofcoding.org/catalog/" rel="nofollow">https://futureofcoding.org/catalog/</a>
Show HN: Kandria, an action RPG made in Common Lisp, is now out
Kandria, an open world action RPG platformer written in Common Lisp is now out and available!<p>A prior discussion of Kandria can be found here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32043026" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32043026</a>.<p>I'm the lead developer and sole programmer for the project. Would be happy to answer any questions about it!
Show HN: Ecode – A minimalist and fast open-source code editor
Hi HN! I've been working on a code editor and I think that it's mature enough to catch some interest. It's using a custom GPU accelerated GUI written in C++. Currently implements some interesting features: LSP, terminal, auto-completion, linters, formatters, custom keybindings, plugins and more. It's a hobby project but still intends to be an alternative to other popular code editors like Sublime, Kate, Lapce, Lite XL (and takes inspiration from them).<p>The project was born as a playground for the GUI I'm developing (eepp GUI) and is advanced enough to currently be my main code editor, but it's a work in progress, and many features are still pending. Some minor hints on how to use it:<p>Folders are used as project (and .gitignore is used to ignore files)<p>The wheel icon on the top-right has all the options you need (Ctrl/Cmd + M to show).<p>Some keybidings to navigate any project (navigation is keyboard driven):<p>Ctrl/Cmd + K = Locate Files<p>Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + F = Global Search<p>Ctrl/Cmd + Number (Go to tab #)
Show HN: Socketify.py: Http/Https and WebSockets servers for PyPy3 and Python3
3D in CSS
Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners
Some highlights:<p>- 100% free and open source (<a href="https://github.com/alexmojaki/futurecoder">https://github.com/alexmojaki/futurecoder</a>), no ads or paid content.<p>- No account required at any point. You can start instantly. (You can create an account if you want to save your progress online and across devices. Your email is only used for password resets)<p>- 3 integrated debuggers can be started with one click to show what your code is doing in different ways.<p>- Enhanced tracebacks make errors easy to understand.<p>- Useful for anyone: You can have the above without having to look at the course. IDE mode (<a href="https://futurecoder.io/course/#ide" rel="nofollow">https://futurecoder.io/course/#ide</a>) gives you an instant scratchpad to write and debug code similar to repl.it.<p>- Completely interactive course: run code at every step which is checked automatically, keeping you engaged and learning by doing.<p>- Every exercise has many small optional hints to give you just the information you need to figure it out and no more.<p>- When the hints run out and you're still stuck, there are 2 ways to gradually reveal a solution so you can still apply your mind and make progress.<p>- Advice for common mistakes: customised linting for beginners and exercise-specific checks to keep you on track.<p>- Construct a question that will be well-received on sites like StackOverflow: <a href="https://futurecoder.io/course/#question" rel="nofollow">https://futurecoder.io/course/#question</a><p>- Also available in French (<a href="https://fr.futurecoder.io/" rel="nofollow">https://fr.futurecoder.io/</a>), Tamil (<a href="https://ta.futurecoder.io/" rel="nofollow">https://ta.futurecoder.io/</a>), and Spanish (<a href="https://es-latam.futurecoder.io/" rel="nofollow">https://es-latam.futurecoder.io/</a>). Note that these translations are slightly behind the English version, so the sites themselves are too as a result. If you're interested, help with translation would be greatly appreciated! Translation to Chinese and Portuguese is also half complete, and any other languages are welcome.<p>- Runs in the browser using Pyodide (<a href="https://pyodide.org/" rel="nofollow">https://pyodide.org/</a>). No servers. Stores user data in firebase.<p>- Progressive Web App (PWA) that can be installed from the browser and used offline.<p>-----------<p>A frequent question is how does futurecoder compare to Codecademy? Codeacademy has some drawbacks:<p>- No interactive shell/REPL/console<p>- No debuggers<p>- Basic error tracebacks not suitable for beginners<p>- No stdin, i.e. no input() so you can't write interactive programs, and no pdb.<p>- No gradual guidance when you're stuck. You can get one big hint, then the full solution in one go. This is not effective for learners having difficulty.<p>- Still on Python 3.6 (futurecoder is on 3.10)<p>I am obviously biased, but I truly believe futurecoder is the best resource for adult beginners. The focus on debugging tools, improved error messages, and hints empowers learners to tackle carefully balanced challenges. The experience of learning feels totally different from other courses, which is why I claim that if someone wants to start learning how to code, futurecoder is the best recommendation you can make.