Ask HN: Things you wish existed but don't have time to build? - bojo
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Vaskivo
_This is something I 've been postponing for a long time. I'm mostly delaying
it for the "dread" of having to pick and learn a GUI library._

A quick and dirty content agnostic grid based level editor.

When making some game prototypes and in Ludum Dares I find myself making grid
based games. I use text files or excel to "build" my levels, but it is
cumbersome and not very flexible.

What I want is:

\- A grid view. Where I can "dig" cells. Either the grid is infinite or I can
add/remove columns and rows.

\- A generic "level content manager". I can add into the project a set of
"tags" (Enemy X, item Y, trap Z, event W) with a visual representation (shapes
and colors)

\- I can add these previously created "content" to cells in the map.

\- It exports to a generic format. JSON is the first one that comes to mind.

EXTRA: Export to Lua. With the option to add custom code bits to cells/content
that is semantically checked.

~~~
WillKirkby
Ogmo Editor by Matt Thorson (of TowerFall fame) seems to have been created to
fit exactly this niche. Exports to XML but it's open-source so you could
always change that.

[http://www.ogmoeditor.com/](http://www.ogmoeditor.com/)

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rpod
A program that detects shell commands that you often use together and makes
intelligent recommendations for automating your workflow.

Very naive example:

\- git add .

\- git commit -m "Some commit message"

\- git push

Becomes: newcmd . "Some commit message"

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krapp
Given how often people complain about the modern web being app-centric,
despite HTML, CSS and JS being meant for a document-centered model (and JS
really only existing as a gimmick to sell Netscape,) I've been wondering just
how well (or poorly) the web model could work with streaming applications.

In other words, instead of hacks that replicate a UI in the browser, have
something that isn't a browser but acts like it, and source code repositories
at URLs instead of documents which compile and run per request, or session (if
you want to "cache" them,) or whatever. This would differ from embedded
applets, flash or similar in that you would be pointing to code rather than
streaming and running binaries, which would enable the user to view or
possibly modify the source code before running.

Probably a terrible idea for numerous reasons, or it more or less already
exists and I just don't know about it (which is not unlikely) but it might be
interesting to see how it might work, and it would be far closer to the FOSS
ideal than the web, for which you can't actually see or modify anything other
than the result of requests.

~~~
idle_zealot
How is this different from just serving a website that is pure js?

~~~
krapp
Not much different, but the basic idea is to not be limited to a particular
runtime or language, and to get away from transpiling other languages to
javascript. Essentially, serving containers or emulators with native code,
rather than documents and JS.

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shaftway
A client-side transpiler from something like WPF to HTML.

I want native, rich binding of data in whatever directions necessary and a
model that makes sense. I don't want any bleed from HTML oddities, or even any
access to the HTML layer. Abstract that away from me entirely with something
that makes sense. Let me publish packages so I can deploy UI components in a
nice tiny bundle. I'm fine with Javascript being the code layer, but give me a
modern render layer, even if under the hood it's built on quirky HTML.

I feel like every library out there is a half-attempt at this, but every
single one ends up being "HTML, but with data binding". I don't want "HTML
with something". I want a modern presentation layer, using modern concepts.

Angular kind of does a decent job at binding, but I still need to handle weird
corner cases in HTML and hack things together. Polymer is further from HTML,
but the binding syntax is pretty gimped, and you end up using a bunch of div's
anyway to get things just right.

Maybe this exists, but my Google-fu is to weak to find it.

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sova
\+ portfolio maker for new devs, designers

\+ multi-platform software that let me use my wireless router as a wireless
mesh network... is possible?

\+ hydroponic year-round grocery store & restaurant

\+ screen-based multiplayer music games

\+ plant identification software for phones

~~~
sova
Just noticed a rather glaring typo, so here is the edit: When I said wireless
router, I actually meant using an individual computer's wireless card as a
component in a mesh-network. I think the idea of transient spatial networks is
rather sooncoming and futuristic in the sense that it is adaptive evolution of
technology... It would be cool to build something that would allow anybody to
broadcast their own wireless network in a radius from their machine, and have
other people that connect do the same, so that effectively you get a mini
pooled intranet of sorts.

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clusmore
Of the things I wish existed, the thing that's most well defined would be a
replacement set of commands to the Git Porcelain commands that output
structured data (e.g. JSON) instead of plaintext.

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tmaly
I wish all browsers followed the CSS standards the same way without browser
specific extensions.

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bbcbasic
I wish JS didn't exist.

~~~
StClaire
So...you wish someone built a time machine?

~~~
rpeden
Fortunately, there's a JavaScript package for that!

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/timemachine](https://www.npmjs.com/package/timemachine)

:)

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nnn1234
The semantic Web.

