4 ms·

Show HN: Helium – a headless, open-source LMS

31 points by ricotico060 4y ago

prNhMan 4y ago
Is there a free trial available? Would be interested to play around with this since my company is considering building homegrown. Thanks.
thunderbong 4y ago
What are the advantages of using this over Contentful [0] or Directus [1]? [0]: https://www.contentful.com https://www.contentful.com [1]: https://directus.io https://directus.io
- thangngoc89 4y ago
  I think this is an LMS (learning management system) as opposed to the CMS you listed. Think of this is the headless competitor of Moodle [0] [0]: https://moodle.org/ https://moodle.org/
  - thunderbong 4y ago
    My apologies. I read that as CMS in the title!
Brajeshwar 4y ago
When you Show HN a project/idea that has something to do with the user-facing (front-end) component to it, please have a demo or screenshots or videos of some final output. That way, it is easier for people to have an idea of what to expect. "Helium provides you with a complete library of UI Components, Hooks, and Utilities that make building custom learning experiences fast, easy, and fun." Brilliant! But where can I see some demo?
- cowsandmilk 4y ago
  https://thoughtindustries.github.io/helium/ https://thoughtindustries.github.io/helium/ from the github repo
  - mkl 4y ago
    That seems to be a mock shopping cart, not a demo of a Learning Management System.
    - Doxin 4y ago
      There's a menu on the left for more components
chrismorgan 4y ago
When you say “headless, open-source LMS”, I assume this is the backend parts. This does not appear to be the case (nor does the actual link target use the word “headless”). https://developer.thoughtindustries.com/build/developer-guide#what-is-helium https://developer.thoughtindustries.com/build/developer-guid... (that entire site seems to be much more appropriate than the GitHub repository, though I’m not sure where to start): > Helium is a frontend web development framework for building highly contextual, dynamic and personalized learning experiences. > Helium utilizes a modern technology stack that includes React, GraphQL, and Tailwind CSS to provide an exceptional developer experience. The out-of-the-box UI components make getting started easy and with GraphQL getting to the data you need is intuitive and fast. And below: > Helium is designed to run on the Thought Industries Enterprise Learning Cloud platform. Therefore, an Enterprise Learning Cloud account is necessary. So… it’s only any direct use for working with a commercial platform backend (and one with no posted price list, but only “schedule a demo” links). Being MIT-licensed, you might be able to pull substantial bits and pieces out of it (I dunno, the list in https://github.com/thoughtindustries/helium/tree/staging/packages https://github.com/thoughtindustries/helium/tree/staging/pac... sounds mostly fairly generic), but it’s not designed for that in any way, and there will be a perpetual maintenance burden to doing so. So I think that (a) the title here is wrong, and (b) it’s unsuitable for a Show HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html). I suspect a misunderstanding of the purpose of Show HN by OP, who I suspect is not connected with Thought Industries.
- mkl 4y ago
  In frontend-speak, "headless" sometimes seems to mean "style it yourself because we didn't". My confusion on this term started a rant/argument thread a couple of years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26910931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26910931
  - tough 4y ago
    Yep as in headless-ui for react by tailwind devs, or radix being -headless- unstyled components. So many layers and stacks to keep up with lol
mdrzn 4y ago
Why would you call it a word that already exists? I'm always baffled by these decisions to reuse already common names, which makes for very weird google searches.
lf-non 4y ago
Looks like this is inspired by Shopify's hydrogen but for the LMS space. So, this repo is an open-source set of components, but those components are tied to a graphql API which is provided by the parent org's closed source backend. That likely limits its use/relevance only to customers of https://www.thoughtindustries.com/ https://www.thoughtindustries.com/ which I guess is fine, but the README should communicate it better.
MoSattler 4y ago
I got excited about this until I realised it's actually a frontend development framework for LMS. Not "headless" in the classical sense.

31 points by ricotico060 4y ago

Is there a free trial available? Would be interested to play around with this since my company is considering building homegrown. Thanks.

thunderbong 4y ago

What are the advantages of using this over Contentful [0] or Directus [1]? [0]: https://www.contentful.com https://www.contentful.com [1]: https://directus.io https://directus.io

thangngoc89 4y ago
I think this is an LMS (learning management system) as opposed to the CMS you listed. Think of this is the headless competitor of Moodle [0] [0]: https://moodle.org/ https://moodle.org/
- thunderbong 4y ago
  My apologies. I read that as CMS in the title!

Brajeshwar 4y ago

When you Show HN a project/idea that has something to do with the user-facing (front-end) component to it, please have a demo or screenshots or videos of some final output. That way, it is easier for people to have an idea of what to expect. "Helium provides you with a complete library of UI Components, Hooks, and Utilities that make building custom learning experiences fast, easy, and fun." Brilliant! But where can I see some demo?

cowsandmilk 4y ago
https://thoughtindustries.github.io/helium/ https://thoughtindustries.github.io/helium/ from the github repo
- mkl 4y ago
  That seems to be a mock shopping cart, not a demo of a Learning Management System.
  - Doxin 4y ago
    There's a menu on the left for more components

chrismorgan 4y ago

When you say “headless, open-source LMS”, I assume this is the backend parts. This does not appear to be the case (nor does the actual link target use the word “headless”). https://developer.thoughtindustries.com/build/developer-guide#what-is-helium https://developer.thoughtindustries.com/build/developer-guid... (that entire site seems to be much more appropriate than the GitHub repository, though I’m not sure where to start): > Helium is a frontend web development framework for building highly contextual, dynamic and personalized learning experiences. > Helium utilizes a modern technology stack that includes React, GraphQL, and Tailwind CSS to provide an exceptional developer experience. The out-of-the-box UI components make getting started easy and with GraphQL getting to the data you need is intuitive and fast. And below: > Helium is designed to run on the Thought Industries Enterprise Learning Cloud platform. Therefore, an Enterprise Learning Cloud account is necessary. So… it’s only any direct use for working with a commercial platform backend (and one with no posted price list, but only “schedule a demo” links). Being MIT-licensed, you might be able to pull substantial bits and pieces out of it (I dunno, the list in https://github.com/thoughtindustries/helium/tree/staging/packages https://github.com/thoughtindustries/helium/tree/staging/pac... sounds mostly fairly generic), but it’s not designed for that in any way, and there will be a perpetual maintenance burden to doing so. So I think that (a) the title here is wrong, and (b) it’s unsuitable for a Show HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html). I suspect a misunderstanding of the purpose of Show HN by OP, who I suspect is not connected with Thought Industries.

mkl 4y ago
In frontend-speak, "headless" sometimes seems to mean "style it yourself because we didn't". My confusion on this term started a rant/argument thread a couple of years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26910931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26910931
- tough 4y ago
  Yep as in headless-ui for react by tailwind devs, or radix being -headless- unstyled components. So many layers and stacks to keep up with lol

mdrzn 4y ago

Why would you call it a word that already exists? I'm always baffled by these decisions to reuse already common names, which makes for very weird google searches.

lf-non 4y ago

Looks like this is inspired by Shopify's hydrogen but for the LMS space. So, this repo is an open-source set of components, but those components are tied to a graphql API which is provided by the parent org's closed source backend. That likely limits its use/relevance only to customers of https://www.thoughtindustries.com/ https://www.thoughtindustries.com/ which I guess is fine, but the README should communicate it better.

MoSattler 4y ago

I got excited about this until I realised it's actually a frontend development framework for LMS. Not "headless" in the classical sense.