oh_teh_meows

Great work! Some questions:

1. How would you compare Stacker to Retool?

2. Would the data from Stripe/Intercom appear as just another sheet/table?

3. One thing I learned that, despite the promises of no code solution, a non-technical user would still not use them, because they lack the know-how to model their domain knowledge in a no code tool. Have you run into these users? How would you work with them?

The Code component seems like a catch all. If it were to support actual AST, surely

<Code>const a = 3</Code>

Would have looked something like:

<Assign> <Lhs constant><Id>a</Id></Lhs> <Rhs><Literal>3</Literal></Rhs> </Assign>

Author here!

What can you do with it:

1. String together Unix-like text processing functions into a text processing pipeline.

2. Share said pipeline with friends and co-workers through a transparent link.

3. Since the functions are encoded in the URL, you can even compose functions without getting on the website! Just start typing a link: www.textpiper.com/grep?total/col?2&3/sort?asc/replace?dollars=yens

4. Your data is safe since it doesn't get out of the browser, but I'm aware that composed URLs could get logged. In future I'll add opaque URL.

It's very much a prototype and a work in progress, and as you can tell already, my UX skills leave a lot to be desired. Feedback is very much appreciated!

Really really cool! I wonder if we can do something similar with programming. Suppose we have a conceptual framework where each module/system is a widget made up of slightly simpler and well-defined widgets. If we can specify what we want, perhaps a system can be devised that would try to build it from a database of widgets. If some of the constituent widgets are not found, the system could recursively specify each one and find/construct.

In this recursive process, the language used to specify the requirements of a widget can be a changing DSL whose grammar and basic constructs co-evolve with the complexity/abstraction level of the widgets.

This seems feasible because we (software engineers) are one such system. Starting from basic transistors, we build ever higher abstraction layers along with the language used to specify them (circuit diagrams -> microcodes -> assembly -> C -> DSLs). I believe multi-layer neural networks are also a prime example of such a system.

you're right about that, so I think what it could help us with is to provide a sort of guidance when we have a particular end-goal in mind.

This might be a little off-topic, but I wonder if the idea of nano-passes can be applied to other areas. For example, can we predict the future of technology by gradually evolving their capabilities? Or say start from some point in the future (interstellar travel!), and gradually work backwards what we think is needed?

Or how about predicting geopolitics/economics?

To use this method effectively, I think we'll need to fully specify, to the extent possible, the condition of each stage in time. That way, at any stage, we can see what constituents might possibly interact with each other and evolve something new.

So...eat cheese the night of your study cram? (Bad idea if you're lactose intolerant)

Thank you!

I had come from a Compilers/computer vision and distributed systems background, and just recently I decided I'd quit my job and bootstrap my own little SaaS business. My web development knowledge had basically been stuck in the era of PHP and XmlHttpRequest, so I was in for a huge surprise when I decided to dive into modern day web development. For 3 months I couldn't do anything useful; it's just straight up a lot of fumbling in the dark with lots of alternatives and opinions on how to do something. The most aggravating things I found were the proliferation of tutorials written by beginners, and libraries/frameworks with lots of new terminologies which are just rebranding of existing CS concepts. It's aggravating to me because I made a distinction between knowledge from sciences and knowledge of made up words that won't be relevant in a few years (e.g action reducers, action creators, state store, etc), but in the end I decided to just suck it up and internalize all these words so I can move on with my project. They were useful to someone's project, so surely I could humble myself and learn something from them.

This piece may seem like a satire on the current state of javascript's ecosystem, but as far as I'm concerned it's an accurate portrayal of the pains that one goes through when picking up front-end development from scratch. I can't reproduce my initial development environment from memory even if I wanted to (too many npm dependencies and command line incantations). I've resorted to freezing them in a git repo and forking from it when I want to start a new project. I hope in time I will figure out the bare basics for what I plan to do.

Reflecting on my learning experiences, I think perhaps I would have progressed faster if I had an opinionated mentor who could hide from me the diversity of the ecosystem, or a guide if you will, until I'm ready. Entering web front-end development is just like entering a bazaar with thousands of sellers calling out to you. You wanted to buy a simple woodwork table so you could get on with your home improvement project, but you left the place 8 hours later with a bunch of tools that would be used to build said table instead, and you're nowhere close to getting started on your actual project.

This maybe the beauty of the ecosystem, but getting into it wasn't a pleasant experience for me. Now that I've gone through that phase and can get started on the real work, I hope to spare others the pain with what I've learned.

@ML experts: could a model be trained from ECoG data so that we can better isolate signals from EEG?

I wonder if the state that C++ finds itself now is a result of sub-optimal compromises between different interests in the standards committee. Year long arguments of what ought to be included or how they ought to be done may cause folks to lose sight of what's important, you see.

I still like C++ though. At least a subset of it anyway.