
Show HN: ChangeOver – A new IDE - milansuk
https://milansuk.github.io/ChangeOver/
======
milansuk
Hi, author here! As you know software is eating the world. It's a huge market.
But only a "few" millions of people can program and the other billions of
people are just consumers. With this project, I try to change it. In other
words: "IDE as an appliance". ChangeOver is closer to Office software than
average IDE.

Please keep in mind it's an alpha version(2nd release), so use-cases are
limited. Next build will have drawing functions(graphs, etc.) and better
multimedia support.

I'm trying to offer whole platform experience, where IDE, Rendering, GUI,
File-system, Network, Database and Interpreter work together as a one piece of
software. Please try it and If you like it or even If you don't like it,
please send your feedback and feel free to ask questions.

-Milan

~~~
pan69
Many many years ago I had a small web development business making websites for
clients. These clients were typical small to medium sized business. Most of
the websites we produced were made with WordPress, because, all our clients
wanted to update their own website. However, out of the many clients we had
built websites for over the years, only one client actually managed to update
their own website by themselves. The others just called us whenever they
wanted to update their website and just paid us to do it for them. This was
because updating websites was easy for "us" since we did it day in and day
out, we had "context" and we "understood" how it worked whereas for our
clients, regardless of all they easy buttons they could click, it was still to
difficult to operate.

I admire the work you have put in and you've created a great project. But
point and click programming will make it easier for "programmers", not for
everyone else to write software.

~~~
milansuk
The current version of ChangeOver is like an assembler! I had to go through
this painful process to build "base" version. I understand you. What you're
seeing right now is just point&click GUI, relational database and point&click
programming with REPL. Nothing new. But there will be a lot more. Today's IDEs
can finish the words(sometimes lines) for you. ChangeOver will finish your
algorithms. Try imagine two cloud apps side by side and you just connect them
without using APIs or some 3rd party services like Zapier. And more.

I believe that everyone wants to make their ideas real. And sure, there will
be always incidental complexity and people will suffer a little bit. Today's
platforms don't really have IDEs, they just tell you: give us file with
javascript/python/etc.. Web, Mobile and Desktop apps are mostly fixed for end-
user. That's why I really like PowerPoint for it's all in one(run/browse
presentation, but also create/edit). Of course, presentations have limited
use-cases.

What we need is a new "standard". People don't put Excel on their CVs anymore,
because everyone knows it. When you have a problem with a spreadsheet you
don't call MS technical support or outsource it like a web development, but
you solve it inside the company. Web or WordPress are probably still too
complicated.

------
ben509
It would be helpful if you could expand on what you're trying to accomplish
with this.

Especially, I get that it's alpha and the use cases are limited, but what
would be the first practical uses of 1.0?

How does it compare to other software? How would it compare to something like
HyperCard[1]? What about Jupyter[2] more recently? If Office has VBA, what do
you want to do that it can't?

[1]: [http://hypercard.org/](http://hypercard.org/) [2]:
[https://jupyter.org/](https://jupyter.org/)

~~~
milansuk
The biggest difference is no code(text programming). Platforms in same space
still require some coding time to time, which is a problem for average
computer user. For example to write even a few lines of python code, you have
to know tons of things about python. Function's steps in ChangeOver are simple
to use and thanks to REPL users can quickly find problems, which non-
programmers will do tons. Also, ChangeOver database is to design to handle
billions of records. Most of the office programs have problems with scale.

First practical use-case? This is something I struggle a lot. I spend most of
the time programming ChangeOver that I forgot to think outside the box. Thank
you for sending my mind this way.

