
I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix - prawn
http://anildash.com/2016/12/im-at-fog-creek-and-were-introducing-gomix.html
======
user5994461
1/4 of the article about what is Fog Creek and how well everyone knows it.

1/4 of the article about culture and other guys and... I don't know what the
hell it's talking about. I'm not even bothering reading half the sentence
anymore.

1/4 Then it's talking about other unrelated products now? Outlook something.

> "Gomix brings back the fun of the “view source” web"

Oh finally. I had to re-read the article 3 times to find something about the
new product, only at the end of the article!

Finished reading. Don't know what the product is about or what it's intended
for.

Is it a AB testing software? Is it a a PageHacker[1] clone? Don't know.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/page-
hacker/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/page-hacker/)

~~~
te_chris
Yawn. Does this genre of comment have to be top of every thread?

~~~
nzjrs
It's warranted in this case as it's responding to the worst launch post I can
recall reading.

~~~
hashhar
This is actually not the launch post. This is the launch post [1].

1: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/05/31/introducing-
hyperd...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/05/31/introducing-hyperdev/)

~~~
brudgers
The Hacker News discussion of the announcement:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11808911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11808911)

------
jszymborski
I really like the spirit of this, and I hate to be the gnu in the room, but
the only thing holding this back is that it's centralised.

Again, I totally get how that might sound stupid. "How can we have nice things
if we always need to solve the decentralisation problem first?", is one of a
billion reasonable responses to my comment, but I'm just a guy who has gotten
his heart broken before by the likes of Geocities, which they reference
directly in the Overview video.

I trust FogCreek a lot more than I ever trusted Yahoo!, but I still never
stray too far from the sidewalk anymore.

~~~
kowdermeister
What's wrong with being centralized? It's just a prototyping platform. I doubt
anyone would build a production app on this.

I recently used it to play with websockets and being centralized was the main
reason it worked so well.

~~~
svantana
Exactly this. It's like saying shadertoy is bad because it's centralized. When
in reality it doesn't matter because everyone is going to lift their code out
to their production env when they're done experimenting.

------
chvid
This mostly seems to be about a new CEO at Fog Creek.

I have never heard of him but appearantly he has a big following. And it
appears that a very large number of people don't like him - enough to create a
bunch of new accounts here at HN just to comment on his persona.

Fog Creek has to me always been about Joel on Software. And to me they always
got a lot of credit and extra attention to their products because of his
excellent writing. It must be hard for a new CEO to follow up on that.

As for the product; it has already been announced and discussed here earlier.

Personally I fail to see what it adds to an already crowded space of online,
web-based, collaborative development environments. Honestly I think has too
few features and is kinda ugly. But given that Trello and Stack Overflow has
very large user bases maybe it is able to push thru and gain critical mass.

~~~
GarethX
We think it's a hugely underserved market. I've written a little about where
we think Gomix fits relative to other similar products:
[https://medium.com/gomix/gomix-and-the-evolution-of-
paas-362...](https://medium.com/gomix/gomix-and-the-evolution-of-
paas-3624fed131b9)

~~~
jt2190
Thanks for the link.

The key paragraph for me was this one:

> The Gomix model is: just click. And in that respect, we have much in common
> with developer playgrounds like CodePen and JSFiddle. They too are fun for
> trying things out, and a nice way for developers to share ideas. But they
> don’t provide any ability to run back-end code, which greatly limits the
> types of things that you can build with them. What’s more, key features like
> realtime collaboration between multiple users are often limited to only
> paying users, putting up a barrier for educational use or simple pair-
> programming scenarios.

------
jedmeyers
As a native Russian speaker, I can't help but notice that the name sounds
really close to the Russian offensive word for homosexual people - 'gomik's.
Can't say if it's going to negatively affect the product but it's certainly
not a good thing. Mitsubishi Pajero is not being sold in the Americas under
that name for a reason.

~~~
camus2
> offensive word for homosexual people - 'gomik's

Could be worse, imagine a product named Gopnik /s

~~~
eps
No, that would've not been worse.

------
mistermann
Considering there are probably many thousands of developer hours invested in
this, I hope Fog Creek invests ten or thirty hours into making some quick and
dirty youtube videos showing starting from scratch and building out a a few
full apps with persistence, some integrations, etc so we can see what that
involves. I still don't completely understand what GoMix is exactly from the
video shown here.

~~~
smikhanov
No, please, not a video — this is the most inefficient way of conveying
information about a product aimed at developers. Just write a well-structured
text tutorial.

~~~
kpil
I have noticed that a lot of young people have never learned to read fast or
skim large documents.

My guess is that is the reason we're tortured with hours long videos with very
little content.

~~~
stevenleeg
Young person here! (at least I hope I still count!)

My anecdotal data point: the homepage only seemed to have a video explanation,
I dropped off right then because I didn't want to watch a 2 minute video about
how this works.

------
olegp
This is very similar to Akshell
([http://toughbyte.com/akshell/](http://toughbyte.com/akshell/)) which we
worked on more than six years ago with @korenyushkin and that made the front
page of HN on a number of occasions.

Despite being promoted by Fog Creek, I suspect that Gomix will run into the
same problem that we did: professional developers won't use it as they already
have the tools they prefer, whereas hobbyists won't be willing to pay. Without
a viable business model, a service like this won't grow.

I hope I'm wrong though! AppJet, a similar service from a YC team
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppJet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppJet))
was the reason I got into JavaScript.

PS. If you're looking for something similar, but simpler and geared towards
backend apps and micro services (think AWS Lambda), you should check out
[https://unitcluster.com/](https://unitcluster.com/)

~~~
irq-1
Don't people who are starting out find these systems to be too difficult? You
have to know much more to use this, then the "view source" days: Http
codes/headers, javascript, npm?, css... Those weren't things you dealt with
when changing Html on your local browser. I'm sure I don't have a good
perspective on what new coders can handle, but this seems like too much.

~~~
olegp
Good point. AppJet and Akshell had their own built in libraries and guides,
whereas with Gomix you're expected to already know about Node, NPM and figure
out which libraries to use yourself. This is likely to make this too complex
for people just starting out, making the model even less viable.

On a somewhat related note, one thing I'd like to see is cheap Heroku like
hosting for Node. Most Node web apps could get by with 64MB of memory and
processes could be started quickly in response to incoming requests, making it
possible to price this at 1 USD per app per month.

~~~
jacques_chester
Pivotal Web Services[0] uses Cloud Foundry, allowing you to specify any
instance size you want, to the megabyte.

(The pricing page[1] is deliberately simplified, but you really can specify to
the megabyte what you want).

[0] [http://run.pivotal.io/](http://run.pivotal.io/)

[1] [http://run.pivotal.io/pricing/](http://run.pivotal.io/pricing/)

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal.

------
ransom1538
First Joel is brilliant. I love the idea. However,

"Set up your Alexa skill in your Amazon developer account."

"TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID and TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN - available from
[https://www.twilio.com/user/account/settings"](https://www.twilio.com/user/account/settings")

...

Things have changed since 99. The walled gardens are up. Credit cards are
required everywhere. I hope the 'casual' programmer can fill out all these
forms and not be scared by AUTH_TOKENS. I wish gomix had a pool of community
accounts. (eg for Twilio where you get like 100 free texts and you just hack
on).

~~~
tezza
quick setup'n'go in 1999 was mostly a php/perl web provider. is AUTH_TOKEN
really too much different for having to set up a mysql db in '99 and putting
in DB_HOST, DB_PORT, DB_USER and DB_PASS ?

thats what a lot if the LAMP stacks had back then at a minimum. then make a
page woth php_info in it and carefully scan the verbose output to see what
your cgi renderer was compiled with

~~~
Nullabillity
Yes. DB_HOST and co. are stuff you run locally on your own computer.
AUTH_TOKEN means you're stuck with some external service, that will probably
charge you at some point.

------
dpweb
I like this alot. For brainstorming and trying out quick ideas, its a really
fast way to prototype server side code, even without the remix/social
features.

I'll explain why I think this product is important. Everyone knows the js dev
world has fallen vicrim to the irresistable urge to abstract away and you end
up with toolchain on top of toolchain.

Node and express made it possible to get an app going instantly, but now, not
so instant cause you have this that and the other to install and more
importantly learn how to use. For example, since Stackoverflow was mentioned,
take a look there at how many people are stuck, not on js, they're confused by
Angular or whatever framework was supposed to make their life easier. Simpler
frameworks and simpler ways are usually pretty well received, so I view gomix
as being in that spirit.

Congrats to the makers its an interesting tool.

------
facorreia
> to stop coding from being an exclusionary priesthood for a small few

Are there really people that see it that way? For me it's just the opposite,
programming is a field that is easily accessible to anyone that's interested,
with a very low entry bar.

Since I learned to program when I was a teenager, by reading a book about the
BASIC language and taking an introductory class where I could use a
microcomputer, I have a hard time thinking about it as "an exclusionary
priesthood for a small few".

~~~
blakeyrat
I see it that way.

That attitude used to exist back in the 90s, with products like HyperCard,
Filemaker, even Microsoft Access. There was a time when it was just _expected_
that development software had a graphical interface builder for developers to
use. (Heck, even IDEs for really difficult languages, like C++, had them.)

But "real developers" crapped all over those tools, especially Access. And
when "real developers" create programming tools, they don't spend even 10
milliseconds thinking about accessibility or usability or user experience--
look at Git (created in 2005) as a perfect example. There was a time when
terrible software like Git was mocked and derided, not praised.

So while back in 1998, anybody could program their own recipe database with
drag&drop and a little scripting in HyperCard or Access, now in 2016 they
can't. They could try perhaps in one of the "leftover" easy environments, like
WinForms, but it's about an order of magnitude more difficult to learn, and if
they want to share their solution with someone, they have to learn Git which
is about two orders of magnitude more difficult to learn.

The world you grew up in no longer exists, and we move further from that ideal
every year. Sorry, but the "high priesthood" concept (make everything
difficult and annoying so we can demand more salary) won in our industry, and
it won decades ago.

~~~
facorreia
The world I grew up on didn't have HyperCard, Filemaker or Access. I wrote
code (as opposed to dragging and dropping, which I couldn't, because there
weren't mouses our GUIs). I used primitive text editors to write BASIC, COBOL,
C and Assembly code and I printed it on paper to better understand the whole
program. I typed programs from listings on magazines. All of that as a
teenager.

The tools we have now, and the libraries and learning resources (like YouTube)
make it that much easier, not harder, for someone to learn and get started.

~~~
blakeyrat
Ok?

It's "easier" in that it doesn't cost money, I'll grant you that. It's not
"easier" in the sense that development tools are more accessible,
discoverable, or usable than they were a decade ago. How many of those YouTube
videos only exist because the tools they're teaching have terrible usability?

------
prawn
Amazed me to read the part of Joel's side of this where he talks about the
staff counts at Stack Overflow and Trello. I remember the early days of his
blog, SO, and when Trello was announced. Now Trello has 100 staff and SO has
300.

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/06/anil-dash-is-
the-n...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/06/anil-dash-is-the-new-ceo-
of-fog-creek-software/)

------
cocktailpeanuts
Why is a post about a product launch that was made a month ago #1 on HN right
now? Did something happen?

~~~
mjolk
Someone pushing their social network to come here and upvote.

~~~
anildash
Nah, if we'd have done that it certainly wouldn't have been while I was asleep
and over a major holiday.

~~~
mjolk
I wasn't implying you directly, as it seems (from comments in this thread),
that you are benefitting from a wave of PC-pressure. The internet-collectivist
movement is strong, so it could have quite easily been a fan.

In any case, it's cool that you're responding to a thread about your blog. I
wish you and yours nothing but health and happiness in 2017 from here in
Russia.

------
jph
I love Fog Creek and use Trello daily. I'm your target audience. If you could
make this self-hosted i.e. on my own company's intranet secure servers, I
would pay a lot for it.

~~~
im2nguyen
Ditto. It'll would be awesome if there was an ability to download the files
you 'remixed' so you can self host.

It could serve as a great educational tool too. Something that would allow
people who are overwhelmed to get their feet wet and 'build something
functional'. Getting 'hello world' to print on a console is cool, but it won't
excite someone as much as getting a live website to print 'hello world'.

~~~
anildash
Yep! We're doing exactly this — hope you'll give it a try. :)

------
EugeneOZ
One more tool for managers and non-tech product owners, to sell them idea "any
cool app can be made just by few clicks of mouse, your dreams will come true,
developers are lying about complexity". And in reality all of these "just
copy-paste from github" will require tons of work to integrate, because in
reality 3 party plugins are not so carefully prepared for Gomix as in their
video presentation.

~~~
ayanray
As an aside, does anyone have a list of tools that are in this category of
"One more tool for managers and non-tech product owners, to sell them idea
\"any cool app can be made just by few clicks of mouse, your dreams will come
true\"". What's a good place to find such tools?

~~~
EugeneOZ
Even if you are trolling, good example of such products: PHPMaker. I hate it
wholeheartedly as a programmer, but if you like tools like this - you will be
satisfied :)

------
kaosjester
I read the blog post and I still have no idea what Gomix is. Is it just a web-
based nodejs ide?

~~~
rickyc091
It's basically jsfiddle or codepen for nodejs. I have to admit, it's pretty
interesting. I'm bias as I look at this from a teaching perspective and it
makes it a lot simpler to just get into the meat. Looking at the code, there's
a bit of magic. If you spin up the parse server it states that it requires a
monogodb ENV key yet it'll just work without one. I'd imagine they are
spinning up services behind the scenes.

Doesn't look like there's currently any way to add more modules. At least I
haven't found it yet. Interested in testing out the import feature...

------
vortico
A few years ago I got into the habit of using alternate languages to HTML,
CSS, and Javascript---namely Pug, Stylus, and Coffeescript---and I'm
physically unable to use the originals any more. Are these supported by Gomix?

~~~
aerovistae
That doesn't get in your way for finding jobs?

~~~
vortico
No, I work in a laboratory. Web dev is a hobby for me, and it seems Gomix is
designed for hobbyists. There are many hobbyists I know who share the same
opinion, so it would nice for Gomix to support languages which emit
HTML/CSS/JS.

------
alooPotato
so while I'm coding, the site is down for my users? (because half written code
throws errors until finished)

I like the auto-deploy because the iteration cycle is amazing for testing and
realtime collab, but it would be great if I it auto-deployed to a staging
area, then when satisfied promote that to be live...

~~~
GarethX
We'll be adding some type of super simple 'branching' type functionality
allowing people to develop without breaking production.

~~~
alooPotato
Is that happening soonish?

~~~
anildash
Yes-ish. :)

------
techbubble
This looks like a slightly upgraded Mozilla Thimble
[https://thimble.mozilla.org](https://thimble.mozilla.org)

~~~
gkoberger
They're both online editors that use the word "remix", but that's really it.

Mozilla Thimble is a HTML/CSS/JS learning tool. It's frontend only and doesn't
have realtime collaboration.

Gomix is backend and frontend. It's collaborative, so a team can work on it at
the same time. They're looking to change how teams work together by replacing
version control. It also deploys instantly, so there's no
saving/uploading/pushing/etc.

Source: [https://learning.mozilla.org/blog/introducing-the-new-
thimbl...](https://learning.mozilla.org/blog/introducing-the-new-thimble-an-
educational-code-editor-for-teaching-and-learning-the-web) and
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/05/31/introducing-
hyperd...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/05/31/introducing-hyperdev/)

~~~
patates
I still didn't understand how they replace version control for the sake of
something better. AFAICT, it just lacks version control?

~~~
facorreia
Lack of version control is a deal breaker for me to just go through the
trouble of opening their page and clicking on "Try".

Maybe there will be Kiln integration at some point?

------
pacaro
Is a software company founded in 2000 really "venerable"?

I would have thought that would be more appropriate for software companies
founded 40+ years ago — around longer than most careers

~~~
kowdermeister
It's not the length of operation, but the track record.

------
Stratoscope
Anil, I don't know you, and you certainly don't know me. But I have a word of
advice.

When you join a company a few weeks before it releases a new software product,
have the humility to admit that you had precious little to do with it. Don't
write about yourself, at all! Write about the product, what it can do for me,
and the amazing team who built it.

I'm going to go way out of line and do a bit of a hatchet job on your writing,
because this is honestly how it came across to me when I read your post. Here
are your exact words, with a few ellipses thrown in to emphasize the point.

> _I 'M AT FOG CREEK…I’m the new CEO of Fog Creek Software!_

> _If you know me…It’s no secret that I’ve become increasingly critical of the
> conventional tech world’s lack of focus on ethics, humanity, and inclusion._

> _[Fog Creek 's] brilliant and thoughtful founders Michael and Joel were
> willing to trust me to be the CEO of the company that have so carefully
> shepherded all these years._ [sic]

> _…after challenges like shutting down ThinkUp earlier this year, I started
> reckoning a bit with how to be most effective in pushing the tech industry
> to be a little more thoughtful. This personal inflection point became
> clearer as the team at Activate released this year 's Activate Outlook —
> seven years after we'd set out to create the leading strategy consulting
> company, I realized we'd not just succeeded, but done so to the degree where
> the team could now run effectively without me being involved day-to-day.
> Between stepping back to an advisory role at Activate and sharpening the
> focus of my work for the organizations whose boards I serve on, I was able
> to bring some clarity to the work in front of me._

> _I realized that I wanted to fully engage myself with a single, all-
> encompassing role that would use all my skills, and that Fog Creek 's legacy
> of leading the industry made it the perfect place to try and push things
> forward again. So now, I have a simple answer if someone at a cocktail party
> asks what I do._

> _What do I do? I 'm the CEO of a small software company in downtown
> Manhattan that’s as influential in the tech world as companies 1000 times
> our size._

> _For the past several years, I found that the overhead of provisioning
> servers, or trying to maintain a dev environment, or wrangling with version
> control took all the fun out of coding for me, to the point where I don’t
> just hack on things for fun anymore. I can’t imagine how much more
> intimidating it would be if I hadn’t spent many years coding._

Tell me, does any of this have anything to do with… What was the product
called again? What does it do for me? And how can you helpfully communicate
that value?

Now I realize this post was on your personal blog. So a bit of self-indulgence
is understandable. But still… Is all of this about _you_ , or about a great
company and its new product that you were lucky enough to be asked to be
involved with?

I should admit that I'm probably just jealous. How in the world do you get a
publication like TechCrunch to give you _personal_ credit for this product
when you had so little to do with it? Their headline from 12/6: "Anil Dash,
new CEO of Fog Creek, launches platform to remove barriers to app development"

~~~
indexerror
Agreed. That is Anil Dash for you. Read his other blog posts as well.

~~~
Stratoscope
Oh, you are right. I never heard of this guy before, but this quote from his
"about" page is choice: "His Twitter account is the only one that’s been
retweeted by the White House, Bill Gates and Prince, a succinct summarization
of Dash’s interests."

[http://anildash.com/about.html](http://anildash.com/about.html)

~~~
therein
He really sounds like the worst kind of person, doesn't he?

~~~
anildash
Depends, I think having a bio that seems too self-congratulatory is not as bad
as, say, perpetrating systemic violence or oppression against entire groups of
people. Some can disagree with that, I guess.

------
huhtenberg
In Russian "Gomik" is an intentionally offensive, very rude form of
"homosexual".

Just FYI, Fog Creek.

------
abbot2
I wonder, is there a quick way to learn what's that all about without watching
a video? As usual, seems like good old text reading/writing skills are
ignored...

~~~
GarethX
Here you go: [https://gomix.com/about/](https://gomix.com/about/)

~~~
abbot2
May be in reading it wrong, but that page contains another video, couple
example snapshots and "why we built this". I still have no idea what all the
fuzz is about, and I'm not wasting my time on videos.

~~~
GarethX
Here's the text of the page for you:

Gomix is the easiest way to build the app or bot of your dreams.

With working example apps to remix, a code editor to modify them, instant
hosting and deployment - anybody can build a web app on Gomix, for free.

Start by remixing. You never have to start from a blank slate. Remix a full,
working app to personalize it for your needs, or build on the most popular and
powerful developer frameworks to create your app.

Real collaboration. You don’t have to deal with the complexity of version
control or tracking changes — the built-in editor allows multiple people to
edit code at once and undo mistakes as they happen, just like working together
in Google Docs.

It's not training wheels. Gomix is not a limited "toy" version of a real
developer environment — your Gomix app is hosted on the exact same industry
standard infrastructure that the best developers use to run their apps.

We handle the mess. While you work with Gomix, we seamlessly upgrade your
servers and cloud infrastructure in the background. There’s no deployment or
server provisioning because it all happens automatically.

Why Did We Make Gomix? In some ways, Gomix is a throwback to an older era of
software or the internet, when there were simpler ways to get started making
cool stuff. For people who were around at that time, they'll understand Gomix
easily: We’re bringing “View Source” back. Of course, they didn't literally
take “View Source” out of web browsers, but the ability to just look at the
code behind something, and tweak it, and make your own thing, was essential to
making the Internet fun, and weird, and diverse, in its early days. And that
has sadly disappeared.

Similarly, in even earlier eras, tools like HyperCard on the Mac and Visual
Basic on Windows democratized software creation, letting regular individuals
or casual business users create useful apps to meet their needs. During
development, Gomix was even called “HyperDev”, as a nod to this history — and
its early-90s aesthetic subtly nods to that heritage, too.

Whether we look at simple issues like being able to do fun things with an
Amazon Echo, or hugely complex issues like trying to make tech and programming
more inclusive, Gomix has a role to play in solving problems that matter. And
we’re going to have fun doing it!

------
benjaminjosephw
Gomix looks like the most ideal tool for hackathons where multiple people can
really quickly collaborate on a live updating prototype. It also seems like a
fantastic tool for teaching since learners have a really tight feedback loop
without any set-up. Obviously, most of us here aren't the real audience for
this but I can see it really lowering the barrier of entry for a lot of
people.

------
mrtimo
I found this post with examples of things recently built with gomix quite
illustrative: [https://medium.com/gomix/what-can-you-build-on-
gomix-557e380...](https://medium.com/gomix/what-can-you-build-on-
gomix-557e38003f4e#.pbbi7291b)

------
lovehashbrowns
This is actually helping me learn nodejs. I'm so happy right now! I'm gonna be
messing around with the very basic todo app as I learn more about
node/express.

~~~
GarethX
ah cool - if you're new to Node.js, then be sure to check out our free
interactive course: [https://gomix.com/#!/project/node-
beginner](https://gomix.com/#!/project/node-beginner)

------
scoot
This seems like a slightly more balanced blog post (posted to HN a few weeks
ago): [https://medium.com/gomix/introducing-gomix-
aec205c421cb#.jcd...](https://medium.com/gomix/introducing-gomix-
aec205c421cb#.jcdijcso1)

Also discussed on this Show HN post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13116426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13116426)

------
mrits
After reading the blog and comments on here I now have a really bad impression
of Fog Creek's CEO and little hope for their future.

------
joelcollinsdc
Saw this on medium and got excited. Checked for commentary on HN, and found
Gomix was posted to HN 4 times with little fanfare
([https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=gomix.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=gomix.com)).

Now when a tech celebrity posts about it, the post blows up but is filled with
discussion of the personality...

~~~
anildash
I wrote this post the same day as the rest of the announcements; I don't know
why my personal blog post took off now, but I'd definitely prefer to focus on
the product, not me.

~~~
eldavido
Anil - not sure you're still reading here but the civility with which you've
handled a lot of criticism really impresses me.

~~~
anildash
Heh, thanks. I've been on the internet long enough to know most of what folks
are going to fuss about on HN probably doesn't have much to actually do with
me as a person.

------
mdekkers
After reading that, I don't think I'd want to work at Fog Creek.

------
mrsmee89
Is there a datastore of some kind?

~~~
kimsk112
They do provide persistent file system.

[https://gomix.com/help/faqs/](https://gomix.com/help/faqs/)

"We have a persistent file system, so anything you store within your project
is kept. This means you can use files as a flat file database, or save your
database files locally (see our SQLite3 and NeDB examples). You can also use
third-party storage services, like a hosted MongoDB database or Redis (see our
MongoDB example).

We recommend creating a folder called ‘.data’ as a safe place to store your
database files. This folder isn’t copied across when a project is remixed."

~~~
mrsmee89
Thank you. Seems kind of cumbersome though. Why wouldn't they provide one
themselves.

~~~
GarethX
We'll be looking to add some simple to use database type functionality. We've
only recently launched, so expect the product to develop over the coming
months.

------
jc4p
I love Gomix. I spent the past weekend helping a friend migrate a static
front-end only CSS skin they had made over to a live server on Gomix. That
friend has moved onto running webpack and babel locally to do more advanced
stuff, but Gomix was a godsend in helping demonstrate to him that the
problemspace isn't as horrifyingly large as he expected. We communicated and
"code reviewed" via writing comments to each other in js files. It was a
really pleasant experience.

I loved it when it was called Hyperdev too. At first I didn't really get it (I
work at Stack Overflow so we're part of the same extended family meaning my
first impression of Hyperdev was before it was as polished), honestly at first
I was angry they were even spending the time doing something I considered so
stupid. Until I had a use for it.

I had gotten a Raspberry Pi foundation touch-screen LCD, spent my Saturday
morning setting it up, had a grandiose idea of what I wanted to make using it
(basically just a "smart" note / TODO / grocery list manager I could attach to
my fridge's door) and... realized I had to write yet-another-webapp. I've been
making web apps for around a dozen years. The last thing I want to do in my
life is spend the time writing the basics of a web-app.

My idea was going to be a thing where I'd use Trello (wow this is becoming an
ad for all my sister companies remind me to plug FogBugz, Kiln, and CityDesk
at some point too) as the "data store". I have Trello boards for everything.
Work to-dos, Personal to-dos, even a trello list for the records I own and the
records I want to own.

After writing the basics of what I wanted down, I started sketching the UI.
And you know what? After I had all that set, I was able to make a prototype of
the entire thing in less than 15 minutes using Gomix (at the time Hyperdev).
You can view my prototype here: [https://coal-sting.gomix.me/](https://coal-
sting.gomix.me/)

I didn't end up building the full flow, but I've been coming back to the Gomix
project every month or two and adding one-more-MVP-checklist-feature to my
prototype. And once I'm done with it? I can take all the JS I wrote, put it
into a project bundled with webpack like the rest of my projects, and place it
directly onto my RPi and touchscreen.

I know Gomix looks deceptively simple, but that's exactly why I love it. I
_really_ value minimizing the time it takes to go from "ooh that's a cool
idea" to "holy shit I'm actually working on the idea and not the cruft and
skeleton code I need to work on before I get to work on the idea itself!"

Half the time the reason why I stop working on a side project is because I'm
getting bored before I get to even work on the real side project. I am always
just looking for an excuse to give up and go back to playing video games.

Gomix is perfect for me. I can't wait until they support more languages so I
can throw away all the time I've spent and code I've written making
templates[0] and bootstrappers[1] for myself.

[0] [https://github.com/jc4p/flask-react-
skeleton](https://github.com/jc4p/flask-react-skeleton) [1]
[https://github.com/jc4p/quickstart](https://github.com/jc4p/quickstart)

~~~
therein
This sounds forced/scripted beyond belief. It really reads like an Amazon
review written in exchange of a product:

> I love my FooBar 2001. I spent the past weekend migrating my dishwasher's
> contents into my new FooBar 2001 and it was a very pleasant experience. I
> was intimidated by how much work it would be at first but to my surprise it
> was A BREEZE. I'm so happy now with my new Foobar 2001 that I will probably
> use my dishwasher as a litterbox.

~~~
jc4p
I mean... I work for a related company (as mentioned in the post)... sorry for
being excited about something they're working on?

I just felt the need to comment because a lot of the comments remind me of my
first impression of the product before I really gave it a chance.

I was _so_ angry they were working on it, they started working on it after a
quiet period following the Fog Creek / Trello split and my first impression
was they were merely looking for something to waste their time doing, it just
didn't make sense. But, I tried it, and damn I love it.

You can go look through my 5 years worth of HN comments if you'd like, when I
like something I am always this excited about it.

~~~
WhitneyLand
There ya go - should have started out your previous comment with this text.
This one sounds much more honest and thoughtful.

Again, not questioning your ethics. Just trying help make your argument more
impactful.

~~~
jc4p
Yeah, very valid. The comment was stream-of-consciousness because I saw this
post when I got home from a pre-new-years-eve party last night.

Honestly with the rest of this thread and the feedback though, I wish I hadn't
posted it at all. I used to really enjoy participating in this community.

------
jimnotgym
I am waiting for Fog reek to write something as good as Trello, and I'm not
sure this is it. Trello is a genius piece of clear thinking, and is loved by
non tech people, but has a 'power user' features and a decent API.

I'm not sure about this Gomix thing. I might send my kids to have a play on it
and see what they think. I can't imagine it is going to have the uptake of
Trello though

------
tomc1985
It's a little odd to read a "programming is just so gosh darn hard" sales
pitch from Fog Creek.

~~~
anildash
That might be my fault if I wrote this poorly. What I was trying to say was
closer to "programming is fun, but all the prerequisites it takes to get code
running these days aren't very satisfying".

------
brylie
Will Gomix be open source?

~~~
anildash
Most of Gomix is totally standard open source infrastructure, and people can
release projects on Gomix under any license they want. We don't currently have
plans to open source the parts of Gomix that run the community or enable
remixing apps, but we'll follow the community's lead based on what they need.

------
spraak
Just use Zeit's 'now'

------
graphememes
Looks horrible, still don't know what it's for.

~~~
astrodust
It's like [http://codepad.org](http://codepad.org) or
[http://jsfiddle.net](http://jsfiddle.net) but with persistence and GitHub
integration, project support, and live collaborative editing.

------
redsummer
Anil Dash seems like a deeply creepy guy.

He inserts race into everything:
[https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/336853407698657280](https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/336853407698657280)

He gets people fired for making jokes:
[http://archive.is/ddDFz](http://archive.is/ddDFz)

I'm sure Gomix will have some level of success, though I have no idea what it
is from his post - which just seems to be about how his is now CEO and all the
glory is his. I wonder how his team feel about that? Perhaps some of them are
white, so the team doesn't matter?

~~~
mmjaa
I think Anil Dash is a creep. His involvement in Gomix and Fog Creek means I'm
less interested in those projects, frankly. I think he's one of the bigger
blowhards in this scene, and I don't see the value in his participation, given
that he seems more interested in social engineering his way to the top than ..
you know .. actual engineering.

~~~
redsummer
Judging from the lack of clarity in his post, he doesn't seem to know what his
own product is. But he sure knows that he is the new CEO (he mentions it a few
times). And he certainly thinks the successes of Fog Creek somehow reflect on
him - in fact he talks about that more than the product.

~~~
yitchelle
For me, it is a bad sign when the personalities in the company has a higher
profile than the products it is selling/making. Fog Creek seems to be heading
down this path.

------
throwaway-17733
How many times can this blowhard say "I'm the CEO" in one blog post? He & his
CEOness are not the story here.

~~~
anildash
Hey throwaway, this is a link to my personal blog. Our official company posts
aren't about me, just the one on my site is. You'll also find my personal
Instagram has pictures of me & my kid and my personal Tumblr has some songs
and pictures that I like.

