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Show HN: FlyCode – Git-Based Copy and Translations Editor for Web Apps

185 points by JakeVacovec 4y ago

Hi HN community, Over the last six months, we’ve been building FlyCode, a product editing DevTool. We make it easy for team members to edit product copy in web and native apps’ code through FlyCode’s dashboard with auto-generated PRs instead of using a code editor. From the beginning, we built around the belief that codebase ownership should stay with developers and that tools should flexibly coexist with a codebase rather than dictate infra changes. The key shift for us was to identify ways to include non-technical teams as individual contributors in the development process. At FlyCode, we’re building a git-based product editor that makes it easy and safe for non-developers, to contribute to web & native apps code without actually coding. So far we’ve built [1]: 1) A GitHub application that scans your selected repositories in real-time for product copy. We are working on integrations to support GitLab and BitBucket in the future. 2) Editing React, Angular, and Vue code as well as JSON and gettext PO files (for international use-cases). We support editing product copy in resource files and hardcoded. 3) Pre-built GUI to invite your team to manage and edit product copy with auto-generated PRs. We are hoping to use this post as an opportunity to collect feedback from fellow hackers! Our open beta is fully self-service and takes about 5-10 minutes from sign up to first edit [2]. We recently added 3 demo repositories so anyone can try the platform [3]. If you’re using GitLab or BitBucket sign up to be notified when FlyCode is ready for you. We are far from our vision but the team - 10 amazing humans (we’re hiring developers [4]) - is working hard every day to improve the user experience and feature requests from our early collaborators (editing images, variables, JSON configuration, A/B testing, etc.). While the platform is still in “beta”, we are confident that today’s FlyCode creates significant value for teams, large and small. Your feedback is what guides us forward so please share any questions, comments, or concerns in the comments below. Join our (new) community on Discord [5] and follow us on Twitter [6] Feel free to contact me at: jake[at]flycode.com or fly[at]flycode.com [1] https://docs.flycode.com/ https://docs.flycode.com/ [2] https://flycode.com/developers https://flycode.com/developers [3] https://github.com/flycode-org https://github.com/flycode-org [4] https://flycode.notion.site/Jobs-FlyCode-94d9cdf269794c368cebc3caad12e416 https://flycode.notion.site/Jobs-FlyCode-94d9cdf269794c368ce... [5] https://discord.gg/sKc4rZnMuw https://discord.gg/sKc4rZnMuw [6] https://twitter.com/FlycodeHQ https://twitter.com/FlycodeHQ

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
etai-flycode 4y ago
CTO and co-founder here, I couldn’t be more proud of the team for shipping FlyCode’s open Beta so fast! As a compilers enthusiast for more than a decade, it is marvelous how analyzing and manipulating code has become more accessible in recent years and the possibilities it unlocks... very excited to empower teams to make edits for real web apps and save their developers time. Feel free to contact me as well at: etai[at]flycode.com
- fprct 4y ago
  Could you outline the most important advances from recent years that you see as contributing to the accessibility you are talking about?
  - etai-flycode 4y ago
    I remember how excited I was about a decade ago when Microsoft announced the Roslyn project, and how sad I was when switching my dev eco-system before it came out. AOP wasn't a new concept, and code generation was available - but it was a hard task to get done, and not accessible to the general dev community. Now, Roslyn ins't news anymore :) We have source generators in C#, and we not only have more main stream compiler plugins & annotation processor in Java and Kotlin (that spends a lot of time on their compiler API). The same process has happened for the JavaScript ecosystem. The AST revolution has hit the frontend/JS ecosystem big-time. Tools like Babel (and derivatives like jscodeshift and recast) have democratized analysis and transformation of code bases. I urge you to play around with ASTExplorer to see how vast is the support for getting a proper AST for source-code. Another big factor is the maturity GitHub marketplace. Today, smaller teams are able to ship production-ready apps for GitHub as the APIs have stabilized and are much documented than a few years ago. All these together makes code-editing products much more feasible than a few years ago. It's not that AST and source editing novel ideas did not exist it's just they matured enough that you can actually build a product that targets a big enough segment of the market.
4y ago

185 points by JakeVacovec 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

etai-flycode 4y ago

CTO and co-founder here, I couldn’t be more proud of the team for shipping FlyCode’s open Beta so fast! As a compilers enthusiast for more than a decade, it is marvelous how analyzing and manipulating code has become more accessible in recent years and the possibilities it unlocks... very excited to empower teams to make edits for real web apps and save their developers time. Feel free to contact me as well at: etai[at]flycode.com

fprct 4y ago
Could you outline the most important advances from recent years that you see as contributing to the accessibility you are talking about?
- etai-flycode 4y ago
  I remember how excited I was about a decade ago when Microsoft announced the Roslyn project, and how sad I was when switching my dev eco-system before it came out. AOP wasn't a new concept, and code generation was available - but it was a hard task to get done, and not accessible to the general dev community. Now, Roslyn ins't news anymore :) We have source generators in C#, and we not only have more main stream compiler plugins & annotation processor in Java and Kotlin (that spends a lot of time on their compiler API). The same process has happened for the JavaScript ecosystem. The AST revolution has hit the frontend/JS ecosystem big-time. Tools like Babel (and derivatives like jscodeshift and recast) have democratized analysis and transformation of code bases. I urge you to play around with ASTExplorer to see how vast is the support for getting a proper AST for source-code. Another big factor is the maturity GitHub marketplace. Today, smaller teams are able to ship production-ready apps for GitHub as the APIs have stabilized and are much documented than a few years ago. All these together makes code-editing products much more feasible than a few years ago. It's not that AST and source editing novel ideas did not exist it's just they matured enough that you can actually build a product that targets a big enough segment of the market.

4y ago