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TraceGL: JavaScript code flow visualisation in WebGL
- shaunxcode 13y agoThis looks incredible. Do you think it would be possible to utilize source maps to allow this to work with coffee (etc) source directly?
- rikarends 13y agoIts theoretically possible, although not easy.
- greenpizza13 13y agoThis is also the only reason I am waiting to buy. We do our development and debugging in chrome via source maps. It's a little too much hassle to track down the bug in CoffeeScript based on the JS trace. Does anyone see a way to get around this with the current version of TraceGL? If so, it looks absolutely fantastic and I want it.
- kcbanner 13y agoThe name seems like a bit of a misnomer, I only just now realized this wasn't a WebGL debugger.
- rikarends 13y agoIts a GL javascript tracer :) plus there is the domain.
- stu_k 13y agoThe name also confused me and I thought it would just be for tracing WebGL. From a developer standpoint it's cool that it's in WebGL. As a developer-user I don't care, it just works well and fast! I would genuinely suggest de-emphasizing the WebGL except in a behind-the-scenes way. (I've bought and played with it, and can't wait to chase down a bug!)
- supercoder 13y agoYeah I agree. The GL part is just an implementation detail. As a comparison would be to say - what if it was actually quicker when implemented in the DOM or Canvas ? Would it then make sense to call it TraceDOM or TraceCanvas ? If the killer / primary feature of the product is speed then it should really be TraceFast / TraceSpeed / TraceMegaSuperQuick (ok, not great names but you get the idea).
- showerst 13y agoThe "Get it now" page immediately redirects to a 404 for me. https://trace.gl/undefined/getitnow.html https://trace.gl/undefined/getitnow.html Firefox 20/Mac
- michael_miller 13y agoThe "Get it now page" is https://trace.gl/getitnow.html https://trace.gl/getitnow.html for me, which works fine.
- rikarends 13y agoHi i'll do a quick test in firefox, i haven't seen that one yet
- rikarends 13y agoFound it. i'll go fix it.
- rikarends 13y agoSorry fixed that, clear cache please.
- marshray 13y agoVote up (down) if you'd ever (never) dreamed of writing this kind of thing yourself. :-) I'll report the number. EDIT: 5 - 1 = net +4 votes as of 10:23 PDT.
- zurn 13y agoMost people can't vote down.
- marshray 13y agoAh, I guess I can only do so sometimes as well. So feel free to leave a comment, I'll register your downvote then you can delete your comment. This experiment in ad-hoc polling is kind of showing the limits of the idea.
- bsimpson 13y agoI think the rule is you need more than 500 karma and can't downvote a reply to your own post.
- simcop2387 13y agoI think an easier way would be to make two posts, Vote one up for each choice. Wouldn't prevent double voting but the difference between the two would still be accurate.
- krsunny 13y agoI cant vote down and Ive been here for about a year.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoWhat if you dreamed of it, wrote it, then decided the approach wasn't viable given UX concerns?
- TheEskimo 13y agoThis is a bad idea. I believe that hn actually will weight every comment you make based on your total karma to a degree. I've certainly heard people make anecdotal claims that if they have a lot of karma their comment, even if not heavily upvoted, appears near the top frequently. This algorithm makes sense. Since upvotes are supposed to mean something like "I want to see more comments of this type and quality", it is giving the majority what they want to promote people who typically make such contributions. As soon as you try to value an upvote as something different (here as an impromptu poll) you damage the entire system. What if I would dream of this but don't want to see more comments like yours since it's effectively spam? What if I like the idea and want to upvote it for visibility but would 'never dream' of this somewhat specialized idea? The point I'm trying to make is that this is a bad idea without even going into how incredibly inaccurate such a poll is. This comment will not give any useful data, actively "abuses" hn's value system by asking for upvotes, and doesn't breed meaningful or intelligent discussion. Good for you I can't downvote yet :-). (notice how I added a smiley so that it would seem childish but friendly? Excellent tactic!) If you want to do a poll I believe the polling option google docs provides will be much better suited (if perhaps slightly tainted by evil).
- kurd_debuggr 13y agoThere is a pricetag that comes with the software, which is definitely not in line with the typical javascript ideology, in my opinon.
- rikarends 13y agoI'm against showing banners in my app ;)
- United857 13y agoWhy not open source it like most other JS tools? You've built on top of other open-source such as node.js. Just a matter of good citizenship in the JS community.
- ajtaylor 13y agoThis is an incredibly useful tool! I was trying to decide how the huge amount of logging was handled in the display when he mentioned using WebGL - a cool idea to this WebGL newbie. Then there is the ability to jump up and down the stack, even through callbacks. This feature alone would be worth 15 EUR because you don't have to set breakpoints in the browser's web inspector to see exactly what is called and how - you just run the program and then look up the traces! I wonder how hard it would be to have the browser's native inspectors do the same thing?
- michael_miller 13y agoThis is an amazing app, extremely underpriced for what it delivers! One thing I'd love to see is the ability to do profiling, so I can see exactly how much time was spent in each function invocation.
- bsimpson 13y agoWe need line_profiler.py for JavaScript.
- DanielRibeiro 13y agoIt is also nice to see how much great work is going on WebGL these days[1]. Hopefully, tools like this will help even more create amazing things with it. [1] http://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/webgl-breaking-into-the-real-world/ http://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/webgl-...
- saejox 13y agoName of the app threw me off. I thought this was designed to attach to GL context and show that is actually happening. Like Nvidia PerfHud. Here is some criticism: - Your site straight up asks for my credit card number. Small line below "Secure connection using Paymill GmbH" not enough for me to trust you. Believe it or not PayPal or Amazon Payments would work better. At least i can get a refund that way. - Where is the demo? I'm getting ripped off ? - I hate when people compare price of their products to a commodity. I don't know how much coffee cost in your world but i can buy 100 cups of coffee where i live. This kinda of comparisons always comes from the bunch that creates long lines at Starbucks. Just don't assume 15 dollars aren't that much. That's half the money i make in a day.
- rikarends 13y agoHi Saejox, - the name came from the domain, since its a GL UI it fits well enough imho. - tried to make it 'as simple as possible to buy' using the same way Stripe does it (i dont touch CC's) - can't solve international wage/price discrepancies, unfortunately. - i tried to pick a payment solution that didnt' suck too much to integrate, paymill is 'the stripe competitor in europe' and its a pretty clean process compared to paypal. And then there is bitcoin too. - As its not a trivial product i decided to make a video demo to show what it can do. Thanks for your feedback.
- nym 13y agoFor what it's worth, I probably wouldn't have paid with a credit card (too much hassle!) but since I could pay with bitcoin you converted me into a customer. :D Thanks for accepting bitcoin!
- rikarends 13y agoThanks :) I just added it this morning. Now if only coinbase payment callbacks would work, it would be much faster (not manual.)
- nym 13y agoCups and Cakes Bakery uses BitPay.com- check out our video of it in action. Payments are verified in about 30s-1m http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCYE4V6C8a8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCYE4V6C8a8 Also, Kai Ryssdal did a segment on us! marketplace.org/topics/business/cupcakes-meet-bitcoins
- rikarends 13y agoAll i really need is a wallet API where you can create a receive address, and get a callback when something arrived. Everything else is just fluff :)
- apaprocki 13y agoYou can run the canonical bitcoind app in JSON RPC mode and it is your wallet and gives you the API. You don't need to use an external service.
- rikarends 13y agoYeah unfortunately i need to pay for a special VM just for the wallet that way. That and the JSON RPC api didn't look all that simple. In a way coinbase does exactly what i need, except its callbacks don't work. It would be nice to be able to fire up a super secure wallet VM with a locked down webservice api for adding receive addresses and getting callbacks, and having a 2 factor 'withdraw' function.
- seddona 13y agoLooks great, just purchased. +1 for coffeescript/source maps, we do everything in Coffee. +1 for charging, i hope you get the support to work on this full time. Maybe consider an open source basic / premium closed version though. +1 for a sublime plugin that does code completion/inspection based on previous runs of the code. Nice work!
- nym 13y ago+1 for typescript instead of coffee.
- shurcooL 13y agoThat looks like an awesome tool, good job. You said you use VBOs for text rendering. Do you use some library for text rendering or is it just coded from scratch?
- rikarends 13y agoI'm rendering font-textures using canvas, and using GL POINT sprites with x+y+texture offsets (the ascii) in the vertexbuffers to store text.
- georgecalm 13y agoWell, I'm completely blown away by this tool. The utility of it. The speed... Amazing. I think it's great that the developer decided to charge money for this too. It has real value for me, it's going to save time, so why wouldn't I want to pay to show my appreciation and to ensure it's being worked on?
- skrebbel 13y agoPardon the off topic and probably downvoted-into-oblivion comment, but Rik, je bent een botpad.
- ncrit 13y agoThis looks nice! Watching the video I was just wondering if it would be more useful if all code that is executed would be highlighted instead of the 2 colors for conditionals. That way one could identify the actual code path more quickly.