Ask YC: HeclBuilder.com | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: HeclBuilder.com

11 pointsdavidw11 comments

ATTENTION: Java plugin required. Sorry, but it wouldn't be possible to build this otherwise.

I have hacked up http://www.heclbuilder.com recently. It's not complete, but I thought I'd ask for comments and opinions about what people would like to see in it.

I know the design is quite simple - I am just not very good at that so I kept it simple. Very specific advice appreciated, "I don't like the design" is a bit useless, unless you want to volunteer to fix it:-)

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Link: http://heclbuilder.com

I like what I see. A short demo video of how to create a small script and test it out might be helpful.

I'm a bit ambivalent about videos. I personally loathe them and won't watch them, but realize that some people might like to sit there watching a video instead of clicking on 'create script' and trying it out.

What would you want to see in one?

A video that is less than 5 mins which shows how to create a simple hello world script. I don't like longer tutorial videos either, but a demo helps anyone with starting trouble.

There is a big difference between "If you have trouble with applets..." and "If these applets rape your browser with a rusty pole..." -- I would have preferred a... heartier warning.

Firefox froze so bad it didn't even know it was frozen. It was actually kind of interesting.

I clicked the first script in the list (the 2d rotator thingy) and it froze up my browser and maxed my cpu when I hit run script. Not too cool. Glad I have the Session Restore addon. Running the latest Firefox on Mac OS X.

BTW, I think that comment sounded a little nastier than I meant it to. Just trying to give some helpfule feedback :-) Cool concept though.

Sorry about that, but it's the Java plugin. Not a lot I can do about that:-(

I got the same failure with a WebKit nightly. I run Java applets and JWS apps from the browser all the time, so the Java Plugin doesn't seem to be broken on my system.

Could it be because I'm still stuck on Java 1.5?

I checked on it, and it's giving me errors even with the latest Java from here:

http://download.java.net/jdk6/

Sigh... I wish the Java guys would get it together.

Neat little application! And Hecl is a great up-and-coming programming language.

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