For anyone who is confused due to the infodump on the GH page, here is a video where I step by step go through some of the SQL and Viz generation features - it's a bit long and doesn't even touch the deep complex stuff (reactive values engine and values i/o) much, but I feel that it's a pretty good intro for what I'm going for...
So, in terms of the RVBBIT (just say rabbit) iceberg - this is everything "above the waterline" - for this layer, direct comparison would be something like superset - but done in a very different way.
Please hit me up here with more questions, ideas, etc!
This "problem" had been bugging me for a decade. The schism between "Proprietary BI Tools" (quick and inflexible) and just writing things from scratch (slow and wide open). You customers don't know or care what your tools can and can't do - and god forbid your org spent millions on Tableau (or whatever) already - your bed is basically made...
Why can't we have a bit of both - and put some direct-manipulation, Bret Victor-y Twists on it?
I just want to build "nice things" for my users that answer their questions, have some re-usability, lots of interactivity, and be able to check it into source control...
Ended up in this beautiful mutation of Tableau meets Hypercard meets Powerbuilder, etc (I think there is even a little SmallTalk and Lotus Notes in there). It's funny how the ultimate evolution of a dash tool is essentially an internal app builder...
Anyways - so I jumped off the ledge and dedicated an entire year to this - alpha is a bit rough around the edges, but it's def something interesting...
Don't let your dreams be memes - or something like that. :)
Heya. Very cool to see this here. Still in alpha and a lot to work on, but I think it's truly a unique offering in this (mostly crowded and nondescript) space.
Not to shill too hard, but my X timeline is loaded with little videos and gifs showing different features and demos (some quite esoteric, like joining a Clojure REPL output vector to a SQL table and filtering on it all). @ryrobes
Currently working on docs and much better "WTF IS THIS" messaging.
Thanks! Pretty much. The idea is to kind of make easy things easy - but allow a very high ceiling for hacking and modifying them for your use case. Besides, if we generate code for some easy stuff and a low skill user starts to make that mental model between the generated code and the visual output - but scrubbing values or even tweaking a CSS map - I think it fosters learning so much more than opaque and hidden wizards and "magic" code being run.
There is also a whole (user space configed) viz reco system (algo chosen and built templates based on query metadata and specified attribs) - but it's all just a starting point. Low bar, high ceiling? At least that's the idea.
There are lots of other systems focused on reading/writing values from the dash (both headless server processes and active browser actions - all synced with the server). Clojure REPL constructing data shapes to be rendered on the front-end also gives me HTMX vibes, which is kind of cool.
There is also a complete visual flow builder system, that you could use to write ETL... or run "visual functions" triggered by UI actions, etc etc.
Anything that serves moving data back & forth, reaction chains, and making it look beautiful (if you want).
Thanks. It's funny about the chosen aesthetic - I had early builds and demos that were very "corpo sterile" and eventually I started going crazy with dynamic themes and openai generated backgrounds, just to keep my motivation up. Morphed into a cyberpunk-esque kind of vibe.
I had people tell me that it wasn't a good idea - will turn people off, etc - my thought was... "well, if people see you can do crazy stuff, then certainly a plain-jame white, black, and heather grey theme would be childs play, no?"
Eventually, I just decided to lean into it. As the kids say, "vibes".
Project guy here - yes, succinct messaging is an issue I'm working on - there is literally so much there. I've been trying to frame it like an Iceberg - on the above the water level its a nice drag and drop "data canvas" that supports SQL and Clojure nREPL connections (meaning it could be any REPL) that generates code to be tweaked and modded for what you need it for (with some very customizable composition).
But underneath the water line it's almost like a pub/sub reactive value engine - since everything is essentially a named parameter that can be subbed to by the client (by referencing it) and the client will push updates to any subbed clients. So, run a flow - each step in the flow is it's own subbable value - run a solver (arbitrary function) - its a sub value - signals (boolean triggers) also a sub... not to mention other client's UI values... also a subbable value.
It's a deep rabbit hole (pun intended?) of reactive / cascading effects - which is a great fertile ground for interactive dash creation. IMHO data tools want to be feedback loop factories.
Same. Had a Commodore 64 hooked up to a CRT in the living room. Thinking back - "a programming language as an 'operating system'" is actually still very cool idea for those reasons you mention above.
Hell, even moving foward - in the 90s using DOS - you had to be somewhat computer literate to get anything to run well (esp games those days which bundled their own hw drivers, etc). HIMEM.SYS, different system boot files per application, etc.
In some ways things are much better now... in some ways they are far far inferior.
This mini-dichotomy reminds me of Rich Hickey's "Simple and Easy" talk.
Much in favor of more Alan Kay, Bret Victor, Doug Engelbart type ideas coming to market as opposed to being "locked" (somewhat) in academia.
From what I recall, he didn't like the aesthetics of the license plate (to which I can't really blame him).
It's also because CA DMV is a bit of a shit show - buy a car and you won't have plates for MONTHS, so seeing cars with no plates (at least in the Bay area) is super normal.
As an ex-NYer (where such things are strictly forbidden, heh) it was a bit jarring to not have a plate for 3-5 months.
I hate it when companies start their marketing about how shitty their main competitor is. Really? You couldn't muster an elegant elevator pitch without throwing some shade first?
Granted this seems to be a 'alternative marketing' page ("Why Zulip?") that calls out Slack directly... but, then again, so does the main page of the site.
If you can't define what your product does without namedropping a popular alternative first... C'mon man.
Red flag: both their concept as well as name have YT's brand name in it. The equivalent of calling your company "Uber for X". I'm all for decentralization where it makes sense - but this seems like they might be shooting themselves in the foot everywhere EXCEPT the tech (which, ultimately won't matter if they fail).
From the article: "Online since March 2018 in a beta version, the project should definitely take off by October, based on the money raised."
Beta + $60k + 6 more months time = Success? Against a practical content monopoly.
As a guy currently doing the start-up dance - this kind of optimistic naivety almost offends me.
> web services do crappy things with that data. (Hey Zuck, how was Congress?)
Is this kind of snark really necessary in top marketing copy? I get what you are saying in terms of freemiums ins and outs, but I don't know if it should be my first impression to your company's message.
OR allow student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy - that would give the schools a hell of an incentive to not ship overtly-debt-addled peeps into the workforce.
Reminds me of ancedotes of devs intentionally wasting ram in old school console game development; locking it up in some obscure way; just so that at the 11th hour, you can remove it and claim "amazing optimizations". ;)
I recall seeing a tweet this morning stating the same for ethics committees in academic research papers. Students are being taught to put questionable things in - that are easy to excise. They get challenged, remove the red herring, and are approved since the "offended party" feels appeased.