6 ms·

Serious question, not trying to be a jerk. Why do people keep making these? Because they’re fun? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these gain traction.

sharts 3y ago
Probably to practice JS.
yen223 3y ago
"It is fun" is a perfectly valid reason to do this.
DustinBrett 3y ago
As someone who has been working on one for nearly 3 years, it is indeed a lot of fun to make. I also learn a lot from doing it and I enjoy making the app as I use it for my personal website. It's my side/passion project and I hope to get to work on it for a long time to come.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
heh, they don't. This is from like 2011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3252199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3252199
pipeline_peak 3y ago
They clearly have talent, I don't understand why they don't make products like Draw.IO or at least something more meaningful and original than a 2000's era desktop environment. Based on the docs https://manual.os-js.org/ https://manual.os-js.org/, they clearly have some serious intention. This is what happens when the Wozniak's of the World don't have a Steve to guide them. They do what they want without a clear vision to practicality.
- devjab 3y ago
  This is going to be a bit unrelated to what you said, but I recommend looking into Mermaid diagrams in your MD files as a replacement for draw.io. It saved us a bunch of time and has given us documentation diagrams that developers actually want to update because they don’t have to spend 9 years aligning lines.
  - LudicrousSpeed 3y ago
    This is pretty cool!
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  I think you are right you need a strategy if aiming for success, riding a wave or what you predict to be a future wave. But now millions of people are open sourcing so there is a fuck load of noise. To the point that I would say you don’t pay a company selling commercial software for the software ad much as you pay to not need to choose between a million free options with scant or bad sales copy and have some proof of customer success.
- noduerme 3y ago
  >> This is what happens when the Wozniak's of the World Yes, surely this is proof that every talented coder is only useful when serving a preening egomaniac. I mean, who else is gonna handle all the hard work of getting publicity and taking credit for things?
- prmoustache 3y ago
  This is a pet project, they already have a job. That is the reason.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > This is what happens when the Wozniak's of the World don't have a Steve to guide them. They do what they want without a clear vision to practicality. If their goal includes "practicality", then sure, maybe this indicates that they need a guiding hand. But, as far as I can tell with all these types of projects, the goal isn't practicality, so you cannot tell whether or not they need a guiding hand. As far as I can tell, these projects all appear to have made progress towards their goal. In summary, what you think their goal is, is not what their goal is.
mdwalters 3y ago
I forked one of these websites, and added more apps to it (developer included all of the app icons in Yaru, so this was an rather easy task). Personally, I wouldn't want to make my own, for a number of reasons.
- thatcherthorn 3y ago
  What reasons?
  - canadianfella 3y ago
    [dead]
mholt 3y ago
Synology has had great success with their window GUI...
guideamigo_com 3y ago
JS is so basic (compared to Python, Go, Java, or Rust) that one can easily make a framework which will do something specific. You can then use it to get a job.
- canadianfella 3y ago
  [dead]
- waltbosz 3y ago
  As a JS dev currently looking for a job, can you elaborate on this comment?
  - guideamigo_com 3y ago
    > As a JS dev currently looking for a job, can you elaborate on this comment? You can build a new framework and use that as your portfolio. JS apps like these can be quickly tried in the browser. That's not true of a new Go/Rust/Java library.
    - 9dev 3y ago
      That isn't quite true anymore since wasm got traction. There really is a lot of tooling around getting your go code to run even in browsers!
      - IshKebab 3y ago
        It's kind of true because the WASM GC proposal still isn't finished, so Rust and C++ are the only reasonable options, and also there's no native support for calling web platform APIs yet, so there's a lot of overhead for doing web stuff and you have to use a ton of JavaScript glue code (there are tools to help, but still...). JavaScript / Typescript will probably always have a size advantage over WASM anyway because they don't have to ship any runtimes or standard library code. E.g. formatting a string or running a regex in JS is just a few bytes but in Rust you have to ship a whole string formatting/regex library.
lsmeducation 3y ago
I think AWS ui would be better served using this. It would make sense.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mappu 3y ago
The Synology and QNAP web interfaces are very similar to this, they've definitely got traction.

sharts 3y ago

Probably to practice JS.

yen223 3y ago

"It is fun" is a perfectly valid reason to do this.

DustinBrett 3y ago

As someone who has been working on one for nearly 3 years, it is indeed a lot of fun to make. I also learn a lot from doing it and I enjoy making the app as I use it for my personal website. It's my side/passion project and I hope to get to work on it for a long time to come.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

heh, they don't. This is from like 2011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3252199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3252199

pipeline_peak 3y ago

They clearly have talent, I don't understand why they don't make products like Draw.IO or at least something more meaningful and original than a 2000's era desktop environment. Based on the docs https://manual.os-js.org/ https://manual.os-js.org/, they clearly have some serious intention. This is what happens when the Wozniak's of the World don't have a Steve to guide them. They do what they want without a clear vision to practicality.

devjab 3y ago
This is going to be a bit unrelated to what you said, but I recommend looking into Mermaid diagrams in your MD files as a replacement for draw.io. It saved us a bunch of time and has given us documentation diagrams that developers actually want to update because they don’t have to spend 9 years aligning lines.
- LudicrousSpeed 3y ago
  This is pretty cool!
quickthrower2 3y ago
I think you are right you need a strategy if aiming for success, riding a wave or what you predict to be a future wave. But now millions of people are open sourcing so there is a fuck load of noise. To the point that I would say you don’t pay a company selling commercial software for the software ad much as you pay to not need to choose between a million free options with scant or bad sales copy and have some proof of customer success.
noduerme 3y ago
>> This is what happens when the Wozniak's of the World Yes, surely this is proof that every talented coder is only useful when serving a preening egomaniac. I mean, who else is gonna handle all the hard work of getting publicity and taking credit for things?
prmoustache 3y ago
This is a pet project, they already have a job. That is the reason.
lelanthran 3y ago
> This is what happens when the Wozniak's of the World don't have a Steve to guide them. They do what they want without a clear vision to practicality. If their goal includes "practicality", then sure, maybe this indicates that they need a guiding hand. But, as far as I can tell with all these types of projects, the goal isn't practicality, so you cannot tell whether or not they need a guiding hand. As far as I can tell, these projects all appear to have made progress towards their goal. In summary, what you think their goal is, is not what their goal is.

mdwalters 3y ago

I forked one of these websites, and added more apps to it (developer included all of the app icons in Yaru, so this was an rather easy task). Personally, I wouldn't want to make my own, for a number of reasons.

thatcherthorn 3y ago
What reasons?
- canadianfella 3y ago
  [dead]

mholt 3y ago

Synology has had great success with their window GUI...

guideamigo_com 3y ago

JS is so basic (compared to Python, Go, Java, or Rust) that one can easily make a framework which will do something specific. You can then use it to get a job.

canadianfella 3y ago
[dead]
waltbosz 3y ago
As a JS dev currently looking for a job, can you elaborate on this comment?
- guideamigo_com 3y ago
  > As a JS dev currently looking for a job, can you elaborate on this comment? You can build a new framework and use that as your portfolio. JS apps like these can be quickly tried in the browser. That's not true of a new Go/Rust/Java library.
  - 9dev 3y ago
    That isn't quite true anymore since wasm got traction. There really is a lot of tooling around getting your go code to run even in browsers!
    - IshKebab 3y ago
      It's kind of true because the WASM GC proposal still isn't finished, so Rust and C++ are the only reasonable options, and also there's no native support for calling web platform APIs yet, so there's a lot of overhead for doing web stuff and you have to use a ton of JavaScript glue code (there are tools to help, but still...). JavaScript / Typescript will probably always have a size advantage over WASM anyway because they don't have to ship any runtimes or standard library code. E.g. formatting a string or running a regex in JS is just a few bytes but in Rust you have to ship a whole string formatting/regex library.

lsmeducation 3y ago

I think AWS ui would be better served using this. It would make sense.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mappu 3y ago

The Synology and QNAP web interfaces are very similar to this, they've definitely got traction.