

TraceGL: JavaScript code flow visualisation in WebGL - rikarends
https://trace.gl

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michael_miller
This is an amazing app, extremely underpriced for what it delivers! One thing
I'd love to see is the ability to do profiling, so I can see exactly how much
time was spent in each function invocation.

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DanielRibeiro
It is also nice to see how much great work is going on WebGL these days[1].
Hopefully, tools like this will help even more create amazing things with it.

[1]
[http://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/webgl-...](http://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/webgl-
breaking-into-the-real-world/)

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ajtaylor
This is an incredibly useful tool! I was trying to decide how the huge amount
of logging was handled in the display when he mentioned using WebGL - a cool
idea to this WebGL newbie. Then there is the ability to jump up and down the
stack, even through callbacks. This feature alone would be worth 15 EUR
because you don't have to set breakpoints in the browser's web inspector to
see exactly what is called and how - you just run the program and then look up
the traces!

I wonder how hard it would be to have the browser's native inspectors do the
same thing?

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saejox
Name of the app threw me off. I thought this was designed to attach to GL
context and show that is actually happening. Like Nvidia PerfHud.

Here is some criticism:

\- Your site straight up asks for my credit card number. Small line below
"Secure connection using Paymill GmbH" not enough for me to trust you. Believe
it or not PayPal or Amazon Payments would work better. At least i can get a
refund that way.

\- Where is the demo? I'm getting ripped off ?

\- I hate when people compare price of their products to a commodity. I don't
know how much coffee cost in your world but i can buy 100 cups of coffee where
i live. This kinda of comparisons always comes from the bunch that creates
long lines at Starbucks. Just don't assume 15 dollars aren't that much. That's
half the money i make in a day.

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rikarends
Hi Saejox, \- the name came from the domain, since its a GL UI it fits well
enough imho. \- tried to make it 'as simple as possible to buy' using the same
way Stripe does it (i dont touch CC's) \- can't solve international wage/price
discrepancies, unfortunately. \- i tried to pick a payment solution that
didnt' suck too much to integrate, paymill is 'the stripe competitor in
europe' and its a pretty clean process compared to paypal. And then there is
bitcoin too. \- As its not a trivial product i decided to make a video demo to
show what it can do.

Thanks for your feedback.

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marshray
Vote up (down) if you'd ever (never) dreamed of writing this kind of thing
yourself. :-) I'll report the number.

EDIT: 5 - 1 = net +4 votes as of 10:23 PDT.

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zurn
Most people can't vote down.

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marshray
Ah, I guess I can only do so sometimes as well. So feel free to leave a
comment, I'll register your downvote then you can delete your comment.

This experiment in ad-hoc polling is kind of showing the limits of the idea.

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simcop2387
I think an easier way would be to make two posts, Vote one up for each choice.
Wouldn't prevent double voting but the difference between the two would still
be accurate.

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georgecalm
Well, I'm completely blown away by this tool. The utility of it. The speed...
Amazing.

I think it's great that the developer decided to charge money for this too. It
has real value for me, it's going to save time, so why wouldn't I want to pay
to show my appreciation and to ensure it's being worked on?

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nym
For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't have paid with a credit card (too
much hassle!) but since I could pay with bitcoin you converted me into a
customer.

:D

Thanks for accepting bitcoin!

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rikarends
Thanks :) I just added it this morning. Now if only coinbase payment callbacks
would work, it would be much faster (not manual.)

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nym
Cups and Cakes Bakery uses BitPay.com- check out our video of it in action.
Payments are verified in about 30s-1m

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCYE4V6C8a8>

Also, Kai Ryssdal did a segment on us!
marketplace.org/topics/business/cupcakes-meet-bitcoins

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rikarends
All i really need is a wallet API where you can create a receive address, and
get a callback when something arrived. Everything else is just fluff :)

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sachingulaya
<http://blockchain.info/api/blockchain_wallet_api>

Blockchain.info has some really nifty(and free) API methods.

When a payment is received blockchain.info will notify the http URL specified
in [Account Settings]. The parameters will be supplied in a http GET request.
The callback url is limited to 255 characters in length.

Parameters value The value of the payment received in satoshi (not including
fees). Divide by 100000000 to get the value in BTC. transaction_hash The
transaction hash. input_address The bitcoin address that received the
transaction. confirmations The number of confirmations of this transaction.
{Custom Parameters} Any parameters included in the callback URL will be past
back to the callback URL in the notification.

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rikarends
ah nice thats exactly what i need.

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seddona
Looks great, just purchased.

+1 for coffeescript/source maps, we do everything in Coffee.

+1 for charging, i hope you get the support to work on this full time. Maybe
consider an open source basic / premium closed version though.

+1 for a sublime plugin that does code completion/inspection based on previous
runs of the code.

Nice work!

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nym
+1 for typescript instead of coffee.

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kcbanner
The name seems like a bit of a misnomer, I only just now realized this wasn't
a WebGL debugger.

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rikarends
Its a GL javascript tracer :) plus there is the domain.

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stu_k
The name also confused me and I thought it would just be for tracing WebGL.

From a developer standpoint it's cool that it's in WebGL. As a developer-user
I don't care, it just works well and fast!

I would genuinely suggest de-emphasizing the WebGL except in a behind-the-
scenes way.

(I've bought and played with it, and can't wait to chase down a bug!)

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shaunxcode
This looks incredible. Do you think it would be possible to utilize source
maps to allow this to work with coffee (etc) source directly?

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rikarends
Its theoretically possible, although not easy.

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showerst
The "Get it now" page immediately redirects to a 404 for me.
<https://trace.gl/undefined/getitnow.html>

Firefox 20/Mac

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rikarends
Hi i'll do a quick test in firefox, i haven't seen that one yet

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rikarends
Found it. i'll go fix it.

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ncrit
This looks nice! Watching the video I was just wondering if it would be more
useful if all code that is executed would be highlighted instead of the 2
colors for conditionals. That way one could identify the actual code path more
quickly.

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shurcooL
That looks like an awesome tool, good job.

You said you use VBOs for text rendering. Do you use some library for text
rendering or is it just coded from scratch?

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rikarends
I'm rendering font-textures using canvas, and using GL POINT sprites with
x+y+texture offsets (the ascii) in the vertexbuffers to store text.

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skrebbel
Pardon the off topic and probably downvoted-into-oblivion comment, but

Rik, je bent een botpad.

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Yuioup
Wie is Rik en wat is een botpad?

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kurd_debuggr
There is a pricetag that comes with the software, which is definitely not in
line with the typical javascript ideology, in my opinon.

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rikarends
I'm against showing banners in my app ;)

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United857
Why not open source it like most other JS tools? You've built on top of other
open-source such as node.js. Just a matter of good citizenship in the JS
community.

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rikarends
This tool has taken quite a lot of my time, and i though i'd try an actual
business model for a change.

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United857
I certainly appreciate that. But also, open source and business models are not
mutually exclusive. Perhaps you can open source the core code and then charge
for support or extensions, like many others do with Linux, Apache, etc.

Plus, if you have more people contributing changes/additions, you might have
less of a workload.

One last question for you: if I pay, do I get the source that I can tinker
with/extend, or is it in a minified/obfuscated format?

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rikarends
No i left the code unminified/unobfuscated on purpose. If you paid for it you
get the freedom to hack on it if you want.

