RONIN | Hacker News Reader

RONIN

ronin.co

13 pointsmindrun10 comments

I’m very confused as to what this actually is. Not sure if OP is affiliated with the linked site or not, but it would be useful to have some documentation that explains: (1) the problem statement, (2) how this product solves the stated problem better than other solutions.

Basically why should someone click the “Get started” button.

Far too many engineers think creating a startup is about writing code. Writing the code is the easy part. Communicating why someone else should care about the code or the product is the hard part.

But it's fully buzzword compatible!

"Enjoy a collaborative editing experience, while taking advantage of true serverless scalability, strong consistency, ACID-compliance, sharding, and other database properties."

"Programmatically interacting with records on RONIN is made possible through its unique query syntax, designed to allow for accessing data in the most “humane” way possible, as it closely mimics the English language."

Here's the syntax:

    get.blogPosts = {
        'where.author.handle.is': 'elaine',
        'where.ronin.createdAt.isLessThan': new Date(),
        including: ['author']
    };

This is SQL made hard.

Ugh. Yeah "unique query syntax" is not a feature.

I suspect this whole thing may be GPT generated buzzword bullshit.

    get.account.with.id = 'acc_fa0k5kkw35fik9pu';

    get.account.with = {
      lastName: 'Elaine',
      email: 'elaine@kojima-productions.com'
    };

I can't decide whether this is genius simplicity, or a terrible leaky-abstraction hack. Interesting.

I'm no fan of LISPs but this is taking paren-phobia to a new level.

There's this and a few other magical things in the client that give me pause, in particular:

    const [post, comments] = await query(({ get }) => {
      get.post.with.slug = 'new-pricing';
      get.comments;
    });

there is simply no way to make that type safe without wrapping or forking TypeScript, and consumers really don't want that. Why make that tradeoff? Especially when it's so easy to accomplish with a more normal syntax:

    const [post, comments] = await query(({ get }) => [
      get('post').with({slug: 'new-pricing'}),
      get('comments')
    ]);

I don't get what this is. Is it a CMS? Or a database? Or both?

What is this UX? What am I looking at? Why do I care? The main page has one blurb in the center which, as noted by others, is filled with buzzwords, and says "learn about it below...!"

Ok so the only thing on the page is a centered text box and a footer (feels like a strange choice) with "Log In" and "Get Started" button. When I see that I think "well, I'm not signing up to find out what this is" and get ready to leave. However first I try to scroll to see if there's anything "below" the fold, and surprise, there's nothing else. Why say below if there's nothing below?

But there's that Footer. This must be navigation, right? Introduction is highlighted, so presumably this control works like the footer in iOS? The fact that all four links are on the footer and one is highlighted leads me to believe that yes, this is a static footer that allows navigation across pages. I click the Features link, expecting the page to slide over and load a page with some discussion on what this actually is and what it's meant to accomplish, with Features highlighted on the footer. This is not what happened. The footer disappeared, and became a sidebar, which is also somehow my dashboard according to the text on page... MY dashboard? I haven't created any account. How am I meant to navigate back to the introduction page to get to the Updates or Community links? I click back in my browser. I go to the Updates page. It's a direct link to x.com, a site I don't want to touch with a ten foot pole. I was expecting a project blog for some reason, not fascist infested social media.

I came straight here to make this comment. In typing up this comment and interacting more with your site, I see there IS a way back to the Introduction page with the footer from the Features page, and it's called "Learn More" and leads back to the emptiest page on the site. What more am I learning on that page? Or from x.com (besides what a fusk Musk is)? I never made it to your Community page. I don't see a point when I still have no idea what this is yet. From mousing over it, I can tell that it's going to force my browser to send an xdg signal to open Discord. That's great. That's nice. I like when users aren't warned by the page where they're going. This is good design. Call it Discord for the sake of all.

This is what the introduction to the Features is:

> To query RONIN, start by creating a new App (such as “Website”) in the “Apps” section of your space on the dashboard (left sidebar), which will provide you with a token.

This is the first thing on the page and really doesn't tell me what this is or is meant to accomplish in plain language. This does not introduce me to the features, it tells me to interact with a UI element that does not exist because I have not made an account because I don't want to create one for a product that I don't understand. And I'm certainly not installing this through npm before I even know what this software is capable or accomplishes.

Respectfully, I have no idea what this is or what I'm supposed to take away from it other than bad ideas not to emulate.

What???

Reply on news.ycombinator.com