Ask HN: What software/app do you wish would exist?
Looking for some ideas about some stuff that might already kind of exist, but could be improved on in terms of features/UX. Also, it could be something completely new.
A better way of discovering what book to read next. Amazon recommendations not browsable enough. Goodreads not assistive enough. Amazon recommendation dollars.
- I want to see the changes in a directory tree that I can navigate through!
- I want to comment on any piece of code, not only changes and their surroundings!
- I want to hide things, or mark them as "seen", to be able to look at things in the order I want without any risk of losing progress!
- I want to be able to filter/sort by the "change type", e.g. Imports, renames, indentation changes etc.!
- I want the diff to be aware of programming semantics, e.g. know when a function just moved from one file to another, or I add a method overload and don't get a diff telling me I added a closing bracket and another whole method signature in the middle of the old method!
- Let me type code! I want to try out and propose changes!
- I want freedom editing my review before submitting it the way I have freedom editing my branches before committing it!
- I want to have single comments refer to ranges of changes, which aren't necessarily connected or in the same file!
- I want to easily see what happened to the changes since I reviewed them! (Not a clickable link "changed since then bla bla", show me right there!).
- And probably most important: It has to be fast! Hyperbole: Having to wait for the page to load for a minute for large diffs, and then having to wait another minute for all changes to _actually_ be visible is a no-go.
The available tooling is already very powerful, but it still frequently fails me and I believe having this be extremely polished would be a real productivity game changer. Maybe there are already some great tools? Last time I had to look over a huge amount of changes I resorted to a patch file; grepping away unnecessary changes like package renames etc and just deleting text lines I considered sufficiently reviewed.
That’s partially due to Capterra being incentive on behalf on the ads they run to have positive reviews up, but it could indicate also that we’ve reached a saturation point where the CRM for X niche has been largely filled.
All linux utils that do that require anal effort, comes with obscene syntax and demand obscure combination of multiple things to accomplish single task.
I always wanted to write my own one on python but never found time.
Would be great if it allows data entry via either text or graphical UI. Basically, a modern version of DOT and DOTTY.
There’s a hosted version of the rendering engine here [2] though it’s easy enough to run locally.
I'm talking about AutoCAD, Ms Office, etc.
It feels error prone and isn't always very accessible as I'm motorically a bit challenged although definitely not disabled.
I simply adore applications that let me invoke commands through text like the command palette in vscode or Sketch Runner in Sketch. This is also why I'm a heavy CLI user and spend a lot of time customising my aliases and work flows. I'd like to extend this outside of the terminal.
Step 1: Measure your room by pointing the phone at the corners and triangulating the room. Can do iregularly shaped room. More pictures = more angles = floor plan through the power of trig.
Step 2: On your generated 2d floorplan place the kitchen units you want
Step 3: hold up your phone, point it at a corner again to triangulate location, generate 3D perspective view of the kitchen units / new floor / painted walls / lighting and put it ontop of the picture in the right place.
Make a rough prototype and then convince a major retailer to pay you to finish it without owning the IP.
Idea + resources = Project (like an article or a book), and tags can help allocate the same resource to multiple projects.
It should allow the note taking to be very quick and fast, like writing a message.
And yeah, I've been trying a bunch of apps over the years. Evernote, the closest one, doesn't fit yet.
Although the interface is text-based (I believe it's a pro not con) it is therefore quite clunky in terms of media integration (photos are good, but I don't know about the videos) the rest (links, associating other resources, tagging system, todos system, exporting, projects etc) is quite superior to everything I've ever seen. Also it's FOSS and therefore extremely expendable IF you are willing to learn a bit of elisp (although I don't know it and I'm fine using just pieces of code from the internet and Spacemacs).
2) What isn't modern about Access? What do you want to change that isn't just removing features?
It's hard to imagine one person replacing 20+ years of dev effort.
2) Excel and Access prove the need for software in a business and model out use cases.
If Access could render to the web, (similar to lotus notes to domino) that likely would be sufficient. Since most of the access backend is available, maybe that is feasible on some level.
Almost everything.
Access does not have granular security, fault tolerance, auditing, or a couple dozen other features that one would expect in a modern database.
I have seen Access app developers run their access app on top of a MS Sql server to bring that kind of functionality in, though.
Access was less of a database and more "let's work with our data using forms and reports".
It was powerful in the hands of people who understood the data and details they work with day in and day out and let them form solutions for themselves when there was no other way.
In many enterprises access is just there like excel, but custom software is not permitted.
Can’t resist I should thou, access is in my mind an embedded dB that added some features sits closer to SQLite than MySQL. Out of interest why do people choose to use access than SQL express is it the GUI driven development?
(My question was genuine, not rhetorical. I don't use Access and had no idea what state it's in.)
Some that I encountered recently were:
You cannot use regular expressions.
There is not a way to create a rule to delete or move messages after a N days.
https://anvil.works is the tool. It is quite explicitly based on VB and other systems like it: it's got a drag-and-drop UI designer, backed by Python. Double-click a button, and edit the Python code that runs when it's clicked. You write Python on the front end (we transpile to JS), Python on the back end, and we host it for you with a click. Check it out!
The problem with many of these tools is that the output is so convoluted that it couldn't be edited manually.
I’m not associated but tried it and liked the features.