kgen

Ditto, I was lucky enough to try out the beta a year ago, and since then, I've been using it more and more compared to Docs or even text files (for event planning, side projects, server docs, etc).

The markdown integration, especially for inlining code, is awesome and what Docs should have been. Being able to quickly make a checklist has also change my note taking behavior and I almost never use straight up text files or specific list apps anymore.

That said, they recently changed their UI to hide the starred docs from the side bar which really makes them harder to find, and I actually find the inline dropbox file links/tables fidgety. But all in all, it's pretty awesome at reducing the friction between mind to note.

Shameless plug, bug I wrote SQLBolt (http://sqlbolt.com) for the same reason, because there was a lack of good, simple interactive tutorials for SQL.

Software engineer, and my side projects involve helping people learn things interactively: RegexOne: http://regexone.com SQLBolt: http://sqlbolt.com

I agree, it's kind of a one-time affair too because if you ever need to add or change a word in a node, you're fcked and have to edit ascii to change borders and lines and what not. There are way better ways to spend your time than to draw an ascii diagram.

Well, even in Wikipedia, the definition is quoted as being different for CS vs the unary operation you describe.

"In computer science, the term idempotent is used more comprehensively to describe an operation that will produce the same results if executed once or multiple times."

Which is more that f(x) == f(x) == f(x) for the state affected by f.

SQL.js is a great library -- we use it on http://sqlbolt.com/ to teach SQL right in the browser in a platform agnostic way.

Interactive tutorials to teach people things like SQL (http://sqlbolt.com) and Regular Expressions (http://regexone.com)!

That would be SQL.js, from the emscripten guys! Props to them! https://github.com/kripken/sql.js/

Thanks for the feedback, I've had the same thought about the popup, so maybe I can move it into the edit text. Otherwise, the result stability issue is important so I'm going to take another crack at it today. Thanks!

Thanks! It's mostly client-side with underscore.js and jquery for core js, highlight.js for syntax highlighting, ace for the editor, and an emscripten compiled SQLite lib for the sql processing.

Ok, I think I've found a good solution on the updating, it should only update when you have a valid query now. Hopefully, it should be a bit more stable. :)

Thanks for the kind words and feedback! I'll try and make the rows more static for some of the lessons -- it's tricky because I feel like the responsive interactivity is important when learning to write queries, but it just might not make sense for some of the lessons (like the update, as you mentioned). Really appreciate the feedback!

Good point, I'll try and make it more clear that the TOC is in the menu. Thanks!

Hey all, I couldn't really find anything like this the last time someone asked me about SQL, so I whipped up this site (SQLBolt) over the last couple months.

It's an interactive tutorial, and I'm looking to add a few more topics along the way. Curious to see what HN thought, and whether you guys might find it useful or have any feedback on it as well. :)

edit: typo

Shameless plug, wrote this interactive tutorial for regular expressions for a friend who was new to them. Seems to have helped a few other people along the way too.

http://regexone.com/

I don't think the hack is the index as much as it is the visual skip-list of sorts, and then being able to jump to the page with the content without having to do a binary search of sorts for the page number you are looking for.

That said, physical journaling is a hard habit to keep :) I feel like I've tried every trick under the sun. Bullet Journal seemed to work for a while, http://www.bulletjournal.com/ [no affiliation], but it's still tough to rigorously keep an index up to date when you just want to jot down something quickly.

Not really "modern", but the remade Broken Sword 1/2 on android have been really entertaining and fun (but a little short and abrupt in the endings), and Broken Sword 5 (the new one) is not bad too.

This is actually pretty dang neat. Raised my eyebrow at 3d triangle, but it wasn't what I expected, and I really like the laser pulse.

Working on a side-project development-log type service (http://capsulr.com), but I think I need to iterate on it a bit more for other people to find it useful (though it's working well for me :/)

This is an interesting point, I think the tendency of most people who are creative/idea types (myself included) are kind of an over thinking of their own ideas, like they are somehow more important and prone to "theft", but the more I work on my own stuff, and the more I do on in open source, the less and less I think that’s the case.

Like when I was working on Capsulr (http://capsulr.com/, shameless plug), I worried about showing people stuff too early, until I just realized that most people probably wouldn’t even see the site, or if they did, most wouldn't even see the product the same way that I see it evolving. It’s kind of helped me to start documenting my work, and I find that sharing notes publicly (just with myself) is a load of pressure off my shoulders and is worth the tiny possibility that someone might take it and run with it.

Thanks John!

Good point on the post-sign up flow, it certainly warrants something more than an alert at the top of the page. I agree that it's nice to be able to store individual snippets, but I look at the web and see how fast it moves, there are patterns that many sites across the site share, that I think people would benefit from exploring and sharing publicly. That said, an Iceberg-like feature might be a cool way to collect various elements from different sites :).

I also definitely agree on the public vs. private work feature. I am thinking about having private Collections for pre-release/private/beta work, and the public Collections for things that are already out there. As there is currently no distinction between the two, I've surprisingly found myself less preoccupied whether something is "out there" and can be copied by someone else, and more preoccupied on just trying to do things right.

Thanks again for your feedback! Much appreciated!

It wouldn't even need a human operator from Amazon, I would gladly put a marker on a map to show the drone exactly where to drop it if it prompted me upon adding a new address/checkout.

Watson was demonstrated on live television, how is that not a possibility that they adapt that technology into a publicly available search engine?

I thought so too, but then I remembered Watson, and just how far off we are from search being fully context-aware.

This is another plug, but people have told me that they've found RegexOne (http://regexone.com) to be pretty useful in learning and practicing regular expressions interactively.

Just curious, but isn't this what ScraperWiki does?

I once wrote a website (http://regexone.com) to help people learn regular expressions using practical examples -- maybe you would like to give that a try and see if it helps you in understanding the different regexes a bit more?

Exactly! I would use that way more than the ,, that I use now to break into command mode.

Clever...

I wonder if this would work better as a temporary mode (like how a real clutch works). For example, you stay in insert mode until you press the pedal, which escapes you to command mode, and then restoring insert mode after you depress the pedal?