Review my startup: Akshell, now with CommonJS support | Hacker News Reader

Review my startup: Akshell, now with CommonJS support

blog.akshell.com

23 pointskorenyushkin16 comments

I'd like to see a clearer up-front description on the front page. This is clearly for people-in-the-know, so just letting me categorize this quickly would be really helpful.

I think this is something for doing server-side Javascript development, with integrated hosting and an IDE. It's not clear to me how things like persistence work; since Javascript is somewhat novel in this role these things aren't obvious. It's not like PHP, where I'd just assume MySQL.

I see you are talking about new programmers using this, but I wouldn't try to talk to both audiences at once. Either have a separate entry page for new programmers, or just skip it (realistically it's only early adopters who are going to be interested in this for the near future).

Your comment does makes sense. I should change the front page.

Applications has two places to store persistent data: database and file storage. The latter is rather common. The database is implemented on top of a custom query language designed for embedding into JavaScript.

Here is a database API description: http://www.akshell.com/docs/0.2/guide/db-and-fs/

And query language description: http://www.akshell.com/docs/0.2/ref/core/db/#query-language

From talking to Anton, it seems like GitHub integration is next up on the TODO list. Any feedback on whether you'd find that useful and how you think it should be done would be really appreciated.

What does it do? The blog posting doesn't mention anything except recent changes to a product with no description.

It enables users to develop web applications is JavaScript and host them in the cloud. The only tool required for development is a web browser. And the deployment is instant.

It also features an environment where applications can interact with each other; so they could be really modular and social.

Is this similar to what AppJet originally attempted to do? If so, have you attempted to contact them to see what types of problems they encountered before focusing on EtherPad?

Akshell targets more "heavy" applications than AppJet. E.g., it has a relational database and AppJet had key-value store. I contacted JGate guys. JGate is an AppJet successor http://apps.jgate.de/.

You should have a look at the Joyent Smart Playform. I think it is very similar, supports CommonJS and Git style deploy. (Plus it is open source) http://github.com/joyent/smart-platform

Thank you for the link. I'll study it.

It anagrams to Haskell, so I assumed this was some DSL for writing Javascript in Haskell...

Awesome, glad to see CommonJS modules and JSGI in there!

Have you looked at the ECMAScript Proxy proposal? You might want to consider using the API.

Yes, I have looked. I implemented a simpler Proxy: http://www.akshell.com/docs/0.2/ref/core/misc/#Proxy

It's more restrictive, but much more easy to use.

Awesome! I still want the ability to run it on my own server, though. You aren't going to get people to use it by locking them in to the platform.

Have you looked at Bespin for an editor/IDE?

I have, but decided to stick with EditArea.

Everything JS has my approval.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com