

Offer HN: Free licenses for two developer tools - viggity

So, I've been working on two apps for the past year and a half. They're not extremely polished (I need better error handling), but the definitely get the job done and they've been paying a few of my bills.<p>Atomiq (www.getatomiq.com) will find all the places someone has copy and pasted code in your project. It supports analyzing C#, VB, Java, Javascript, Python, Ruby, Actionscript, C and C++. We leave it up to you on how to refactor the duplicate code, but you should definitely check out "the wheel" visualization (www.getatomiq.com/images/faq/wheel.png)<p>Nitriq (www.nitriq.com) is a code analysis, code review tool for .Net developers. It helps you find problem areas in your code by allowing you to write LINQ statements against your assemblies. It is in the same space as FXCop, but Nitriq makes in much more easy to tweak the kinds of problems you're looking for.<p>Both apps are written with WPF, so they're windows only (sorry linux/osx devs).<p>I love HN and find it to be a source of inspiration, so I'm offering free licenses to any HN'er who has been around for at least 6 months or has 50+ karma. Please send your name, HN ID, and email address to me (info in profile) and I'll send you a free license. Also let me know which tool you'd like. The system we have to generate licenses is kind of a pain to use right now, so it may take me a day or two to gen the license for you depending on how many people respond.<p>Thanks HN for being HN
======
cubicle67
I'm not able to take you up on your offer (I'm a Linux/OSX user), but what
you've got sounds pretty cool. Good luck with it

~~~
owyn
Looks cool, but I'm in the same situation. Windows is not a deal breaker, but
we're a PHP shop. :)

Any intention of adding more languages?

------
smiler
Viggity - I see you've been writing your apps in WPF. Did you see the news
about Evernote switching from WPF to native code. What are your thoughts on
that and do you find WPF to be a pain?

~~~
viggity
Sure, I was following that story most of yesterday.

I think it really comes down to what kind of app you're writing. Evernote
could have written their app in assembly and it'd be screaming fast but it'd
be a PITA to maintain. They chose to go C++ because speed is really important
to their customers, but I think they're going to have a harder time adding new
features and tweaking old ones. With such a robust, flexible system that WPF
provides, you're obviously going to have some performance overhead, but
creating new features becomes a lot more easy. And perf is obviously going to
get better with time simply due to the speed of your average PC.

For me, I absolutely _love_ WPF. The thing I love about it is that it is
stupid easy to make intuitive UI - I can put any kind of visual element
ANYWHERE I want. And using MVVM lets me keep a very nice separation between my
business logic and my presentation. In fact, I'm hooking up the same view
model to several different views and via declarative binding, changes to one
automatically update all the others. Granted, there is a fairly steep learning
curve, but there is a lot more training material now than there was 4 years
ago.

Also, FWIW, I've been doing some Silverlight dev and if SL could step up a
little and improve their binding system (WPF's is much more robust), I'd have
no problem switching over to Silverlight. I consider them to be two branches
of the same tech. I'm expecting a lot more parity between the binding systems
in SL 5.

------
rbxbx
How about making these service-based tools, so platform isn't an issue?

[and thanks for the offer]

~~~
viggity
I've considered it, but right now I've got too much invested in my current
presentation layer, which I think provides a large chunk of the value.

That, and I'd be wary of uploading my company's IP to a third party system.

~~~
limmeau
Is Atomiq more about copy-paste from foreign code or more about copy-paste
instead of refactoring to more general code? If the former, have you thought
about a turnitin-like service for CS departments?

~~~
viggity
Atomiq is about finding duplicates in your own code (so, the later).
Eventually, I'll be adding more robust pattern finding so it will find
structurally similar code (like the cheat detection that some CS departments
use). We ignore "fluff" like whitespace, capitalization, etc, but if the end
user changes all the variable names, Atomiq isn't going to catch it.

------
kingkilr
I know you said they're windows only, but do you have any idea if they work
under Mono or WINE?

~~~
viggity
Mono doesn't have a WPF alternative, so no on that front. I'm not sure about
WINE but I'm guessing so.

~~~
rlmw
Mono does have a Silverlight alternative. So if you're able to switch to
Silverlight in future then that might enable to create a crossplatform
version.

Best of luck.

------
jayaram
why is it only for people who are here for atleast for 6 months or 50+ karma ?

Could you just change it to everyone ?

~~~
phoenix24
oh! i don't have enough karma :'(

~~~
viggity
but you've been on for at least 6 months - I said either, not both :)

