Hi, author here.
Thank you everyone for the feedback. It's clear that I launched this far too soon.
I'll work on the pain points you all noted, and come back in a few months.
Hi, author here.
Thank you everyone for the feedback. It's clear that I launched this far too soon.
I'll work on the pain points you all noted, and come back in a few months.
Absolutely not too soon! This is a great project; it's so amazingly, ridiculously overengineered, in the best way possible! The most beautiful bike shed I have ever seen. You even implemented your own reactivity system.
I love it.
Ha, thanks! Yeah the reactivity system was born out of trying to get stuff done quickly. I was tired of manually setting variables so I made it easy to "chain" and "adapt" them and stuff. Same thing with the (hacky?) auto-layout system. Shortcuts to get stuff done quick!
it's the best, I reused vue reactivity for gta multiplayer server to track player state changes and write reactive functionality around those changes and people called me crazy for using frontend tech in backend :c
Interestingly, I didn't know Vue had a thing called a Ref until about a week ago. Yet my Refs have a very similar design. Though I do think my Refs are much better and more generally useful.
In fact, I think my Refs might be a genuine breakthrough in compsci, mainly because of .defer(), and I half want to write a doctoral thesis on them just to see if anyone else agrees.
It's just right for a Show HN. I was able to find the Hello World tour and grasp what's going on here, from previous PICO-8 and React experience. Looks pretty cool, and I think 16:9 is a good pick. PICO-8 being square is awkward.
Thank you to you and the other replies. You're very encouraging. I'll keep iterating, making it more usable and its usage more clear. Maybe I can at least finish at least a few tasks while it's on HN's front page(!!!) based on everyone's feedback. Going to work on finishing the paint app right now, hopefully done within an hour.
Thank you for launching early.
Definitely launch often.
10,000 iterations. One down. 9,999 more to go.
Thanks! That's an encouraging way to look at it, as it allows me to ship something that's not 100% perfect yet. But I guess no matter how hard we try, it never really is, is it?
Usually it never really is perfect, unless it does its job 100% without any bugs (which we may not be able to tell, but it is possible). I have projects that are completely finished, so I think. :D
There is a difference though between showing off cool stuff and having the potential to show off cool stuff. I released my app in the latter phase, not the former, which is what I wanted to do. To be honest, I was just having a really bad day yesterday and was feeling really burnt out, so I just sort of gave up and released it, knowing full well I hadn't written the stuff to show off how cool this is just yet. I knew I should have waited. Oh well, lesson learned.
I do not think it was premature to show it off, and you could always post a new submission a month or two from now. :)
A few times over the past 15 years, the HN mods have made it clear to me that you only get the HN spotlight once every few months. So this was my one chance for mid 2025 to release it right. That's okay, lesson learned is the important thing. I'm moving on to the next big iteration of it and will probably post again in Q3/Q4.
Hmm, I have not heard of that. You cannot post the same link, or a link to a new release perhaps, maybe after 2 months?
No sir, you didnt launch too soon. You're doing great.
Thanks! And you are not worthless trash, just in case your username was serious.