13 ms·
MS Paint IDE
- chews 5y agoThis is the type of wild stuff I come to HN for... will I ever use it? No. Is it amazing? Eff yes.
- forgotmypw17 5y agoIf you already have a lot of Java stuff on your resume, why not add it for a bit of humor? Of course, you'd have to at least get it working and play around.
- develatio 5y agoI bet the author had a lot of fun, but still, I must ask: "why, oh why!!?? Just why!!?"
- bob1029 5y agomspaint is still one of those things I instantly reach for when I've got a framebuffer on my clipboard and I quickly need to make edits for pasting into email/issue/etc. Almost everyone else on my team uses some other fancy bullshit that is probably better in every way, but I have found deep comfort in the simplicity & speed of this ancient application. My preference for mspaint is probably out of habit from working for a megacorp that disallowed installing of any third party applications on work computers. It was the most accessible option on any computer in the org.
- canadianfella 5y agoYou call screenshots framebuffers?
- NikolaNovak 5y agoIt's the most accessible on any corporate computer, but also fast to start and fast to use. I use Greenshot to capture images, but its image editor cannot move rasterized bitmap around... so I still need to go to MS Paint or equivalent. Interestingly, the Paint 3D that now ships with Windows, is a strangely unfocused app.
- ddingus 5y agoIt wants to include the poly mesh as a basic data type, like text, bitmaps. The ecosystem just is not there.
- tyingq 5y agoPaint.net is free and gives you photoshop-ish functionality with a more mspaint type of UI. You would probably like it. https://getpaint.net https://getpaint.net
- ddingus 5y agoSame. I use the crap out of MSPaint and Paint.net when I know I will be doing a bit more. Simple, fast, does just enough. There is another basic reason and that is bitmaps and text are still crazy useful for basic communications. I started out using both of those early on in 8 bit land. Still dominant today. In that sense, MSPaint makes sense as a basic OS tool.
- ak39 5y agoDIWHY (Incredible talent shown though)
- matsemann 5y agoThe video where he does search&replace on the images using OCR shows how much effort went into this. Just wild, haha.
- jcelerier 5y agofinally we can get a fix for https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5508110/why-is-this-program-erroneously-rejected-by-three-c-compilers https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5508110/why-is-this-prog...
- tester756 5y agohaha, that's really good thread
- chungy 5y agoIt's funny, but the OP probably overplayed their hand. No newbie is going to figure out how to install three compilers. ;)
- ateng 5y agoLegendary. Please scroll to the comments of the top answer if you haven’t. There’s another “MS Paint IDE” there
- tpmx 5y agoSuperiority: It's not Eclipse. Sold.
- neogodless 5y agoMy curiosity is piqued, but I also found it hard to navigate this web site. How do I see screenshots? When I clicked "Info" on the Theming section I was taken back to the top of the home page (Firefox, Android.)
- pininja 5y agoSkimming through the demo video on the homepage is rewarding.
- zksmk 5y agoI'm also on Firefox (Focus) on Android. I found the GitHub link at the bottom of the page: https://github.com/MSPaintIDE/MSPaintIDE https://github.com/MSPaintIDE/MSPaintIDE . It has screenshots and a video of usage.
- sombremesa 5y agoScroll down.
- sfgweilr4f 5y agoThis has a vaguely steam punk sensibility of a rethink of those old punch cards using only technology / techniques from the current era. Instead of the cards you've got image files. Maybe I missed it, but it would be good if it also created image outputs from the program stdout.
- snarfy 5y agoMakes me want to take screenshots and paste them as comments in the code, with circles and arrows and stuff.
- chirau 5y agoMS Paint's convenience and simplicity is underrated. I end up subconsciously using it more often than I think I do. Screenshot pastes, quick edits to blur out stuff before sharing etc.
- jraph 5y ago> Screenshot pastes This is a failure of Windows's screenshot tool though, in my opinion. I find this incredibly clunky. On Plasma/KDE, pressing "print screen" takes a screenshot of the complete screen, and a dialog opens and offers you to copy the screenshot into the clipboard, to save it in a file or to open / edit it with the tool of your choice. You can also take another screenshot of the entire screen, or a window, or an area that you can draw with the mouse, with a delay or not. On other environments, the screenshot is automatically saved in a file without interaction. I'm not a huge fan but this is what you end up doing most of the time on Windows anyway, but by manually pasting in Paint and saving.
- pseudosavant 5y agoPre Windows 10 I'd agree. Try Win+Shift+S on Windows 10.
- jraph 5y agoGood to know, what does it do? Too bad it's not bound to the Print Screen key but I guess it would break many people's workflow.
- gregorkas 5y agoIt allows you to select a region of the screen, then copies it to your clipboard, so you can easily paste it to other programs. It’s the best workflow there is because it requires no other running tools, and the binding is even simpler than ctrl+cmd+shift+4 on MacOS.
- whywhywhywhy 5y agoThe is an option for this in Ease of Use > Keyboard > Print Screen shortcut
- davidscolgan 5y agoIt feels like there is a kernel of something realllly cool here but I can't quite tell what it is.
- Gene_Parmesan 5y agoI think the whole idea is cool! It doesn't have to be useful to be cool, in fact some of the coolest projects are eminently unuseful. I think this is an awesome resume project. They've built an IDE (which is impressive by itself), and then they've got this whole parsing code from OCR thing on top that's not necessarily useful but man is it cool. The fact that it shows a good sense of humor is just icing on the cake. Like, search and replace on pictures of code contained in PNG files... Just amazing.
- davidscolgan 5y agoAh I am in no way trying to be dismissive - this is really cool by itself, and it feels like there may be applications of this that would be highly useful at the same time.
- RubbaBoy 5y agoThat was essentially the goal with this in the end, I was able to talk to red hat developers about the actual IDE part, do a ton of research on the custom OCR, learn about the Google Assistant API, and a ton of more stuff. I'm glad you enjoy the project, I dumped way more time than I probably should have in this silly thing, but it should pay off when I start looking for jobs in the field lol
- warpech 5y agoBut does it work with Wine?
- nmstoker 5y agoIs this meant to be some sort of amusing tool in the spirit of "because we can" or is there a genuine practical purpose to it?
- mathhulk 5y agoNo general purpose. I know the guy who made this and the hype actually started on a Minecraft forum for developers where there were a lot of Eclipse vs. IntelliJ arguments. It was a hilarious addition to any “What is the best IDE?” threads! He became quite interested in OCR and thought this would be a fun project and thus MS Paint IDE was born!
- grawprog 5y ago>Can read, parse, and highlight code from purely image files >Finding and replacing of text from image files These two features actually seem pretty useful. There's been more than one time i've found code as an image or something it would have been nice to be able to copy. To be honest, it's come up enough that i've wanted to be able to copy text directly from an image I've wondered if such a tool existed. Never enough to actually go look for one, I'm sure many exist, but enough that i've thought about it at least.
- artificial 5y agoThere’s an app called Memos on iOS that has that capability. It’s great for searching images for text, for example I use it to take photos of my receipts, menus, screenshots, and entirely it’s on device and nearly instant (with 40k images). I’m sure other apps exist for various platforms and in the same niche. Looks like iOS 15 is adding text selection to their photos tool so if there’s a phone number visible it’s selectable and interactive.
- pfarrell 5y agoNot totally related, but enough that I’ll give a shout out to tabula. It can ocr tabular data from a pdf. I’m not affiliated but I really need to get my company to contribute $$$ to the project. For now I’ll namecheck them. https://tabula.technology/ https://tabula.technology/
- b20000 5y agoi thought this was going to generate code based on drawings you made in ms paint.
- pininja 5y agoIf you can draw convincing enough text with a paint brush the OCR should pick it up. But yeah next level would be drawing a square inside of a rectangle to generate “class Square extends Rectangle”
- b20000 5y agomaybe the next level of leetcode will be to write code in this IDE using only the spray can tool, and if you don't get it done in less than 1 minute, they will pass on you. of course, everyone will happily go along with it.
- mathhulk 5y agoFor reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17958021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17958021 I’m glad to see this continue blowing up! Love you RubbaBoy <3
- RubbaBoy 5y agoThanks for the support as always <3 Glad people still find enjoyment in this cursed project
- pininja 5y agoI can finally put MS Paint back on my resume under “technical” skills! Amazing dedication, made my day!
- amelius 5y agoMaking images executable sounds like a bad idea.
- bronzeage 5y agoI want to see this working in python - good luck reading whitespace in OCR...
- arthurcolle 5y agoIs this more of a... "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should." or a "We choose to go to the Moon not because it is easy but because it is hard." situation?
- edoceo 5y agoYes.
- raghuveerdotnet 5y agoLol. Looks more like the first option to me, but I also feel that there is something very very special about these kind of efforts and people who don’t mind spending their time and energy on things like this, precisely because of the fact that the world is filled with the ‘useful-or-not’ types. In fact, I feel we need a lot more of these ‘do-I-find-it-personally-interesting-or-not’ types, so that the rest of us can keep riding the ‘whether-or-not’ bandwagon and when that one off ‘interesting-or-not’ turns out to be useful, in ways we didn’t foresee, we can ask them to join us.
- worker767424 5y ago> if they should I hear crypto is a good place for this attitude, these days. I actually got an email from a recruiter describing the product as React for smart contracts.
- cpach 5y agoWhat a time to be alive!
- Forge36 5y agoDemonstration of skills demonstrated with a fun example. I'm assuming there is image->Text translation, process automation + functional demo, and UI design. Digging into the github page it appears a custom OCR solution was created. I wonder if anyone has forked/used this in cool places.
- londons_explore 5y agoWhile this is satire, it does raise the question:... Is it time to consider what benefits more advanced file formats for source code could offer? Like in this case for example, the image format could allow doodles, notes, and diagrams to be in the margins of the code...
- jorl17 5y agoI loved how TempleOS embedded 3D sprites right into the source code!
- aunetx 5y agoThis man was really smart...
- foobar33333 5y agoNot only that but you could print the 3D shapes to the terminal and copy/paste them in to other files.
- rvnx 5y agohttps://youtu.be/mBgIBF9Y6PE?t=485 https://youtu.be/mBgIBF9Y6PE?t=485 "We have graphics in the source-code"
- twoknee 5y agoRest in peace Terry.
- underwater 5y agoI've not seen his livestreams before, but this lived up to expectations. Within two minutes he's gone from demoing some innovative tech to calling people the n-word and spouting conspiracies about the CIA.
- andai 5y agoYouTube is asking me to provide my ID or credit card to view this -- apparently it's an EU thing ;( Even though I'm pretty sure I watched this video multiple times and have it saved.
- nxpnsv 5y agoLooks like its finally time for me to switch to windows...
- alberto-m 5y agoRelated: 93 % of Paint Splatters Are Valid Perl Programs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19576425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19576425)
- dang 5y agoSome past threads: MS Paint IDE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290834 - Aug 2020 (9 comments) MS Paint IDE - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17958021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17958021 - Sept 2018 (34 comments) Coding in MS Paint - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6589881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6589881 - Oct 2013 (4 comments)
- hudo 5y agoJesus what a colossal waste of time
- RubbaBoy 5y agoI couldn't put it better myself, 1k+ hours poured into this for a handful of laughs isn't a trade many would do
- dmz73 5y agoI know MS Paint is seen as a joke but what is the Linux program with equivalent functionality that actually works? Recently I wanted to copy image from Firefox and paste it into a program to crop and add some text. Ubuntu did not have a program installed that would let me do that. I tried few different programs available in the repository and none of them worked well enough to perform this task. Even GIMP was not usable because the icons and text would not scale up enough to be visible by human eye on 4k 15" laptop screen. In the end I had to reboot into Windows and use MS Paint which had this done in a flash. So, what is the Linux Paint that actually works like MS Paint?
- primaryobjects 5y agoA great web-based version is https://www.photopea.com https://www.photopea.com
- quickthrower2 5y agoThat’s a web based version of photoshop!
- brian_herman 5y agohttps://jspaint.app https://jspaint.app
- olivierestsage 5y agoYour point is well made, but for anyone wondering about this, I've found Krita[1] to be better than the GIMP for everyday use like this. [1] https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/
- Pompidou 5y agoOkay but mspaint is starting so fast and consume so little memory.
- UbrtrbNchDneRle 5y agoImageMagick. Even has a command line interface! On a serious note, I don’t have any problems with GIMP, 2.10 is supposed to have hiDPI support. Have you tried Krita and MyPaint?
- smegma2 5y ago> MS Paint IDE is a program that can read a normal image file saved with MS Paint I'm curious is it reading the image or using something about the way MS paint stores its data?
- RubbaBoy 5y agoIt reads the actual image, it could be saved with any program
- quickthrower2 5y agoCan I finally compile those whiteboard interview exercises?
- ConfusedDog 5y agoI'm both confused and impressed by this... really can't think of a use case other than mentioned in previous comment about parsing out code from an image copied from somewhere, which is rare. Maybe pitch to some VC's, they might put in a couple millions just in case this is a hidden unicorn or something...
- whitetrump 5y agoit could be a bit more stupid, but not much more...
- sasaf5 5y ago"It provides a clean and simple interface, with your actual programming in a program you and millions of others already know how to use, and already have." Isn't that why many of us are using emacs/vim?
- drums8787 5y agoUm... wow. ;-) Suggestion: start the demo by showing what the thing actually does. I bet most visitors won't actually ever download/install. But I certainly was very curios to see what the hell this was, and it was rewarding to skip to the actual demo.
- rdines 5y agoThis is incredible. Need to go dig out the Bar-Mitzvah invitations I designed in MSpaint in 1990