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Kiln

github.com

233 pointsadelevie61 comments

Kiln is already a well-known software development tool from Fog Creek: http://www.fogcreek.com/kiln/. I wonder if the author knows.

nope, never heard of it.

Clearly not that well-known, then. I've never heard of it either. The Fog Creek Kiln project doesn't have its own Wikipedia page (which I consider a rough threshold for notability).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_creek

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Spolsky

I was referring to the Kiln project by Fog Creek. Obviously, Fog Creek has its own Wiki page.

Your original post said "Fog Creek doesn't have it's own Wikipedia page". Then you edited it to say Kiln project after you saw these links. How about some integrity?

> Your original post said "Fog Creek doesn't have it's own Wikipedia page". Then you edited it to say Kiln project after you saw these links.

Wrong, my post originally said "The Fog Creek project" (as opposed to the OP's project). The only word I added was "Kiln", to make it clearer.

> How about some integrity?

How about stopping to think before making accusations about other people's integrity, rather than shooting from the hip? I see you're new to HN. Why don't you learn some etiquette by reading the HN guidelines, it'll help you to avoid the banhammer: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I suspect most software developers worth their salt have heard of Joel Spolsky, and by extension Fog Creek. Aside from them actually having their own pages on Wikipedia (which someone else has linked to), Kiln is a trademark of Fog Creek, so not an ideal choice of name for an OSS project.

> I suspect most software developers worth their salt have heard of Joel Spolsky, and by extension Fog Creek.

Having heard of Joel or Fog Creek is one thing. Having heard of their Kiln project is another.

I've heard of both Joel and Fog Creek, but not Kiln. So, yes.

Agreed, I haven't really paid attention to what he or Fog Creek has been doing since this site killed off the "Joel on Software" site.

I had honestly never heard of Joel until I did my research when applying at Stack Overflow. Didn't affect the outcome.

We've been on HN a half dozen times, been featured in some trade magazines, have been a gold Mercurial sponsor, and have built-in support in competitor's products (e.g. SourceTree). We're also the second link if you google for "Kiln". I think that qualifies as relatively notable.

We also have a trademark on the name Kiln in the context of developer tools.

Edit: That last line sounds like a threat, which it absolutely isn't. Just, due to how these things work, picking another name probably makes sense.

My first reaction when I saw this submission was "Holy shit, who leaked kiln?"

Yeah, that was my reaction as well. Kiln == Fog Creek's hg server in my head.

It is now a git and hg server all at the same time.

Mine was similar, if a little less cynical: "Holy shit, Fog Creek is open-sourcing Kiln? On April Fool's Day?"

Would they really host it on GitHub? :)

Ooh, good point. Though one issue I've noticed popping up of late is that people are starting to associate "open source" with "GitHub" instead of with checking whether the source is open or not. So who knows, maybe a GitHub mirror of their own Kiln-hosted source for April Fool's?

On April 1st, absolutely.

do you want me to change the name?

Edit: I'm brainstorming names on the rubymotion google group. F-ing naming, it's so annoying. I'll try and get it renamed soon.

If someone told me they had a registered trademark on the name I chose for my product, I'd be a fool not to change the name. That's a huge liability.

You should change the name because "kiln" is an uncomfortable and awkward word to pronounce.

How about Layer, Ply, Stratum, Flag, Stage, Platter, Plate, Lamina, Pellicle, Film, Leaf, Slice, Shive, Rasher, Eschar, or Nest?

Developer tools for iOS, on iOS. You probably don't really care about the domain name, so there are a lot of possibilities.

Kiln is kind of a shitty name to begin with, so I'm sure you'll think of something better. I'd focus on how it's self-hosted, handheld, mobile, lightweight, and portable.

"Phone Self Exam" is one bad idea, with the obvious non-Ada Initiative approved branding concept...

> do you want me to change the name?

You're joking, right? Yes. You need to pick a name for your product that doesn't clash with a well established product in the same field.

I only clicked this article because I thought Joel had gone open-source. I suspect most everyone reading this thread thought the same thing.

iKiln?

Google and whois are the minimum threshold for picking names these days. If you intend to start a business, add a trademark search to that.

There's also no law against picking descriptive names.

Did you develop an egg smashing simulator? Where's the harm in calling it "Egg Smash Simulator Kit" instead of "Humpty" or some other confusing bloody puntastic name?

I think "Egg Smash Simulator Professional Deluxe 2013 Edition" has a better ring to it.

You may have a future at Capcom Marketing.

Random fact of the day: If you read "Capcom" in Russian it sounds like "Sarsom".

How about "kilt"

iOS Easy Bake(tm)

Try Anvil. Similar blacksmith-y name, nothing majorly confusing or conflicting on the first page of a google or ddg search.

Oven? Smith?

iSpector, Forge, Layers

Changing its name would be an appreciated gesture, I think. I'm sure others will agree. I confused it initially thinking it would be related to Fog Creek.

Same. Title made me wonder if Github and FogCreek had entered into some kind cross-compatibility deal or something.

It is literally the first google result when you search for "kiln", even above the original definition of the term.

Think you are getting personalized search, it's #2 if not logged in to Google.

Hrm. Might be regional? Or tied to user agent? If I search in incognito mode it's still #1 but it's #2 via lynx from two different VPSes.

It's geo-based, it seems. It's #1 when not logged in, in the UK; it's #2 (with Wikipedia #1) when coming from the US.

It's also the first result in DDG, fwiw.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kiln

Tip for naming your projects: google it first

I'm not blaming anyone or saying anyone is wrong.

But I almost named a project I was involved "beaver" something. (No, I am not a native speaker)

There's a Kiln for Ring app context management in the Clojure world too.

Sounds like an opportunity. Maybe a name/brand search tool dedicated to software projects that gives a report on conflicts that costs a few bucks or is ad-supported.

Google?

This is awesome, great work! However, and I don't mean to be rude, lemme just give you a tip about your documentation.

I'm not a "documentation expert" or anything, but IMHO I'd say there is too much information on your "landing page" and not a clear "call to action":

- How about some installation instructions?

- Basic usage? (addressing the main features, those which most users will probably use most of the time) If I were you I'd put the details about plugins somewhere in the Wiki.

I don't have a lot of spare time to check out your thing, so the project becomes increasingly unattractive as I have to waste more and more time to figure out how to use it / how to get it up and running for a basic test.

Again, IMHO, I believe this applies to most hackers, and to open source documentation in general. Very often I see great hackers who can code 1000x better than I do, but fail to write 'attractive' documentation for their projects.

As cool as that looks, I've been using DCIntrospect for a year or two, and it's nearly everything I need in a live UI inspection tool.

https://github.com/domesticcatsoftware/DCIntrospect

I spent a long time trying to find similar things to what I was building, and of course now I'm finding out about PonyDebugger and this tool.

Different, though, because Kiln is meant to be more generic, and pluggable.

It's not totally clear from the project page, but I'm pretty sure this particular project is for RubyMotion, and you'll need to be writing your apps with that to benefit. You wouldn't be able to integrate Kiln straight into an existing Objective-C/XCode flow, unlike DCIntrospect. Someone do correct me if I'm wrong on this though.

That's correct - RubyMotion only for now.

This looks like it gives a lot of what I hoped PonyDebugger [1] would be when I first heard about it. Cool!

[1]: https://github.com/square/PonyDebugger

Thanks! PonyDebugger is solid, though, and much more useful from when you're at a computer. This project is all about getting debugging information from your device.

name is resolved, so all the trolls and snipes that are hung up on the NAME instead of the PRODUCT, please continue your trolling and sniping, but on a new topic (like this comment! it's perfect!)

https://github.com/colinta/motion-xray

I hope that this turns into on-device development. I would pay a handsome sum to be able to code on my iPad mini or iPhone on the train.

Gone now. Anyone have a mirror?

It's working fine for me. Did you scroll down to the readme?

It's there for me.

Check the link to make sure there weren't any added parameters. I know hacker node had/has a problem with that.

How many people are using ruby motion to create ios apps?

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