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Comment by smrtinsert | Hacker News Reader

I've always felt that the tuple oriented view of the world of database was closer to what we should be doing instead of objects (or more lately functions?), although fp definitely gets you closer.

My one comment is to please make eve keyboard oriented from the start. I really don't want to use a mouse. I should be able to navigate every entity logically with a keyboard. For example, I should be able to hit a key to select available link endpoints and another to connect them.

I like visual, but I love keyboard oriented a lot more. Dragging and scrolling are way too overused ui interactions.

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+100

1. Powerful keyboard-based navigation/manipulation will be extremely helpful.

2. RDBMS-style tuples seem weird to me; why not objects? Quite natural to a layperson, IMO. If a "cell" can hold an object ({name: "Brown shoes", price: { amount: 254, currency: "USD"}} rather than just a scalar value like $2.54) a spreadsheet can be a lot more powerful.

With a sufficiently rich type system (with composites and sets as domains), there's not a lot of difference when you are talking about pure data (instead of how the data structure relates to behavior) between tuples and objects.

Take a look at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.113.... . Object databases, XML databases and network databases were around long before relational databases. The key problem the relational databases solved is not having to bake the access paths into your data-structure.

haha it's funny, this is almost always the first worry programmers have after we talk about Eve.

Don't worry, we'll make sure it works whether you use the mouse, a keyboard, maybe even a touch screen or voice. :)

Awesome! Congratulations on the funding, looking forward to see it soon.

Suggestion: if you want this to succeed, constrain your scope. Say No to touch-screen & voice! (IMO they are crippled interfaces compared to the keyboard)

Just say 'NO'. & best luck :)

If they want to reach a billion people then they're going to have to live in a world of touch screen (and maybe voice).

At NDC Oslo this year there was a keynote by Luke Wroblewski on user experience on the web. There's a video on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/97305189

The key takeaway was that a significant percentage of people are using their smart phones with either only their thumb or their forefinger. Many people don't even have a computing device with a traditional keyboard and full-size screen. That talk got me thinking about this question: what would programming look like if you only use your thumb?

I don't think you can write off these interfaces, rather I think we may need to start to really think about separating creation of core components of software and then orchestrating the interaction of these components as a different aspect to developing software.

I've often wished I could program even a RAD proof of concept kind of thing on my phone. Many ideas come to me while I'm not at a computer (our desks are not always the most inspiring place we find ourselves) and as a consequence, are gone before I get back to work.

If you're wondering how programming with just your thumbs might work, look at Touch Develop from Microsoft Research.

If they want to reach a billion people then starting off by targeting all 1 billion is probably the wrong way of going about it.

Or maybe the people who are primarily using their phone/tablet to access the internet don't actually need to program anything in the first place?

Siri, Cortana ... Eve

It's worth noting that for programmers with some degree of RSI or a similar injury, a keyboard can potentially be a far less painful interface than a mouse or even touch.

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