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Comment by taco_emoji | Hacker News Reader

The OP was talking about web apps. What do Makefiles and npm have to with Evernote or Dropbox?

Why use a web app to take notes when one has vi or emacs?

This is just a wild guess.... because they have a web browser and not vi or emacs.

Because it's really convenient to be able to make a note on your phone or tablet, then access it and make additional post-meeting notes shortly thereafter, on a laptop, all in the same interface (so you have the same features, or at least a set of common features).

That's just one, assuming you never want formatting, tables, pictures, etc.

Maybe we need some sort of unix on the web.

More of a fun experiment than anything else, but the Pig Shell is worth playing with:

http://pigshell.com/

It's cool, but I always found such things to be cargo-culting and going in the completly wrong direction. You don't want to make a web shell, you want to use normal shell for web.

For a proper "Web UNIX" we need:

- websites talking in structured data (not just plain text)

- less propertiary bullshit (hint: keep sales & marketing people away from APIs)

- ability to conveniently pipe them together anywhere (not on a third-party, complexity-hiding, feature-limiting site like IFTTT)

When I can start typing things like these in my own, local shell:

  @twitter.com/me/tweets/latest | sort > tweets.log
  echo tweets.log | @facebook.com/me/post/new --activity "Feeling: Happy" --photo /tmp/HN.jpg

(where @ is a somewhat general web communication utility)

then we'll have a web UNIX.

Oh Emacs does tables[0] better than anything out there, except maybe MS Excel. Definitely eats stuff like Evernote or Google Drive for breakfast.

[0] - http://orgmode.org/

I love org mode but due to the fact that emacs doesn't run on my phone and Evernote does, I take notes on Evernote when I'm not at my computer

> Because it's really convenient to be able to make a note on your phone or tablet, then access it and make additional post-meeting notes shortly thereafter, on a laptop, all in the same interface (so you have the same features, or at least a set of common features).

That's why I personally want emacs on my phone and tablet. I don't know yet the best way to expose its functionality with a touch interface, but it's still, hands-down the best way to edit information.

Maybe something where a tap in the minibar offers some sort of helm- or ido-like command-picking mode, and with taps on the side to enable quick execution of text-editing commands? I dunno, really.

> That's just one, assuming you never want formatting, tables, pictures, etc.

Emacs can handle formatting, tables and pictures if you want.

I don't know, but that's also completely beside the point.

I believe they are putting forth the case that the kind of developer that doesn't make Unix-like tools, doesn't use Unix-like tools. And that this issue is not a case of everyone doing things shitty (not making things Unix-like), but that it is the god damn creatives making all this bad software. These fucking people don't appreciate the art of programming, and think software is about the destination and not the journey. That's my take anyway.

By "OP" you mean the author of the article then, no, the article is not about web apps.

Then we clearly read two different articles.

This is essentially the thesis statement:

> Unix has pipes, which make it easy to build complex applications from chains of simpler commands. On the Web, nobody may know you’re a dog, but we don’t have pipes, either. [emphasis mine]

It is explicitly lamenting the complexity of web-based applications as opposed to other kinds of applications. If you disagree that that's the premise, then you and I are living in rather distinct universes.

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