> Gridland is the successor to Ink Web (ink-web.dev) which is the same concept, but using Ink + xterm.js. After building Ink Web, we continued experimenting and found that using OpenTUI and a canvas renderer performed better with less flickering and nearly instant load times.
Ah, I was wondering how this was different to xterm.js embedded in a page. It's just the performance angle? I've been teaching the kids programming from the terminal and I've been planning to make the jump from the terminal to a terminal in the browser as we hit graphical limitations (and as they want to be able to share their games). I'll take it for a spin.
(and if nothing else, I'm going to steal that ripple effect for them ;) )*
Yep, mainly performance - specifically page load time (near instant for Gridland vs ~2-3s for Ink Web). The other issue was flickering. Tbh rendering directly into a canvas is just a better approach and OpenTUI's architect is more modern.
I love that xkcd, I never know what to do, so I'll just ：）)
Can confirm good canvas renderer performance. Just tested it with a real-time smart meter dashboard — 62 meters streaming over MQTT via JustinX.ai (our data ingestion platform), 60 msg/s (peak), 500ms refresh. Almost no flicker, smooth updates across all meter cards. Much nicer way to handle high-frequency streaming data than xterm.js.
Reading this thread I'm reassured that despite everything AI may disrupt, humans arguing past each other about philosophy of knowledge and epistemology on internet forums is safe :')
> I often wonder is "what will be the minimally viable LLM" that can work from just enough information that if it googles the rest it can provide reasonable answers?
It depends what that word "reasonable" means for your specific use-case ;)
> You mean that dumb app that forced you to move files into a single folder instead of adapting to your workflow was prefect?
Users in 2012 were overwhelmingly of the cohort who's metaphor for doing work on a computer was the filesystem. You opened Files with Programs, worked on them, saved them. You wanted your latest Files on all your computers (1), and you wanted to Share them (2).
Unless users were on a system managed by a sysadmin there were only really two solutions for problems (1)&(2): you would Email the File (A), or you would copy it to a Floppy/CD/USB (B) and physically move it.
Note the caveat of "in absence of a sysadmin". So either on a school or corporate work environment, or if you happened to have a geek in your family/social group who did it as a passion project. Or y'know, if _you_ were the geek you could roll your own.
While you're there, note the tag line in the title of the post "Throw away your USB key"
Now rereading your comment it is clearly an example of exactly what OP was referring to:
> It takes real courage for a builder to say, "It’s good enough. It’s complete. It serves the core use cases well." If people want more features? Great, make it a separate product under a new brand.
If Dropbox did not "adapt to your workflow", then just _don't use Dropbox_.
Instead you attack it as "dumb" and demand it change...and those users for whom Dropbox _was_ perfectly adapted don't have their solution anymore.
Software doesn't have to be forever changing and chasing user growth; it's not a zero-sum game. The bits don't care if no one uses them. But _people_ care if you take away their bits.
> ...we shouldn't normalize that, we should push for improvements
Agreed, you should create a new solution and put it out there! Just as suggested by the post you've replied to :)
I love the project -- even if I agree with a lot of the critique in this thread. Critique that is very high quality, professional feedback that you should take as a very big compliment.
I think every Front End developer or designer dreams of this idea(+) at some point, but you're the madlad who actually did it. It feels like you've posted an implementation of everyone's baby and tugged at our heart-strings ;)
It's fantastic, keep going.
(+) a truly consistent design system that Just Works. See GEB for why not :(
If you were going to do this for the slider approach you can arrange the labels to the `block-start` and `block-end` of the image and support non-RTL scripts/languages natively.
The flipping-between is a great hack -- as you said your eyes (really, brain) just do the work for you.
I learnt about it in Japan where proof-readers and editors would (or do) quickly lift a top page up and down to spot mistakes with kanji (pictographs). And sure enough, even from a page of dense script the dissonance of the error really does pop out at you.
I likewise tucked that little trick into my belt -- it comes in useful anytime you're trying to manually spot a pattern across complex data. This technique has the same "vibe" as FFTs to me: it's just neat feeling like you're getting computation from the universe for free.
Solar PV in a similar category: free electrons if you can arrange the magic rocks just right :)
If you put two proofs side by side, you can view from the right distance then uncross or cross your eyes like a stereogram till they converge, which makes differences shimmer.
And once you have the hang of this technique, congratulations! You can now enjoy those 3D "Magic Eye" images that stumped a significant portion of the population back in the 90s :)
I use ScreenFloat[0] in a similar way to catch differences between GUI settings, like the cPanel PHP extensions selector, which has tons of checkboxes. Position a screenshot of settings for site A over the settings for site B, adjust the transparency, and any differences will jump out.
Excellent summary of the implications of LLM agents.
Personally I'd like it if we could all skip to the _end_ of Asimov's universe and bubble along together, but it seems like we're in for the whole ride these days.
> "It's just fancy autocomplete! You just set it up to look like a chat session and it's hallucinating a user to talk to"
> "Can we make the hallucination use excel?"
> "Yes, but --"
> "Then what's the difference between it and any of our other workers?"
Ah, I was wondering how this was different to xterm.js embedded in a page. It's just the performance angle? I've been teaching the kids programming from the terminal and I've been planning to make the jump from the terminal to a terminal in the browser as we hit graphical limitations (and as they want to be able to share their games). I'll take it for a spin.
(and if nothing else, I'm going to steal that ripple effect for them ;) )*
* obligatory https://xkcd.com/541/