denster

9 ms·

1.
by denster 2mo ago
I think meat proxies are solved by ARs which is the new PR, we built a tongue-in-cheek attentionrequest.com site about it, but the general concept has been working for our team -- asking people to write questions before they send an agent-g
2.
by denster 2mo ago
We had the same problem, now I just ask my colleagues to AR the docs (attentionrequest.com); while the site may be tongue-in-cheek, it helped us build a workflow, where "certificate of having read & thought about it" is condit
3.
by denster 6y ago
I'd recommend MintData ( https://mintdata.com ) It lets you define your dashboard logic in a spreadsheet & then drag/drop the dashboard UI and publish it for end-user consumption.
4.
by denster 6y ago
I think this is a fantastic way to describe it! I spent 5 years in the 90s creating a WYSIWYG tool with Visual Basic 6 , and VB6 was a life saver. I think retool is a fantastic, modern-day re-incarnation of that. However, I think when the U
5.
by denster 6y ago
100% Agreed! Defining logic in JS is quite clunky for these sorts of tools. I'm biased[1], but for this reason we took the approach of creating a spreadsheet from scratch for the sole purpose of creating logic for apps (both internal t
6.
by denster 6y ago
Great post! To op, for tools like Figma, what do you think the future holds? In what dimension will they evolve? How can they help you be more effective? Will they help you express your ideas in ever higher fidelity over time? [1] [1] Biase
7.
by denster 6y ago
Design + Code tooling. Hard problem: How do we evolve design tools? Can Sketch/Figma be evolved to create full featured software? [1] Something with no limits, and the freedom to create any feature developers create today with React&#x
8.
by denster 6y ago
I can't help but agree! Where's the Visual Basic 6 of our era? :) Sure, apps weren't pretty, but you could bang one out in a few days and start getting use from it. That's why I've devoted my career to tooling, hopi
9.
by denster 6y ago
Agreed on the democratization front! We saw this OpenAI demo: https://player.vimeo.com/video/427943452 and were just blown away . Very cool!! I guess a spreadsheet is never too old [1] to learn new tricks :) [1] Found
10.
by denster 6y ago
What's a "non-artistic developer"? I think: 1) Design is like a muscle, you can always develop it 2) Digital experiences [1] are all around us! And they play a more pivotal role in our lives as time goes on. So, hit the gym (
11.
by denster 6y ago
We [1] used to think the same thing a few years back, but then figured out empirically that virtualization (above the React layer) will let you view/scroll through virtually unlimited-size datasets (until you hit the browser's mem
12.
by denster 6y ago
We use "nested spreadsheets" that can live in any cell, and combined with aggregate functions like GROUP_BY() we're able to get this behavior. Would be genuinely curious -- would our approach [1] help w/what you're
13.
by denster 6y ago
"I can't imagine how that would work" -> hearing that kills me inside :( I think we have 2 options: OPTION 1) We've reached a plateau -- software will continue to be developed as it is now, no new abstractions. OPTION
14.
by denster 6y ago
I think dates, times, UTC offsets, and locales/cultures is a topic we frequently think of as "that's easy" [1] when in practice it's painstakingly hard to get right. As an example, we've spent the past few days
15.
by denster 6y ago
We’ve used this API in our https://mintdata.com/docs examples, but the limits run out fairly quickly. Would be curious to ask here — are there any alternative APIs you’d recommend for showing financial application examples?
16.
by denster 6y ago
So, for (2) above, not sure I understand: camp 1) at best, a TCP connection is re-used, and the HTML for "page 2" is fetched over the network, parsed, the CSS OM is applied, and then the whole caboodle* is "painted on screen&
17.
by denster 6y ago
I'll take a stab at this, Kyle just shoot me if I get something wrong below :D 1) There's a server-centric approach and a client-centric approach: --a) hand-maintained HTML + php falls into the first camp --b) React (/Angular
18.
by denster 6y ago
Interesting, what were the challenges you faced with MDX? We built https://mintdata.com/docs on it, and it's been proverbially better than sliced bread -- that is, a true joy to work with MDX. What're the challeng
19.
by denster 6y ago
Kyle, Just read the post, congrats on the launch! We've been using Gatsby on: https://mintdata.com for the past few years, and are huge fans of your work. I still recall the day when I brought Gatsby into our org, our fro
20.
by denster 6y ago
Thank you! Before the others come with torches, I’ll point out we turned on public/free access recently, would be happy to hear your thoughts/feedback on the MintData approach.
21.
by denster 6y ago
The issue is that FBP (flow based programming) scales to a certain point of complexity. After that, it stops being more effective than a textual representation or (gasp!) even old fashioned imperative programming. As a result, we need new
22.
by denster 6y ago
This is exactly what we built at MintData. [1] A new way to construct software by using a spreadsheet to define application logic, instead of today’s spreadsheets which breed chaos. “A canvas of composition” - I really like that phrase to d
23.
by denster 6y ago
I think of this in two parts: 1) Computing is cheap, human time is not. 2) Competition in established industries is fierce (finance, real estate, education, construction, etc) -- To the extent possible, I'd: a) time out bad queries b)
24.
by denster 6y ago
Thank you! Genuinely warms my heart to hear it :) We've been using our own "Visual SDK" to build large parts of MintData for the past few years. It's 100% written in TypeScript/React, using decorators (cough: annota
25.
by denster 6y ago
Point taken :) Is it ok to shill Roosevelt? [1] https://youtu.be/Mm4epcGApnY?t=14
26.
by denster 6y ago
Ouch! That hurts! My only response is this: https://youtu.be/Mm4epcGApnY?t=14
27.
by denster 6y ago
200% agreed. I learned to develop software [1] before the interwebs, where we would just kind-of hack things together in C/Unix. Manuals were our only (& best!) friend. I then went to uni for a CS degree, and they had a very "
28.
by denster 6y ago
I'll give you an example that mid-way [1] disproves the above. Think of a typical "product tour" in a SaaS product. We're building the MintData product tour, in MintData itself. We then "publish" this "pro
29.
by denster 6y ago
(!) This! First, big props for shipping stuff that people use. Second, I've [1] often compared 90% of what we do in software development to being highly trained baristas. Granted, this buys me little love from engineers & even less
30.
by denster 6y ago
Whoa! What do you have against hillbillies? :) Jokes aside, imagine if Annie in accounting has the ability to define her own malleable tools, on top of a solid/robust system for centrally managing data? (version, backup, secure via IAM

More ›