Hacker News Reader

Comment by lxe | Hacker News Reader

There are software projects that get posted once in a while on HN that are on a completely different level of quality, whether it's product, UX, or tech. This is one of those posts.

View on HN

This one is amazing. I've cloned so many repos locally with the only reason to explore them with the comfort of VS Code.

I really wish it had Cmd+P support for searching for project files.

I find the project a really cool concept, but am genuinely curious what real value this is adding in it's current incarnation? Navigating the folder structure is kinda nice, but I don't see much else.

Am I missing something obvious?

> what real value this is adding in it's current incarnation?

Ctrl+Shift+F works. I've forgotten how many repos I clone off github just to be able to search all through the code.

> Ctrl+Shift+F works

It's not working for me (it's also the first thing I wanted). It only seems to search through files that are already open in an editor tab. E.g. in the vscode repo linked from the README search for "nodeModulesPath" and no results, but open bootstrap-node.js and it's there on line 22.

Github allows you to search through repositories as long as they're not forks.

GitHub search is notoriously poor, though—it can only match whole words (e.g. the query "FooBar" does not match the text "FooBarBaz"), and it doesn't support regexes.

If anyone is looking for actually useful cross-repo search: https://grep.app/

This is great, thank you.

And way worse it doesn't even keep word order and similar.

So searching for `fn foobar` will return any file containing the words `fn` and `foobar` not caring about you looking for `fn foobar`.

Then if you find what you want opening the preview doesn't jump to the right line in the file so I have to search again using "find in page".

In addition to the flaws mentioned by the other commenters (whole word only, no regexes), Github will only search the master branch of a repo, which makes it useless for my two most common tasks "where did this code used to be used" and "does this unmerged PR manage to remove all of the references to this code in its refactor (incl. in comments/etc)"

EDIT: Unfortunately, it seems like search doesn't work at all on this site, which is a shame. (at least, when I tried to do it on https://github1s.com/rails/rails it failed)

It does have search, but I'd be willing to wager that the normal workflow when using that is "try searching for something, look at the results page, swear, clone, ..."

How does that work? I've never been able to find this option. Also, this tool's search is broken. It searches only the currently open file.

And as long as you’re not trying to do a case-sensitive search.

> I really wish it had Cmd+P support for searching for project files.

Works for me. CTRL+P on Linux though.

> Am I missing something obvious?

Better search, find definition, ...

Search is completely broken for me... for example on https://github1s.com/matryer/bitbar, searching for just the letter "a" returns no results. Am I doing something wrong?

Search appears to only work once the files are cached, if you open a file then close it, search will find it.

Then you need to cache all files, which you were already doing years ago by cloning and browsing locally.

I too see no special value in the end.

Ah, makes sense! Thanks!

It appears to only work for files which have already been opened.

Nothing obvious. I've found Cmd+Shift+P, then delete the > character, works extremely well in place of Cmd+P.

Confirmed CMD+P just worked for me on mac.

Shift+CMD+P does not but without Shift it works

Yeah, I do the same. I feel the thing that's missing is navigate to definitions/declarations (cmd+])

Yup. T'is pretty good indeed. I have told world+dog.

This, so much this!

We are so used to JavaScript SPAs taking a long time to load. People will Webpack it then use a tool to inline CSS and sort scripts. I find it easier and faster to use no loader at all, and manually sort scripts. The build process is less likely to break, because there is none, and it builds instantly, because there is none, it loads directly from the filesystem. Most modern browsers (even with IE11 included) support enough ES6 features that you can write your code directly in the common supported subset.[0] I had a multiplayer game with hundreds of hours of gameplay get on the front page with "loads in less than one second" in the HN headline. (http://vnav.io)

[0]: https://wwwperiodictable.surge.sh

This. This just nails it. I honestly was in awe when I saw this repo, you don’t see these very often on here. So much Tier 1 talent in all aspects - product, UX, and tech.

Flawless execution on all fronts. I’ve always wanted an easy way to preview a repo in VS Code and this is it.

Agreed. This also demonstrates: Does one-thing and does it well.

It surely opens a repo in VSCode, but it doesn't seem to have any language server support built in. For example, if I open a Go repository, I can't navigate code (Go to references, Find references etc). GitHub Workspaces (although takes waaay longer to provision) is better at this. I wish GitHub did a faster loading read-only version like this.

I'm only speculating, but the reason is likely because language servers are not written in JS. I assume electron apps can spin up arbitrary processes, allowing for a language servers to be written in anything. It'd be neat to see these language servers compiled to WASM and run as a web worker, although I suspect vscode isn't setup for that.

I think Codespaces is able to pull it off because the language servers, and vscode itself, is really running on Github's backends. They've set up the frontend to connect to a remote host.

I handle this by firing up a Fargate instance with a Docker container pre-configured for VSCode Remote SSH. Then once you connect to it, you can install whatever language server you want assuming it's not baked into the Docker image. An EFS mount persists my sources across runs too, and I can scale it up to whatever size Fargate instance my development of the day needs.

Would be cool to tie it into this.

Thats the trade off. If you have everything supported upfront then the loading performance would be abysmal and it would take 2 minutes to load the entire app on a desktop machine. This is perfect for browsing through code.

So surely, it will never make money. :(

why is that a sad face? do things have to earn money to have any worth?

It would be nice reward the author for making something that is useful, not just by patting him/her on the back. I think that is what heyoo is talking about

Creating a useful tool that becomes well known (or a de facto standard) in the community, a successful project you proudly add to your resume, can pay for itself and much more indirectly.

Not as lucrative as profiting directly from it.

I respect non open source software very much. They put hard work into it, and I have absolutely zero, zilch right to ask for its source. I am willing and happy to pay for a service if it benefits me. OSS and non-OSS can coexist. There is no need to bash on non-OSS software. It's folks like you and me, writing code, providing for the family.

Github1s, I could see myself paying $50 for a yearly fee. I would use this thing all the time.

I get the opposite vibe from the parent comment: that usefulness and worthiness is often detached from monetary reward.

How nice it would be for great work to be compensated more fairly.

If it doesn't make money but need to run infrastructure it's not likely to live for very long?

def do_things_have_to_earn_money_to_have_any_worth(dev: Developer) -> bool:

    if dev.strong_financial_background():

      return False

    return True

It can make a shit ton of money through programming job ads.

Good point. I think most people aren't aware that it costs €500 - €1000 to post a single job ad on an important platform.

Of course, the rate will be a lot lower for small companies, but with something like this you'd have perfect targeting. And you don't even need any invasive privacy tracking for targeting: Just let people buy ads on specific repos.

Also, at least in my personal experience, people really don't mind job ads. Job ads are the only ads I regularly click on, because I'm curious what companies are looking for (even though I'm not looking for a job)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com