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Comment by joelthelion | Hacker News Reader

This may be the first time I try a web app that is as snappy as a desktop one. Congratulations!

What front-end frameworks/technologies did you use?

Also from the bower file, the magic that turns it from a web app into a standalone app is node-webkit [1]. This kind of tool is really becoming one of the best options for creating desktop applications, especially considering how powerful the browsers' devtools have become. It's having like a GUI designer and a debugger rolled up into one.

[1]: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit

Iirc, lighttable is written using node-webkit as well (in addition to clojurescript).

>> "What front-end frameworks/technologies did you use?"

Why is that everyone's first question? I get this constantly when I demo my stuff at meetups and hackathons. None. The answer is none. And they look at me like I just admitted to being a person who prefers to breath water. Vanilla JS is not that hard. It's a sight easier to know one language than to have to relearn the darling framework of the year all the time.

It's only been a year or two since major software is written in JavaScript. Why did you relearn the darling language of the year?

Perhaps you have been sleeping under a rock for the last 10+ years. Unless most multi-billion web services, from Gmail to Facebook are not "major software".

Plus, from his cv: "I've been doing JavaScript since it was invented.".

Vanilla js is not that hard when you have thing like document.queryselect or you're building trivial web apps. Sadly when you're building enterprise grade software and you have to support things like Internet Explorer 7 it makes a lot more sense to use a framework like angular than vanilla js.

Having been involved in lots of different types of projects over the years, "enterprise" software is not different from other types of software in any way.

Sorry but when I'm writing my hobby projects I don't have to worry about supporting a 13 year old browser.

The occurrence of this in enterprise is grossly overstated.

>Why is that everyone's first question? I get this constantly when I demo my stuff at meetups and hackathons. None. The answer is none.

Are you the creator of Gravit.io? If not, then your response is useless, because nobody asked YOU that.

The point is, as someone who has been in this position of being asked this question on several occasions for a number of different projects, it's extremely frustrating to be asked this question rather than anything actually pertinent to the project. So if you don't get any sort of answer from the Gravit.io team, this is why you should probably not be surprised. It's an insulting question. We're much more than just glue coders between this-and-that-frameworks.

Give your custom code a random framework name :) Someone could make a framework out of it.

Actually. I don't see it as an insulting question at all. If you've demoed something cool and someone asks you what technologies you used it's usually because they're wondering if they can use them themselves. It's not them hoping to jump you for using the unpopular framework.

if i see someone build something awesome and would like the ability to build something awesome in the same sphere I ask them how they did it, so that I can emulate those strategies in my own work. Part of "how they did it" is what tools they used. Are they using something I'm unaware of? Are they using something I'm aware of but may have dismissed and should reconsider? Are they using something that they now regret and can warn me away from?

Yes, we are more than glue-coders. Carpenters are way more than people who wield power tools, but it doesn't mean they don't discuss tools with each other. If they see someone else who's constructed something they're not sure how to do with their current toolset you know they're going to ask what the other guy used to build it.

Yeah, I'll ask you what you used, but I'll do it because you've accomplished something cool and I want to compare and contrast strategies from someone who's (in my mind) succeeded at something.

No, usually people who ask this sort of question aren't looking for suggestions. They're looking for validation for their own choices. Because the question is almost always followed by a statement, "oh, you should use (Angular|React|Whatever), that's what I use."

Most people, even on boards like this that select for technology-interested people, don't make things. Even people who think of themselves as "makers" (ugh, I hate that word) don't make things.

I don't mind people making suggestions (though something that would fundamentally require a complete rewrite seems more like trolling than being a mere suggestion). But when they then act like I'm insane because I don't use a 3rd party framework, then I start finding trouble keeping my opinion to myself.

Do you ever reuse code from previous projects?

According to the bower file [1] they only use jquery

[1] https://github.com/quasado/gravit/blob/master/bower.json

A cursory glace at the editor code does not reveal any extensive jQuery use (in fact, I didn't notice any). I've never seen a jQuery-heavy app go quite this fast.

I found the opposite opening a random file: https://github.com/quasado/gravit/blob/master/src/gravit/com...

+1 on making it iPad-compatible and making the demo without subscription. And snappy webapps in the iPad are rare.

I just tried it for a few simple operations on a 1.3GHz laptop from 2006 (which is running and IDE that's indexing in the background), and this app was still instantly responsive. Very nice work indeed.

It's usually AJAX + lots of DOM manipulation that makes web apps crawl. Everything here is static.

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