4 ms·

Show HN: Watch random code typed out on an MS-DOS IDE

17 points by vunderba 3mo ago

As a software dev, I really enjoy having live coding videos playing in the background while I work. But it's surprisingly difficult to find hour+ long videos of coding without commentary on Youtube. What I really wanted was an infinite coding video, so I built one. Pick your IDE/monitor/ambience of choice, hit the Screensaver button, put it on a second monitor or TV, and enjoy infinite coding ASMR.

malux85 3mo ago
DJGPP (with rhide) was my first IDE, love!
- vunderba 3mo ago
  Thanks! I completely forgot about RHIDE~ I remember seeing a friend of mine using it and mistakenly thought it was Borland's Turbo C++ since they look so similar.
nubinetwork 3mo ago
One problem I can see with this is that the files are typed out, from top to bottom... People don't really code like that... They write functions and jump around between files as they add functionality...
- vunderba 3mo ago
  Yeah, good point. To expand on that: this actually started out as an animated typist for classic literary works in the public domain (some of which are in the Library), like The Machine Stops or The War of the Worlds. That’s why, if you look at the IDEs, there’s a WordStar one. At the time, having it write from top to bottom made sense. Now that I've expanded it to handle code, it would basically require building or integrating some kind of AST so a bit more work than I want to put in right now. Maybe I’ll include it in a future update!
martinflack 3mo ago
Looks interesting but I keep getting "Preview error" (?)
- vunderba 3mo ago
  Hmmm... sorry about that, I'll try to put a more descriptive error in place. The 2D/3D CRT effects use shaders and require WebGL; that's probably what's causing the issue. Can you try hitting this and seeing if you get an error? https://webglreport.com/?v=2 https://webglreport.com/?v=2
richstokes 3mo ago
Idea: Support providing it the URL to your own / arbitrary git repo, so you can see it type out whatever code you like :-)
- vunderba 3mo ago
  Beat you to it! :) Hit the "Load from GitHub" button and type in your repo~ Small caveat: the only current limitation is that it has to be public. EDIT: Oh I see what you're getting at. Like being able to point to any *.git repository such as from a gitea server, etc.? That's a good idea thanks for the suggestion!

17 points by vunderba 3mo ago

malux85 3mo ago

DJGPP (with rhide) was my first IDE, love!

vunderba 3mo ago
Thanks! I completely forgot about RHIDE~ I remember seeing a friend of mine using it and mistakenly thought it was Borland's Turbo C++ since they look so similar.

nubinetwork 3mo ago

One problem I can see with this is that the files are typed out, from top to bottom... People don't really code like that... They write functions and jump around between files as they add functionality...

vunderba 3mo ago
Yeah, good point. To expand on that: this actually started out as an animated typist for classic literary works in the public domain (some of which are in the Library), like The Machine Stops or The War of the Worlds. That’s why, if you look at the IDEs, there’s a WordStar one. At the time, having it write from top to bottom made sense. Now that I've expanded it to handle code, it would basically require building or integrating some kind of AST so a bit more work than I want to put in right now. Maybe I’ll include it in a future update!

martinflack 3mo ago

Looks interesting but I keep getting "Preview error" (?)

vunderba 3mo ago
Hmmm... sorry about that, I'll try to put a more descriptive error in place. The 2D/3D CRT effects use shaders and require WebGL; that's probably what's causing the issue. Can you try hitting this and seeing if you get an error? https://webglreport.com/?v=2 https://webglreport.com/?v=2

richstokes 3mo ago

Idea: Support providing it the URL to your own / arbitrary git repo, so you can see it type out whatever code you like :-)

vunderba 3mo ago
Beat you to it! :) Hit the "Load from GitHub" button and type in your repo~ Small caveat: the only current limitation is that it has to be public. EDIT: Oh I see what you're getting at. Like being able to point to any *.git repository such as from a gitea server, etc.? That's a good idea thanks for the suggestion!