[HN Gopher] Show HN: Openexus - Building blocks for the internet
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Show HN: Openexus - Building blocks for the internet
Hi HN! We are thrilled to share a sneak peek of
https://openexus.com after months of work. You can try out the cool
demos on the front page! The idea is to build a platform and
community for composable building blocks where anyone can easily
create, find and connect different modules to create dynamic and
interactive apps, sites, dashboards, and docs. This can be done
without using a single line of code. Key principles of what we are
building: 1) True composability that enables infinite
possibilities -- Modules today are either too complex to be used
only by developers (e.g. NPM packages) or too simplistic where they
are usually used as an embed in isolation. We are establishing a
modularization foundation that is powerful enough for developers to
express functionalities, simple enough for anyone (even kids) to
use, and flexible enough to build sophisticated creations. 2)
Smart connect without code -- All logic can be clearly expressed by
simply drawing lines. Depending on the data type and other
characteristics of the connector, we can figure out how the
connection should behave. For example, triggers can only be
connected to actions, and data connectors that fetch from APIs can
be defined as directional read-only connectors. 3) Open-
connections for instant forking -- Forking today is a time-
consuming complex endeavor. Even a simple change requires many
layers of code understanding. Instead of open-source code, we see a
future of open-source connections, where remixing simply means
adding new blocks and re-wiring them. What we are building can be
described as NPM for non-developers, connectable Lego blocks for
the Internet, or Minecraft for non-game creations. Our focus is to
create a community where we can share ideas and innovations. We
are super excited about the possibilities of this platform,
especially when we incorporate AI. We will be releasing tutorials,
opening up the playground, and sending out invites in the coming
weeks. If you are eager to try out our tooling and create your own
building blocks, drop us an email! We would love to hear your
feedback! Website: https://openexus.com Email: m@openexus.com
Author : lominming
Score : 28 points
Date : 2023-07-31 02:59 UTC (20 hours ago)
| omeze wrote:
| I don't understand how you make blocks, all of the demos seem to
| "just work" but it doesnt really make sense how some values are
| overrode and others have a default that auto updates?
| lominming wrote:
| The logic is actually quite simple. Once 2 cells are connected
| via a line, their values are kept in-sync. If one cell changes
| the value, the other cell will be informed of the change, and
| the module will react accordingly, very much like a reactive
| spreadsheet.
|
| During the initial connection, we have to "pick a winner" and
| determine which of the 2 cells' values to use. The logic is
| that the empty cell will be overridden. If both cells have
| values, the direction of how you connect them determines the
| winner. Dragging A to B will have B's value overridden by A's
| value.
|
| However, the developer of the module, or the creator have the
| ability to specify the direction flow when necessary. For
| example, in the Github example, the Github module populates the
| (issues) cell via fetch call and is expected to be a read-only
| cell. This means that any connection to the cell will become a
| directional data flow out.
|
| The simple big picture is that we are drawing lines to tell the
| system how we want data to flow among the different modules,
| very much like how we pass variables around in code.
| jjb123 wrote:
| What are your favorite use cases?
| lominming wrote:
| We actually did a mini internal hackathon among ourselves
| to see what we can do in 1 hour. We created a codepen
| (multiple code editors hooked up with iframes), spotify +
| lyrics + translation mini app, and a mini-dashboard.
|
| Besides the common use-cases of creating apps or
| dashboards, we are excited about: AI apps and workflows,
| interactive education materials, a playground for kids to
| start thinking about logic, and hardware interface
| controls.
| remuusx3 wrote:
| Oh nice, sent an email for access--looks like a great extension
| of APIs.
| lominming wrote:
| Clickable link: https://openexus.com
| taywenbin wrote:
| Pretty cool! I would really like to know how would I go about
| creating my blocks in the future? That is a feature I'm really
| interested in
| lominming wrote:
| Developers can create modules in Javascript very similar to
| writing web components or React components. The only addition
| is to write a declaration of the connectors (e.g. value, data,
| location, etc.) and use provided functions to subscribe to cell
| value changes.
|
| Developers can import NPM packages, load external javascript
| files, use JSX, write CSS, use Typescript, etc. We will provide
| all the necessary tooling online so that building a module is
| as simple as using an online IDE like codepen. No need for
| downloads, building, compilation, etc.
|
| Non-developers can also create custom modules that consist of
| other nested modules grouped together. We also aim to have a
| lightweight way for citizen developers to write modules using
| spreadsheet-like syntax.
| esafak wrote:
| Is this like Yahoo! Pipes?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes
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(page generated 2023-07-31 23:02 UTC)