Cerebro App – Open-source productivity booster with a brain(cerebroapp.com)
cerebroapp.com
Cerebro App – Open-source productivity booster with a brain
https://cerebroapp.com/
170 comments
I truly wish that most communities of practice were more like what you describe. But, it's also naive to expect that experts won't criticize, sometimes even harshly.
For instance, I am currently learning data science from the ground up (i.e. reading the fundamental mathematical literature) and doing it outside of a university program. It is disheartening to post a question, to say Cross Validated, and have a few critical commenters almost laugh the motivation out of me. So, I can emphasize.
However, on the other hand, as a software practitioner, I am often on the other side of the fence. In this field in particular it seems like there are often amateurs who decide to jump in with an arrogant disrespect for the existing community knowledge and practices. I think it's because software is very cool now (like statistics, etc.). And, in software it's easy to find some code and libraries and 'wire them together' in crude ways.
Note, I am not implying that this is the case here! I haven't even looked at the software nor read most of the comments. But, since I often see this happening, I know that such comments are expected. I'm only commenting on your perspective.
I am not against autodidacts. In fact, I am one myself. And, I encourage it. But, all autodidacts should expect and embrace criticism from the community. It sucks to take it, because often commenters are often overly harsh and blunt. But, in defense of them, every community will be like this, to some degree. And, it's expected. Many of these practitioners have spent their life doing it, and they have some right to be critical, don't they?
For instance, I am currently learning data science from the ground up (i.e. reading the fundamental mathematical literature) and doing it outside of a university program. It is disheartening to post a question, to say Cross Validated, and have a few critical commenters almost laugh the motivation out of me. So, I can emphasize.
However, on the other hand, as a software practitioner, I am often on the other side of the fence. In this field in particular it seems like there are often amateurs who decide to jump in with an arrogant disrespect for the existing community knowledge and practices. I think it's because software is very cool now (like statistics, etc.). And, in software it's easy to find some code and libraries and 'wire them together' in crude ways.
Note, I am not implying that this is the case here! I haven't even looked at the software nor read most of the comments. But, since I often see this happening, I know that such comments are expected. I'm only commenting on your perspective.
I am not against autodidacts. In fact, I am one myself. And, I encourage it. But, all autodidacts should expect and embrace criticism from the community. It sucks to take it, because often commenters are often overly harsh and blunt. But, in defense of them, every community will be like this, to some degree. And, it's expected. Many of these practitioners have spent their life doing it, and they have some right to be critical, don't they?
> If the app is memory hogging, not following best coding practices, or you have a cool idea of how something could be done instead share that feedback and offer better ways to do things.
In spirit i agree with you.
In practice the problem here is, to use a really crude analogy:
The Cerebro developers rented an empty mall for super cheap, then opened a single restaurant in it. Some people won't mind driving all the way there and walking through the entire thing to get to the restaurant, other people will.
The advice then in that situation is to one of these:
1. Demolish the parts of the mall that aren't used, piece by piece, while trying to not knock over the restaurant situated on the third floor, so other people can build their houses on the now free space, closer to the restaurant.
2. Abandon it and build a new restaurant in the middle of the city.
Everyone recognizes that both of these are very expensive solutions and unlikely to ever be implemented, so you end up with two kind of people.
1. Those who shrug and walk away saying nothing.
2. Those who go, with various amounts of emphasis: "Aw, i wish you hadn't done that."
There is no happy middle ground possible here, sadly.
In spirit i agree with you.
In practice the problem here is, to use a really crude analogy:
The Cerebro developers rented an empty mall for super cheap, then opened a single restaurant in it. Some people won't mind driving all the way there and walking through the entire thing to get to the restaurant, other people will.
The advice then in that situation is to one of these:
1. Demolish the parts of the mall that aren't used, piece by piece, while trying to not knock over the restaurant situated on the third floor, so other people can build their houses on the now free space, closer to the restaurant.
2. Abandon it and build a new restaurant in the middle of the city.
Everyone recognizes that both of these are very expensive solutions and unlikely to ever be implemented, so you end up with two kind of people.
1. Those who shrug and walk away saying nothing.
2. Those who go, with various amounts of emphasis: "Aw, i wish you hadn't done that."
There is no happy middle ground possible here, sadly.
While it's cool if the dev does it as a side project I think that the main reason people are negative is because it doesn't bring anything new as many similar tools exist:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13737052
And the only difference it has is being much heavier because it's electron.
And the only difference it has is being much heavier because it's electron.
I actually find comments like yours far more obnoxious than level-headed criticism. This communities purpose is not to be a marketing team for whoever wants to post here. Criticism is much more edifying than blind support.
The problem I see in this community is that much of the time, many aren't providing criticism. If it were only criticism, I'd even agree. The truth is that the so called "criticism" is really armchair quarterbacking most of the time.
There are quite a few of these Quicksilver-clones these days:
* Ulauncher http://ulauncher.io/
* Albert https://github.com/albertlauncher/albert#albert-
* Synapse https://launchpad.net/synapse-project
* Kupfer https://kupferlauncher.github.io/
* Zazu http://zazuapp.org/
* M-x counsel-linux-app http://oremacs.com/2016/03/16/counsel-linux-app/
I've tried a couple, but I always end up back to Alt+F2 in XFCE, since most of these launchers always start so slowly in comparison, and I never use any other features (more than once) than starting Firefox/Emacs/Terminal …
* Ulauncher http://ulauncher.io/
* Albert https://github.com/albertlauncher/albert#albert-
* Synapse https://launchpad.net/synapse-project
* Kupfer https://kupferlauncher.github.io/
* Zazu http://zazuapp.org/
* M-x counsel-linux-app http://oremacs.com/2016/03/16/counsel-linux-app/
I've tried a couple, but I always end up back to Alt+F2 in XFCE, since most of these launchers always start so slowly in comparison, and I never use any other features (more than once) than starting Firefox/Emacs/Terminal …
I use synapse. It's lightning fast and does the job. I can't do without it! I'm going to test a few of those alternatives as well, thanks!
Anyone remembers that Firefox extension ? I can't remember its name but it also had about the same funcitonalities.
Rofi is fast, customisable and nice.
I like rofi + i3w on Antergos, after using tiled windows and all the hotkey goodness it'd be hard to switch back to a more window-ed experience.
+1, it's the fastest of all that I've tried. It doesn't do too much out of the box, but it takes a couple frames to launch, as opposed to >1s for many of the alternatives.
Related: For fast filesystem search on Windows (NTFS) I cannot recommend enough Everything [0]. Instant search through all drives. This app really shines. Under 1 Mb install size, blazing fast interface (can be bound to global hotkey), command line interface, optional HTTP interface, small memory footprint (depends on the size of indices). Really, if you haven't seen it, check it out.
It basically connects to the NTFS database, fo that's why it is instant. Still don't understand why OS does not do this.
[0] http://voidtools.com/
It basically connects to the NTFS database, fo that's why it is instant. Still don't understand why OS does not do this.
[0] http://voidtools.com/
There's also Wox [0], which provides a nicer UI/UX over top of Everything. Also has some interesting plugins.
[0] http://www.getwox.com/
[0] http://www.getwox.com/
I've tried Wox and other launchers that include Everything several times and I always go back to having a launcher for, well, launching and using Everything for searching. For me the compact design of a launcher is not well suited to show a couple of file search results. But of course that also depends on what files you usually search for, how many results there will be and what you do with them. If, for example, you often search for documents it's fine. But I usually search for source code files and what not and there it's different.
This is the only tool I miss since I shifted from Windows to Linux almost a decade back. If you're on Windows, go install it right now.
I use locate for now, but I'm still to find something that does it as well.
I use locate for now, but I'm still to find something that does it as well.
Find anything better than Gnome-Do for it on Linux?
Nopes, locate is where I am at (after trying gnome-do for a while)
Wow, this is really nice. It takes literally a second (or two) to index EVERYTHING. I'd use this as an alternative to Win10's Cortana/search.
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Great, another electron app. This one takes almost 300mb of RAM, just sitting there, being idle and doing nothing: http://imgur.com/a/vITos
Only used 70mb in Windows. Nice to see an app like this for windows and not always something exclusively for osx.
You miscounted something, it uses 210+MB on windows: http://i.imgur.com/EXSAKEK.png
Windows 10 shows me this: http://imgur.com/vKDZU24
Any Electron app, like Chrome, will run at least 3 processes, Cerebro even runs 5. However the default windows task manager doesn't group processes by child/parent relationships so the other processes Cerebro uses are further down in your view.
To get the total you need to find all of them and sum them up. That might be easier in the Details tab. Or use Process Explorer instead.
To get the total you need to find all of them and sum them up. That might be easier in the Details tab. Or use Process Explorer instead.
Ah, thanks. Adding those up comes to around 170 MB.
The question is, is it fast? It annoys me if I hit the shortcut keys and the window takes a long time to pop up, I use Find and Run Robot(1) on Windows and it shows up instantly. It even has plugins, but you have to gasp write them in C/C++!
1) https://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/
1) https://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/
After I saw the memory consumption, I honestly didn't played with it a lot. It seems fast, but not as fast as Alfred (I use macOS).
I wonder why people dont use pyqt? my startup's first product was a Square-pos like tool built in pyqt and cross compiled to exe, dmg and linux executable.
We made it run on Windows XP machine with 256 mb ram total. Oh and we embedded cherrypy into it.
For lots of products with performance as a criterion, pyqt toolchain is so much better than electron. And programming in qt isnt bad at all.
We made it run on Windows XP machine with 256 mb ram total. Oh and we embedded cherrypy into it.
For lots of products with performance as a criterion, pyqt toolchain is so much better than electron. And programming in qt isnt bad at all.
Deploying PyQT (statically, most end users don't have it installed) is a major PITA.
that's actually not true. we statically compiled the binary to include all qt dependencies and it ran out of the box - remember we were installing on low end POS machines and pyqt worked beautifully.
Qt does not need to be dynamically linked. In fact the commercial versions of qt have even better toolchains.
Qt does not need to be dynamically linked. In fact the commercial versions of qt have even better toolchains.
MacOS, and Linux, and Windows? Let me guess: it's some web-electron-app-native-things, right?
Yes it is.
Not gonna replace (native) Alfred for me, no.
Yes it is.
Not gonna replace (native) Alfred for me, no.
Equally, it's free. Alfred wants me to pay for it again to upgrade to the newest version, but I'm feeling like I kind of don't want to sink more money into it ..
Alfred as a launcher it's free and way more efficient than spotlight. But just as the comment above, paid version is really nice and worth that price. Even deserve more. There is a website packal.org for workflows. It's amazing. Really miss fuzzy search on Gnome-shell or windows search.
I got the lifetime supporter pack for about 40 bucks and I've been using it for the last 6 years or so with free upgrades. Not a bad investment for something that you literally use almost every single day.
I've been using Alfred for probably 7 years or so, every single day, and I can't imagine not using it. Even if it had cost double what it does, I still think it's worth it.
tbh, ive been hoping that a paid launcher for windows would come along at some stage because all the current ones only half fit my needs and are probably going to stay that way for a while since they only developed in someones free time
I once was a fan of electron until I ran some apps on a low end surface with little disk space. Something like react native for the desktop could become a huge success.
There's https://github.com/ptmt/react-native-macos for OSX and, as mentioned, also Microsoft's https://github.com/ReactWindows/react-native-windows for Win10/UWP
There is work being done on Universal Windows Platform support for React Native, which will let you publish not just on Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile but on the Xbox One.
Btw. do you guys know that MSFT building next version of Skype with React Native? Mindblowing, innit?
I was super sold, ready to install. But then realized that too.
Electron apps drain my mac battery super fast. It's a pity.
Electron apps drain my mac battery super fast. It's a pity.
That must be the fault of the app than the Electron framework itself.
You might think, but it seems all electron apps are resource hogs.
What does seem to be in the app's control is whether it is fast.
See VS Code and Atom; huge difference in performance but both will chew up your battery.
What does seem to be in the app's control is whether it is fast.
See VS Code and Atom; huge difference in performance but both will chew up your battery.
I think it's caused by Electron being so "easy". Anyone without much experience in CS can write desktop applications with it. Those who do have the CS experience tend to use different frameworks.
So even if Electron is a solid foundation, there is probably a bias towards inexperienced developers in who it attracts to work with it.
So even if Electron is a solid foundation, there is probably a bias towards inexperienced developers in who it attracts to work with it.
Agreed that this is essentially the "Atom of Alfred" with the web container. Seems interesting but Alfred is also an extremely polished product so many years in the making. As an existing Alfred user, it doesn't look good enough to make me switch.
I wrote about a cross-platform alternative using Terminal, specially if you work with multiple OSs https://hackernoon.com/cross-platform-productivity-tool-with...
i see some criticism of electron in the comments because of it's high memory footprint. If i would have to create an offline app i would also choose electron, because of it's simplicity and my familiarity with the technology. Is there something being done or planned to reduce the footprint? Or something on the roadmap? I would guess a browser is just not optimised for a use-case comparable to Cerebro (running as a daemon).
> I would guess a browser is just not optimised for a use-case comparable to Cerebro (running as a daemon).
That's pretty much it. There's no useful way to make electron slimmer in any way, since it comes with the full chrome browser in the backpack and there's nothing you can do, because chrome's being the base of the huge pyramid with your teeny tiny bits of html and js on top.
It's useful for proto-typing or one-off apps, but for long-running things you're better of making it a chrome app directly (i.e. reusing Chrome's memory foot-print), or making it into a proper native app.
That's pretty much it. There's no useful way to make electron slimmer in any way, since it comes with the full chrome browser in the backpack and there's nothing you can do, because chrome's being the base of the huge pyramid with your teeny tiny bits of html and js on top.
It's useful for proto-typing or one-off apps, but for long-running things you're better of making it a chrome app directly (i.e. reusing Chrome's memory foot-print), or making it into a proper native app.
I wish siri would let me type queries.
Having "information at your fingertips" really kills productivity for me. I need long stretches away from twitch reactions to "what's the capital of Uganda?" type of intrusive thoughts. I'd honestly pay for a "2 click" browser extension where you only get to make two clicks on any link per hour for a given domain on a blacklist of time sinks during certain hours.
Having "information at your fingertips" really kills productivity for me. I need long stretches away from twitch reactions to "what's the capital of Uganda?" type of intrusive thoughts. I'd honestly pay for a "2 click" browser extension where you only get to make two clicks on any link per hour for a given domain on a blacklist of time sinks during certain hours.
Here's an extension that can block sites by domain after a pre defined number of minutes on those sites:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...
Here is more of a nuclear option that lets you micro manage your activity on an os-level. Unfortunately no Linux client afaik. A bit pricy, but very customizable and very effective: https://focusme.com
Here is more of a nuclear option that lets you micro manage your activity on an os-level. Unfortunately no Linux client afaik. A bit pricy, but very customizable and very effective: https://focusme.com
http://rescuetime.com/ has clients for almost all OS including Linux but excluding iOS.
It also has browser extensions.
Forgive me if you aren't looking for advice, but I recommend a distraction notebook:
Keep a small notebook beside you and promise yourself you are going to focus on the topic at hand for a period of time. When a thought, question or search topic pops into your brain, write it in the notebook. When you have some free time you can pick up the notebook at look up all those things. Of course, I often find that coming back to them they aren't all that important at all, and feeling of desperately needing to know has gone.
Keep a small notebook beside you and promise yourself you are going to focus on the topic at hand for a period of time. When a thought, question or search topic pops into your brain, write it in the notebook. When you have some free time you can pick up the notebook at look up all those things. Of course, I often find that coming back to them they aren't all that important at all, and feeling of desperately needing to know has gone.
Thank you, I actually do something like this. If I get stuck writing I'll write out all the scatter brained thoughts into a catch all file.
Otherwise, I try to create separate physical spaces for various tasks and try to practice mindfulness in general. It will always be an ongoing process though.
Otherwise, I try to create separate physical spaces for various tasks and try to practice mindfulness in general. It will always be an ongoing process though.
I've done the same thing! It's been really useful in getting rid of the distracting urge to answer every thought that jumps into your mind.
I love the idea of extending it with Javascript. Every service my company uses has an API that'd be (presumably) trivial to wire-in to this, making for a nice alternative to the traditional informational portal.
So its an embedded webbrowser with built in bookmarks.
Am i missing something here?
Am i missing something here?
Seems more like it's Quicksilver built on a browser stack
I used Launchy for years but then when setting up my last day to day laptop switched to Wox (http://www.getwox.com/) after trying Hain. It was too limited at that point.
On Linux, I use Super (Windows) key to use the inbuilt launcher which meets all my requirements. If Windows had anywhere near this level of usefulness in its start menu I wouldn't need the third party Wox.
On Linux, I use Super (Windows) key to use the inbuilt launcher which meets all my requirements. If Windows had anywhere near this level of usefulness in its start menu I wouldn't need the third party Wox.
Wox looks like a front-end to Everything (https://www.voidtools.com/), but with really nice UI and also plugins, etc. It looks nice.
http://imgur.com/a/Oyjqt Can't even launch the application
Flashlight is my fav http://flashlight.nateparrott.com/
So basically... an imitation of Spotlight? I prefer that they copy Alfred's UI. Simple and does all I need. Need Alfred on my Windows machine!
Check Hain [1] on Windows. It works very nicely.
[1] https://github.com/appetizermonster/hain
[1] https://github.com/appetizermonster/hain
Thanks for the suggestion! Unfortunately, it's also an Electron app, which is something I would like to avoid. If footprint is also a concern to you check out http://keypirinha.com! It's really great, with the only concern being not very elegant aesthetically...
Just installed Keypirinha. It's great! Thanks for the hint.
Edit: https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha
Edit: https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha
I've been using Hain for the past 6 months, it s great but again built with Electron and can be a memory hog. Also the developer has seemingly become quiet in the past few months. I'd pay for a Alfred type windows version.
Great to see some open sourced based efforts in this area. Imho FOSS is a promising approach for this kind of helper apps. Although I've tried a few of the closed source alternatives I'm not yet definitely sold to one. A community driven approach could provide a better result in the long run. The best of luck for the future...
Every thread I have seen here on HN that presents another bloated Electron app seems to be filled with criticism, and I must admit that this restores my faith in humanity. If the consensus was that Electron apps is a good thing and we need more of them, it would be very depressing.
I do think the criticism is productive, because it's usually not targeted against the developer or the app idea, but that it's built on the Electron framework. Maybe many developers using Electron do not have much experience and it seems like a good idea in their heads. In this case criticism is helpful because the developer will learn that Electron is bad and should be avoided.
A crude analogy: If I was driving on an divided highway in the wrong lane without knowing, I would be very grateful if the first car I met in the opposite lane would use the horn and blink the lights to get my attention so I could immediately stop and turn around.
I do think the criticism is productive, because it's usually not targeted against the developer or the app idea, but that it's built on the Electron framework. Maybe many developers using Electron do not have much experience and it seems like a good idea in their heads. In this case criticism is helpful because the developer will learn that Electron is bad and should be avoided.
A crude analogy: If I was driving on an divided highway in the wrong lane without knowing, I would be very grateful if the first car I met in the opposite lane would use the horn and blink the lights to get my attention so I could immediately stop and turn around.
Doesn't Cortana do this? Also unit dash can also search the web and local files.
Not as polished, but I wrote something similar that leverages Google or DuckDuckGo on top of Hammerspoon. If you're in to little tweaks like this to boost your productivity on a Mac, definitely check out Hammerspoon. Hammerspoon is quite light, and runs on Lua.
Here's my version, Anycomplete: http://github.com/nathancahill/Anycomplete/
And the Show HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065670
Here's my version, Anycomplete: http://github.com/nathancahill/Anycomplete/
And the Show HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065670
Is finding things such a pain point for many people? I work with a few tools/programs, and a few locations where my documents and data live. I know where those are and go to them so often it takes no effort. The few times I do need to go elsewhere, the tools that come with the OS work fine.
So, sure, great, more power to you if you want to write a tool like this. I'm just not feeling the pain that would make me have any interest in giving it a try.
So, sure, great, more power to you if you want to write a tool like this. I'm just not feeling the pain that would make me have any interest in giving it a try.
I don't use my mouse for navigation if I can help it. With Alfred (similar tool to this) I can navigation to any folder on my system, any contact, search on duckduckgo, translate words/sentences/currency, navigate my clipboard, restart/shutdown/lock my computer, open any app with just a keyboard shortcut and a few letters that specify what I'm going for.
It's like a very precise search engine for your personal machine.
It's amazing how great it works, and not having that available when I'm using a computer ruins things for me.
If that is not enough, Alfred also has lots of other awesome features.
It's like a very precise search engine for your personal machine.
It's amazing how great it works, and not having that available when I'm using a computer ruins things for me.
If that is not enough, Alfred also has lots of other awesome features.
"Search everything in few clicks" - poorly phrased or actually promotes navigating by clicking instead of using keyboard?
some keyboards make clicky sounds ;)
For the ones that don't, there's https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring
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i tried this app, i actually love it.
the fact is in electron is not that big of a deal, but i would awensome if i could share the electron instance between multiple electron app, but i guess is something hard.
Good job dev
Good job dev
On Windows...
Are anyone using keypirinha?
Is cerebro better?
Are anyone using keypirinha?
Is cerebro better?
ive been trying keypirinha since a few weeks ago. its not bad. its nice improvement over launchy and is being developed unlike launchy which hasnt been touched in years.
having to change the settings from a text file in keypirinha is bit of a pain though.
anyway, from what i can tell, cerebro is able to show you a lot more things and also has plugins. keypirinha just shows basic things like files and apps i think
anyway, from what i can tell, cerebro is able to show you a lot more things and also has plugins. keypirinha just shows basic things like files and apps i think
I tend to use Gnome Do[1] as my launcher. I haven't observed any noticeable battery drain (on Arch) despite the fact that it runs in background.
There's a neat comparison of different launchers available on Wikipedia[2].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Do 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_desktop_applicat...
As someone mentioned previously the Alt + F2 (or F3) works well enough in XFCE most of time.
I'll give Cerebro a try...
There's a neat comparison of different launchers available on Wikipedia[2].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Do 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_desktop_applicat...
As someone mentioned previously the Alt + F2 (or F3) works well enough in XFCE most of time.
I'll give Cerebro a try...
Yeah there are other similar apps.
But this one is written in Javascript, so that is something going for it. More accessible, millions of packages to drop in easily.
Nice job.
But this one is written in Javascript, so that is something going for it. More accessible, millions of packages to drop in easily.
Nice job.
> https://github.com/KELiON/cerebro/blob/master/app/AppUpdater... :
> export default class AppUpdater { ......
why is this a class ? just so it can auto-exececute without being called ?
i would prefer an 'export default function init(){ // init code'
> export default class AppUpdater { ......
why is this a class ? just so it can auto-exececute without being called ?
i would prefer an 'export default function init(){ // init code'
Not even. `export default new class ...` would be 'equivalent' to an IIFE; using CommonJS module caching to produce singleton behaviour. This should just export a function. That's it.
OMG, another electron app that is meant to run as a daemon.
It's terrible. I already have hard times with Slack taking more memory than i would expect from a chat.
Yeah, I know that it's super hard to make native GUI these days, but please if you try to attract developer community with plugins and you have a relatively simple app, don't choose electron for that.
Examples of good ol' native desktop apps : twitter for OSX.
It's terrible. I already have hard times with Slack taking more memory than i would expect from a chat.
Yeah, I know that it's super hard to make native GUI these days, but please if you try to attract developer community with plugins and you have a relatively simple app, don't choose electron for that.
Examples of good ol' native desktop apps : twitter for OSX.
Wow, some of the comments in this thread are pretty harsh considering the developer has worked hard on providing what looks to me like a pretty cool free app. Nobody is forcing you to install it.
Completely agree. Electron is free, easy to use and doesn't take much effort. Although it isn't the most memory efficient thing in the world, it is great at making really small applications (like this one) which developers can easily make plugins for.
Javascript is probably one of the most common languages, with Node.JS the most common server-side variant of it, allowing so very many people to contribute.
Also, we live in age where we don't have 100MB systems. At the moment the program is using a whole 30MB, which constitutes about 0.4% of my 8GB system.
Javascript is probably one of the most common languages, with Node.JS the most common server-side variant of it, allowing so very many people to contribute.
Also, we live in age where we don't have 100MB systems. At the moment the program is using a whole 30MB, which constitutes about 0.4% of my 8GB system.
izacus(5)
Hey, come on.
I also had criticism in time for open source projects I worked on.
It's not about the person who did it, it's about my opinion and why I wouldn't use it.
Kudos for everyone doing open source.
I also had criticism in time for open source projects I worked on.
It's not about the person who did it, it's about my opinion and why I wouldn't use it.
Kudos for everyone doing open source.
So, people shouldn't be able to comment their point of view because the developer worked hard?
A considered statement in measured language about the negative consequences of using electron is one thing. This wasn't that: it's unnecessarily hostile — as if the OP was genuinely inconvenienced or put out by something that doesn't impact them in the least.
Disagreeing with someone isn't the same as shitting on their hard work and good-faith effort to create something useful.
Disagreeing with someone isn't the same as shitting on their hard work and good-faith effort to create something useful.
I think people should be slightly less critical of design decisions enforced by a limited amount of time to work on a side-project that's free.
Comments such as "why didn't you make everything from scratch" probably aren't going to contribute much to the conversation.
Comments such as "why didn't you make everything from scratch" probably aren't going to contribute much to the conversation.
Well, maybe we should choose our projects based on time we have for them, instead of using a hammer to drive in a screw?
Or maybe the app works great and nobody cares what technology you wish had been used.
We have already established this is not the case.
No, we haven't. A bunch of people have used the app (including me) and said nice things about it. Then some other people have spouted vitriol about the fact that it's made with electron. Frankly all we've established is that a lot of people are bitter about electron and don't have the basic manners required to take part in a constructive technology community.
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Don't worry about drinchev, it is very common in Bulgaria to point out flaws whenever someone else is doing something, instead of congratulating how awesome the work is. It is not personal, just cultural.
Behaviors contrary to Hacker News's culture are common to many national cultures and most sites on the internet. That does not make them appropriate here.
Speechless here. Bravo!
I know that most people don't know it, no reason to be speechless. But I've been living there for a good part of my life and observed that behaviour time and again. Someone does something awesome, then comes the first feedback, finds a flaw and makes the whole feedback just about that flaw. That's why the country is miserable and everyone is leaving. People don't enxourage eacht other but crizisize each other all day long. Besides that: Wonderful country and people!
I feel completely the opposite way.
> It's terrible.
It's awesome. Who cares if it takes more memory than someone would expect? That doesn't matter unless you're on a memory constrained system, in which case it's hardly the fault of developers looking to be productive. Electron is here to stay, and it is greatly improving the desktop app ecosystem imo.
> if you try to attract developer community with plugins and you have a relatively simple app, don't choose electron for that
Electron is the perfect choice. Any web developer can quickly learn to contribute to an electron app. It's far easier to build community around electron apps than native apps, because there are more web developers than any other kind.
> It's terrible.
It's awesome. Who cares if it takes more memory than someone would expect? That doesn't matter unless you're on a memory constrained system, in which case it's hardly the fault of developers looking to be productive. Electron is here to stay, and it is greatly improving the desktop app ecosystem imo.
> if you try to attract developer community with plugins and you have a relatively simple app, don't choose electron for that
Electron is the perfect choice. Any web developer can quickly learn to contribute to an electron app. It's far easier to build community around electron apps than native apps, because there are more web developers than any other kind.
>Who cares if it...
I care, because it's a waste of resources, I care because I don't need a daemon written in JS running in a loop sucking up my laptop battery, I care because I like it when my software doesn't randomly get in a loop maxing out a core, I care because I like it when my software is able to push out 60FPS animations.
You know, things Electron doesn't provide.
I get it, HTML+CSS is probably the fastest thing we have for UIs today, and it's not half bad. That doesn't stop software from being absolute crap.
I care, because it's a waste of resources, I care because I don't need a daemon written in JS running in a loop sucking up my laptop battery, I care because I like it when my software doesn't randomly get in a loop maxing out a core, I care because I like it when my software is able to push out 60FPS animations.
You know, things Electron doesn't provide.
I get it, HTML+CSS is probably the fastest thing we have for UIs today, and it's not half bad. That doesn't stop software from being absolute crap.
> I get it, HTML+CSS is probably the fastest thing we have for UIs today.
Maybe Racket will come to the rescue soon :) it comes with full gui and graphics libraries, is a much saner language, and is performant (with major perf boosts in the works), cross-platform, has c interop... Optional type system...
Maybe Racket will come to the rescue soon :) it comes with full gui and graphics libraries, is a much saner language, and is performant (with major perf boosts in the works), cross-platform, has c interop... Optional type system...
What hardware are you running on?
Also:
> I don't need a daemon written in JS running in a loop sucking up my laptop battery
This is not JS (or Electron) specific.
> I like it when my software doesn't randomly get in a loop maxing out a core
Again, this is not JS (or Electron) specific.
> I like it when my software is able to push out 60FPS animations.
This is not JS (or Electron) specific either.
Also:
> I don't need a daemon written in JS running in a loop sucking up my laptop battery
This is not JS (or Electron) specific.
> I like it when my software doesn't randomly get in a loop maxing out a core
Again, this is not JS (or Electron) specific.
> I like it when my software is able to push out 60FPS animations.
This is not JS (or Electron) specific either.
>> I like it when my software is able to push out 60FPS animations.
> This is not JS (or Electron) specific either.
Pikzen could be more respectful. But to be fair, it is really reeally hard to make animations smooth all the time with web technologies. I have never seen a web app or Electron app being smooth all the time, on all my hardware. Usually there is some amount of stuttering. I mean, come on, we did 60 fps in the 90s, so even hardware from 10 years ago should be able to achieve 60 fps all the time without breaking a sweat. I know there are hardware accelerated CSS animations but for some reason smooth animations remain hard, e.g. because of garbage collector pauses, accidental relayouts or whatever.
Native UIs tend to fare much better. Though to be fairer still, even they fail at delivering smooth animations all the time (but still succeed more often than web tech). For exmaple macOS Sierra has more animation stutterings on my latest Macbook Pro than OS X Lion from 2008.
> This is not JS (or Electron) specific either.
Pikzen could be more respectful. But to be fair, it is really reeally hard to make animations smooth all the time with web technologies. I have never seen a web app or Electron app being smooth all the time, on all my hardware. Usually there is some amount of stuttering. I mean, come on, we did 60 fps in the 90s, so even hardware from 10 years ago should be able to achieve 60 fps all the time without breaking a sweat. I know there are hardware accelerated CSS animations but for some reason smooth animations remain hard, e.g. because of garbage collector pauses, accidental relayouts or whatever.
Native UIs tend to fare much better. Though to be fairer still, even they fail at delivering smooth animations all the time (but still succeed more often than web tech). For exmaple macOS Sierra has more animation stutterings on my latest Macbook Pro than OS X Lion from 2008.
Good thing it's open source, so you can attempt to improve it if you'd like. :)
rm -rf ~/cerebro-electron && mkdir ~/cerebro && touch main.cpp is a valid option, right?
you're so edgy it's actually insane. i want you to reply to this message with your age.
Only if you promise to not cut yourself on that edge.
I feel like "want" is a strong word though. I don't exactly believe you've earned any right to get personal information. I'll give you a hint though, it's over 25.
In all seriousness though, when HN lives in a safe space where being told your work is shit isn't accepted, what other answers do I have aside from being snarky? It's okay to be told your work is shit. It's better when you're told why it's shit, sure. But that's not a judgement on you, as a person. It's about your work. It's shit. And it's fine, no hard feelings. Start over, you'll maybe do it better.
I feel like "want" is a strong word though. I don't exactly believe you've earned any right to get personal information. I'll give you a hint though, it's over 25.
In all seriousness though, when HN lives in a safe space where being told your work is shit isn't accepted, what other answers do I have aside from being snarky? It's okay to be told your work is shit. It's better when you're told why it's shit, sure. But that's not a judgement on you, as a person. It's about your work. It's shit. And it's fine, no hard feelings. Start over, you'll maybe do it better.
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I hoped a better comment were at top. This is disheartening for the developer. Instead of downright rudeness, constructive feedback would help.
And it is disheartening for the users to have a dozen of electron apps competing for CPU Time or Memory slowing down your PC and draining your battery.
Choosing electron to build an application means you didn't care about those implications either by negligence, ignorance or a combination of both and you can't expect a positive response when you neglect those issues just because you wanted to build something with the minimum possible effort to ship the application as fast as possible.
If we just blindly praised the efforts of people, the end result would be more apps built with electron, and that is abhorrent.
Choosing electron to build an application means you didn't care about those implications either by negligence, ignorance or a combination of both and you can't expect a positive response when you neglect those issues just because you wanted to build something with the minimum possible effort to ship the application as fast as possible.
If we just blindly praised the efforts of people, the end result would be more apps built with electron, and that is abhorrent.
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I feel the same way. Whenever I see an app compatible with all three platforms, I check if it's built on electron.
The less electron-based running apps, the better. The only electron app I (sometimes) use is Atom.
I have switched to slack on browser, instead of the app.
The less electron-based running apps, the better. The only electron app I (sometimes) use is Atom.
I have switched to slack on browser, instead of the app.
Maybe put some more RAM in your computer. It's pennies per megabyte these days.
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sure native apps would be great, but this guy seems to be doing this in his free time. i doubt he has time to learn and make native apps on all three os's
Could not QT fill this space better than a whole electron stack ?
QT used to fill this space, but developers flock to electron because it's a much nicer development experience.
I can't blame people for trying to build things in what they find introduces the least friction to shipping. With traction, this app could be rewritten as native, supposing it's tenable as a first iteration. I use an Electron app on my Mac that's been open for days and is only using 100MB ram at the moment. RAM is cheaper than time for many folks.
Also, Qt Widgets are in maintenance mode. Not a good sign, imo.
But QT isn't cool enough for the JS crowd
Mac and Swift/Obj-C fanboys will always rail against anything that fails their purity tests. Electron certainly has some issues they need to work out, but Electron criticism doesn't need to dominate this comments section to the rate that it is.
Fwiw, i work on windows and also reject anything electron that isn't designed to be started, do a thing, and closed quickly.
"Cerebro" in Spanish means "brain".
Also in Portuguese.
The author seems non-hispanic, it could be a reference to X-Men: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebro
The author seems non-hispanic, it could be a reference to X-Men: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebro
Not even close, it is the «brain» as invented by Pr Xavier in X-men.
Spanish must have stolen it in an alternate universe when the X-men went back in time fighting the spanish inquisition disguised as lumberjacks and it's ok.
Spanish must have stolen it in an alternate universe when the X-men went back in time fighting the spanish inquisition disguised as lumberjacks and it's ok.
Hm.
I don't expect it that it was the Spanish Inquisition.
Cerebrō was Latin for brain before it was Spanish, so probably it's some kind of Future Past thing with the Colosseum. Which explains why it's so beat up, but not how Magneto lifted it when the Romans didn't have steel-reinforced concrete.
I don't expect it that it was the Spanish Inquisition.
Cerebrō was Latin for brain before it was Spanish, so probably it's some kind of Future Past thing with the Colosseum. Which explains why it's so beat up, but not how Magneto lifted it when the Romans didn't have steel-reinforced concrete.
Default Spotlight in macOS?
i just use alt+space in kde plasma 5.
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Years of work can still amount to absolute crap. You're not shielded from criticism because your software is free.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13737495 and marked it off-topic.
There's difference between arrogant criticism and constructive feedback. Most of those who rudely criticize are those who rarely create anything. Instead they are mostly into commentaries.
Aaaaah, the good old "you shouldn't critize if you haven't created anything argument". Easily applied to "you can't criticize music if you haven't recorded an album" and "Why are you criticizing this movie you haven't even filmed a blockbuster".
Commentaries have a valid point, with or without creation.
Commentaries have a valid point, with or without creation.
I disagree. I can dislike a song. If I am able to talk to the singer/musician, I won't say 'You Suck', that would be rude.
I think that you are focusing on "rudeness" too much.
This is the internet.
And this is a (mainly) hacker community -who are not known for their politeness-, and good engineering matters for hackers. (as it should) I think that this is the perfect medium for rudeness.
The whole reason people post their projects here is to get criticism of any kind. If one is disheartened because of a rude comment, one needs to grow up.
One needs to learn how to deal with comments; learn to decide on which ones to take seriously and which ones to not..
The good thing about the internet is that most of us are anonymous here. So you can not judge my comments based on my identity (or my history, e.g. what i have done). Nor you can punch me in the face for being rude or something. The thing you get in exchange is honesty (hopefully).
This is healthy. Let's embrace it, and keep politeness and politics for face-to-face meetings.
This is the internet.
And this is a (mainly) hacker community -who are not known for their politeness-, and good engineering matters for hackers. (as it should) I think that this is the perfect medium for rudeness.
The whole reason people post their projects here is to get criticism of any kind. If one is disheartened because of a rude comment, one needs to grow up.
One needs to learn how to deal with comments; learn to decide on which ones to take seriously and which ones to not..
The good thing about the internet is that most of us are anonymous here. So you can not judge my comments based on my identity (or my history, e.g. what i have done). Nor you can punch me in the face for being rude or something. The thing you get in exchange is honesty (hopefully).
This is healthy. Let's embrace it, and keep politeness and politics for face-to-face meetings.
> And this is a (mainly) hacker community -who are not known for their politeness-
And you hold this up as an ideal rather than something we can improve upon? Tone matters.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.
If you want to act differently than in real life, this is not the site.
And you hold this up as an ideal rather than something we can improve upon? Tone matters.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.
If you want to act differently than in real life, this is not the site.
Good point.
I might be wrong.
I was trying to say that everybody needs to learn how to deal with rude people/comments.
This does not justify the bad tone nonetheless.
I might be wrong.
I was trying to say that everybody needs to learn how to deal with rude people/comments.
This does not justify the bad tone nonetheless.
No love for Listary?
“Cerebro.app” can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer. I'm really curious why developers release software without signing it. The Mac developer account and code signing certificate seem like a small cost if you're releasing software you actually expect people to use. Personally, I see that warning and assume the developers aren't serious and/or don't care about their users and delete the software.
Personally, I support developers not signing apps out of principle.
Gatekeeper on Mac OS, while ostensibly a "security" restriction, is nothing more than a blatant money-grab by Apple.
Gatekeeper on Mac OS, while ostensibly a "security" restriction, is nothing more than a blatant money-grab by Apple.
As many others in this thread have pointed out, Cerebro is a pretty cool app that borrows from some core OS functionality and improves on it. Is its design 100% perfect? Maybe not. However, instead of commenting the application isn't exactly the way YOU would have done it and complaining try offering some constructive criticism.
If the app is memory hogging, not following best coding practices, or you have a cool idea of how something could be done instead share that feedback and offer better ways to do things. Not only does this benefit the developers working on this app but it helps others who may be working on becoming better developers themselves.
I myself am a naive developer. However I enjoy developing in my free time to keep myself thinking and I enjoy learning new things. I frequently visit this community to see what others are working on and looking at all the cool applications that people develop is a great way to pass time. If I had worked on something really hard, posted it, and then received some of these comments I would be extremely discouraged.
That said, if a Cerebro developer is reading, this looks like a really cool improvement on Spotlight (I use OSX). Keep up the good work and don't let the negative comments in here discourage you or your team!