Show HN: SnapCode – a real Java IDE in the browser | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: SnapCode – a real Java IDE in the browser

reportmill.com

42 pointsjeffreportmill125 comments

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My apologies to FireFox users - it quickly hits an exception. Will fix today if I can, but still fine on Chrome and Safari in the meantime.

I found and fixed the major FireFox issue and put out the update. There is still another issue I'm tracking down, but it's much better.

Fascinating technology - it's good to see good ol' Swing and Graphics2D being used to target browsers in the same way React Native has gone the other way and allowed swapping the DOM renderer for a native renderer. I have a couple of questions, though. What is the pricing strategy? (Programmers who'd use it will grumble that its not FOSS, then those same programmers will grumble when the maintainers quit maintaining it. I suggest ignoring the grumbling entirely.) It's also a bit awkward in that my sense is that most (enterprise) UI programming is done with web tech, and has been for at least 10 years. Where are these Swing programmers going to come from?!

SnapCode is actually using SnapKit (https://github.com/reportmill/SnapKit) which can run on either WebAPI/DOM (in browser) or Swing (desktop). In the browser this helps slim the download and improve performance by using more browser native code.

For pricing, SnapCode is free for individual use and will remain so. Perhaps there will be funding opportunities from large organizations or for embedding use cases to help provide for the continued health of the product and community.

I think they folded this technology into their Gateway but IJ had a Swing surface that was built for "IDEA on the Web," too: https://github.com/JetBrains/projector-server#the-state-of-p...

see also:

https://github.com/JetBrains/projector-client#readme

https://github.com/JetBrains/projector-demo#readme

Is this using canvas graphics? I don't think I've ever seen that before for a modern web app. Reminds me of the Mac OS 9 in the browser demo. Can we get SnapCode running in there?

https://infinitemac.org/2000/Mac%20OS%209.0.4

Yes, every window is a canvas. All painting is done with an adapter so it uses DOM painting in the browser and Java Swing Graphics2D painting on the desktop. It's pretty much pixel perfect identical though.

Very cool! FYI the jar download link on your website is 404ing currently: https://reportmill.com/SnapCode/app/SnapCodeAll-2023.11.jar

I think this is some kind of CDN caching issue - that reference was removed from the launch file last week (but I've gotten a couple other reports). How did you work around it?

The link to that jar is coming from this page https://reportmill.com/SnapCode/download.html . Was just trying to download the jar to try it outside of the browser.

The online version is working well in my testing.

Oh right! I forgot to update that link, thanks for the report. I've updated it now.

Awesome, confirmed the link now works. On my (linux) machine I do see an issue with the jar after startup, I will submit a bug on your github page.

I think this project would be a great environment for getting my kids into coding, thanks for making it.

IDE in the browser is the future, similar to how people no longer install Microsoft Excel and instead use Google spreadsheet. Github codespaces, replit, hony.ai ... will replace installing VScode.

I'd rather jump into a pit full of rusty spikes

The browser certainly has unparalleled deployment advantages. Though for sustained use, I would recommend going desktop (there's a download link on the page). Java still does good desktop. :-)

Or maybe using new "Web Apps" feature like MacOS has to turn web app into desktop.

The browser^desktop thing is a false dichotomy. You can write browser-based programs that nonetheless aren't Web apps.

<https://wiki.triplescripts.org/wiki/NOT#Not_a_cloud_IDE>

The trick is to untangle the mental equivalence of runs-in-the-browser versus mobile code (code on demand) and/or cloud-thingy-accessed-via-thin-client, which are all orthogonal concepts. To often these get confused. But just like you give people a Java, Python, whatever bundle comprising an app that targets its associated runtime, you can give people a bundle to download and launch from their own computer where the $RUNTIME it's meant to be launched with is /usr/bin/firefox (or whatever).

(And no, this doesn't require browser support for unstable/experimental APIs like Chrome's newest proposed APIs for filesystem access. There are ways to get by with HTML5 stuff that's well-supported by every mainstream browser released in this decade.)

FYI, you don't have to install vscode (https://vscode.dev/). The announcement is a good overview of when that makes more or less sense: https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2021/10/20/vscode-dev

Do they really need Excel if they use Google spreadsheets ?

I hate to break it to you - excel is still the king in the spreadsheet world. Excel has decades of momentum to start with, and still gets continual upgrades. Moreover modern excel can also be web-based like Google and honestly it has very powerful features

The 'future' likely doesn't have a browser in it at all.

The industry is settling on the browser as the remote rendering platform.

This is cool! I assume I'm daft and just didn't look hard enough, but what is your privacy/data policy?

Thanks! SnapCode is actually 100% client based right now. It downloads the jars and the CheerpJ JVM browser runtime and runs on the local machine. Files are stored in the browser index-db.

There is a preview feature for using drop box and I'm looking into using local file system APIs, but its not really there yet.

Does that mean the user's code is compiled in the browser? Is the compliation a feature of Cheerpj?

The Java compiler is written in Java, so you can run it in CheerpJ just like anything else. JavaFiddle does this: https://github.com/leaningtech/javafiddle/blob/main/src/rout...

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