[HN Gopher] Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
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Thinkserver: My web-based coding environment
Author : ColinWright
Score : 217 points
Date : 2025-02-10 12:52 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (checkmyworking.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (checkmyworking.com)
| grimui wrote:
| Building custom tools that work for only you is so under rated. I
| would never use that workflow but it works for the author and
| that's awesome!
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > Building custom tools that work for only you is so under
| rated.
|
| This is one of the top applications for LLM-based dev IMO. With
| things like aider / cline / cursor / windsurf / bolt it's
| looking like this will be a lot easier to scaffold small-scale
| projects that make sense for you and not necessarily turn into
| products. It suits single-dev / small teams for now, and that's
| OK.
| joshstrange wrote:
| This has been my experience as well. I find my much more
| likely to "build" it myself versus using something off the
| shelf because it'll give me full control over the project.
|
| A lot of the reasons I would pull in dependencies for are
| things I'm either not good at or not fast at writing and in
| most cases LLMs are good at picking up the slack.
|
| It's been a joy to write the core logic then have an LLM
| throw a web GUI frontend together for me so I can iterate
| faster.
| tomglynch wrote:
| I'm a big fan of glitch as well, so it's very impressive you have
| built the same yourself. Do you self host the server and are
| there any limitations on languages you can use?
| lvturner wrote:
| I've recently discovered the joys of vscode-server[0] for this
| type of use case.
|
| Which you can either serve as a WebApp direct from your machine,
| or tunnel in from another VSCode instance - including a webhosted
| version from Microsoft[1]
|
| I may not do that much coding these days, but I already have
| found it handy for when I forgot to do a Git push! Just log back
| in to the Web Environment and everything is how I left it.
|
| [0] https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/vscode-server [1]
| https://vscode.dev/
| notpushkin wrote:
| There's also code-server by Coder, which you can just run on
| your own server and open in browser directly. It's also open
| source (most tunneling features in VSCode aren't).
| https://github.com/coder/code-server
|
| There's a one-click setup for it in Lunni, a Docker dashboard
| I've been working on (shameless plug): https://lunni.dev/
| BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote:
| As someone who doesn't code professionally, what is the
| primary use case that leads to significant daily enhancements
| for developers?
| lvturner wrote:
| This is a multifaceted question, because there isn't one
| use case, it depends on who you are.
|
| If you are somewhat nomadic and always moving systems,
| having a "home" you can dial back to and pick up where you
| left off from is a massive boon (with a remote system like
| this, my _phone_ is now powerful enough to do pretty much
| any development task as now it 's just rendering the front
| end and not doing real heavy lifting)
|
| If you're an enterprise programmer working on locked down
| networks and devices with more end point protection tools
| than endpoints, an unencumbered authorized system with
| access to the right network assets, as well as standardized
| and project specific tooling is the difference between
| coding and coding with one arm tied behind your back and a
| blindfold on. (actually the benefits for enterprise are
| many and not just DevEx -- think security, network admin,
| vendor access, governance, AI rollout, reduction in project
| specific on-boarding documentation....)
|
| I'm sure there are many other use cases, though these are
| just the immediate ones that spring to mind.
| TheTaytay wrote:
| Lunni looks cool. I hear mixed things about Docker Swarm. How
| has it been to work with?
| notpushkin wrote:
| Thank you so much!
|
| Personally, Docker Swarm works great for me. I was worried
| about it for a while, too, but Mirantis seems to maintain
| it pretty well. There are even new features being shipped,
| like CSI support back in 2023! I'm thinking about adding a
| Kubernetes backend though, just in case things get worse
| for Swarm.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Lunni looks neat. Is persistence baked in with the docker
| stuff you deploy on and/or how is persistence
| handled/achieved?
| gyomu wrote:
| This is awesome. I've also built a number of services for myself
| (Pinterest style photo hosting for archival/research purposes,
| analytics service for my websites, tracker for the books I've
| read, message board for micro communities I'm a part of, etc). I
| also share them with friends who express interest in them.
|
| The costs are minimal (they all run on a shared $4/mo instance +
| $10/yr domain per project) and I get to control where the data
| lives, the features I want to have, etc.
|
| No need to worry about getting the rug pulled on me because the
| company got acquired or needs to raise revenue or anything like
| that. No frustration because a redesign made the UI worse or
| removed features I cared about.
|
| It obviously takes a bit of time upfront, but I see it as a long
| term investment in my productivity. I use boring, basic, stable
| technologies so once something is deployed it keeps on humming
| with extremely minimal involvement on my behalf.
|
| I'm basically slowly working on replacing pretty much every 3rd
| party app I use with something I wrote myself (it's going to take
| a while but that's okay). My grandpa was a carpenter and pretty
| much every piece of furniture in the house was something he or
| his friends had made. As software craftspeople, we should strive
| to do the same with our digital houses.
|
| Kudos to the author and anyone else who does this. You don't hear
| about these things in the mainstream because there's no reason
| for people doing this to shout it from the rooftops, but this is
| software at its best.
| eGQjxkKF6fif wrote:
| For the love of technology, and the love of coding, and the
| love of self hosting, good.
|
| This is the way.
| mdrzn wrote:
| Same.
|
| Since Claude 3.5 Sonnet has been released I've been building a
| lot of "microservices" that are just useful to me, or Chrome
| Extensions that I've seen that I just recreated using Cursor.
| Awesome learning experience and now I can customize them as
| needed.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| I think you mean that you've been building a lot of simple
| applications? Because that's not really what microservices
| are.
|
| I mean sure it's just a word and HN especially loves to spit
| on original definitions, but it is always kinda jarring to
| hear these technical terms in settings that have pretty much
| no overlap with the original definition.
| dewey wrote:
| If you think as yourself as an application and you are
| surrounding yourself by small service applications that do
| one specific task...then I could see it make sense.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Seems like we'll need to coalesce on a term for these. A
| microapp[0]? Or a tiny app[1][2]?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microapp
|
| [1] https://tinyprojects.dev/projects
|
| [2] https://tinyapps.org/
| hansvm wrote:
| mApp?
| sim7c00 wrote:
| this makes it sound very nice. i only do this stuff out of
| sheer frustration. not understanding stuff (i hate 'magic' ,
| its 1s and 0s...), or not agreeing with decisions after i do
| understand stuff. i really dislike i have to build everything
| myself. though then again. i guess i do like building stuff
| :')... it's a never ending s/shitshow/joy/g
| sim7c00 wrote:
| oh, and yeah, looks like a really nice project honestly. i
| never do frontend stuff, but when i do, man, something like
| this would be useful :')... typing chromium index.html ->
| realizing it just spawned on the different workspace because
| chromium is trying to be smart (more likely i am being dumb
| ;D).
|
| having it side by side like that looks really nice if u have
| the screenspace.
| rambambram wrote:
| > I'm basically slowly working on replacing pretty much every
| 3rd party app I use with something I wrote myself (it's going
| to take a while but that's okay). My grandpa was a carpenter
| and pretty much every piece of furniture in the house was
| something he or his friends had made. As software craftspeople,
| we should strive to do the same with our digital houses.
|
| I do the same. Both with software and furniture in my house.
|
| I've built all kinds of little dashboards, a big website
| software project, a local-only bookkeeping system, etc.
|
| With furniture, I'm not that far that I dare to build a chair
| or couch, but I've built a bed frame, an over-engineered shoe
| rack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXzO8BOIlhk), a weight
| rack, and now I have some bookshelves in the works.
|
| I don't know if you're Japanese, maybe it's coincidence, but I
| really get inspired by watching Japanese craftsmen on Youtube.
| It's not only the techniques or style that I like, but the
| careful working on something that should last.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| For others of like interest, NHKOnline is an ever-growing and
| fantastic collection of videos in English (or at least
| subtitled) that showcase Japan's fascinating sub-cultures,
| many of them craft-oriented.
|
| Our favorite is "Design Stories" (which used to be "Design
| Talks Plus") that features many such fantastic Japanese
| crafspeople. Our family hasn't missed an episode in quite a
| few years.
|
| And, of course, there is the Canadian resident of Japan,
| David Bull, who does traditional wood-block prints in the
| style of the magnificent Hokusai. His attention to detail in
| his work is inspiring to us as well.
| bityard wrote:
| Same here. I got into woodworking because I was astonished at
| the price of decently-made furniture here in the US. You can
| literally buy all the materials AND tools for less than one
| solid wood rustic-chic kitchen table and bench costs to buy.
|
| Anyway, the hard part about this is that you need a space and
| then the tools and some tools are easier/cheaper to build
| than buy (e.g. bandsaw, router table) but there comes a point
| at which you have to stop building the shop and start
| building furniture. Most of the YouTubers I follow haven't
| gotten this message yet...
| echoangle wrote:
| > I got into woodworking because I was astonished at the
| price of decently-made furniture here in the US. You can
| literally buy all the materials AND tools for less than one
| solid wood rustic-chic kitchen table and bench costs to
| buy.
|
| Not really surprising, the majority of the cost is the
| actual work. Especially in high-wage countries like the US.
| Buying a computer to build a website is also much cheaper
| than getting a website made by someone else.
| rambambram wrote:
| > Anyway, the hard part about this is that you need a space
| and then the tools and some tools are easier/cheaper to
| build than buy (e.g. bandsaw, router table) but there comes
| a point at which you have to stop building the shop and
| start building furniture. Most of the YouTubers I follow
| haven't gotten this message yet...
|
| You might like my Youtube channel then (see previous link).
| I work in my living room, using my couch and my Ikea stool
| for basically everything. A lot of cheap hand tools, but I
| can't work without my drill press. I pick up 2x3's at the
| local home depot, start sawing and drilling, and mostly use
| bolts and nuts for connections. Along the way I pick up new
| power tools, like a portable drill, a dremel, and my newest
| - a trim router. I built a bicycle caravan, a portable
| stove, among others. One of the things that really
| surprised me is the amount of jigs that come to life out of
| nowhere, haha.
|
| By the way, nice bandsaw you made!
| videogreg93 wrote:
| What service are you using that's 4$/month? I've used the free
| tier of Render on the past which I enjoyed but the lowest paid
| plan is 20$/month.
| diggan wrote:
| Some options that pop up frequently on HN: Vultr,
| DigitalOcean, OVH and Hetzner Cloud, all have cheap VPSes,
| $4-$5 per month for the cheapest I think. And usually if it's
| an app for just you/your small family, you can get away
| hosting multiple apps per VPS without suffering atrocious
| performance (depends on the apps/usage obviously).
|
| The trick (and somewhat the drawback in many's eyes) is to
| rent a VPS (or dedicated/bare metal) instead of a "App
| hosting service" (what Render is). You'd need to know some
| basics about infrastructure and networking, but not anything
| too advanced and that's stuff will be useful regardless too,
| so not too easy to rationalize away :)
| mediumsmart wrote:
| Dreamhost shared unlimited is good for this I think. 3,95 -
| After 3 years the price triples but still worth it. Unlimited
| traffic, bandwidth, emails and subdomains.
|
| https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/shared/#shared-plans
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Some excellent VPS deals with high storage here. Host has a
| good rep on LET. Believe these promos are ending soon and
| many are sold out in any case, but I think they have some
| stock in a few of them..
|
| https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/199617/hostbrr-bf-
| storage-...
| bityard wrote:
| 100%
|
| I'm not a programmer by trade but I write tools for myself all
| the time. My favorite is a wiki-style knowledge base that I
| built for myself because I did not like the bulk or design of
| all the existing solutions. (I am a bit picky.) I use it every
| day for both work and personal stuff. There are lots of ways I
| want to improve it, but finding the time is difficult.
| canadiantim wrote:
| I'd love to see the UI, you don't by chance have any
| screenshots? I'm always interested in how people organize
| their own knowledge based especially wiki style
| cies wrote:
| Nice to see another Elm enthusiast!
|
| You must know about Ellie, right?
|
| https://ellie-app.com
|
| It does not have git integration like your project though.
|
| Anyway, nice project!!
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Nice.
|
| One thing I couldn't unsee: The editor and the preview panels
| seem to have their bottoms misaligned by 1-2px.
| janoelze wrote:
| nice work! very similar to the scrappy codepen clone i built for
| myself, will copy a few things! I've integrated AI edits and use
| it suprisingly often as well to sketch out mini apps.
| https://endtime-instruments.org/scratch/
| smokel wrote:
| This might be a serious problem for tinkering platforms such as
| Glitch and Kinopio [1]. They are awesome, but they strongly
| inspire me to take creativity just a little step further and
| build my own implementation.
|
| This then leads to a fragmented landscape of such services, and
| none gets enough traction to grow into seriously sustainable
| popularity.
|
| [1] https://kinopio.club/
| rambambram wrote:
| Just build it for yourself and don't feel bad about not being a
| startup founder or something. I know it feels a little weird
| and it takes some adjustment time, but don't compare the joy of
| building software for yourself to business yardsticks. That
| stuff won't match anyway.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Fantastic. This is something I've thought about doing too. There
| are days where visual studio's shenanigans make me consider the
| benefits of a bespoke web based UI very strongly.
|
| With libraries like ace and codemirror available, the hard part
| is mostly on the server with managing state and integrating
| tools.
|
| I use C#/.NET for everything, so I'd lean on the Roslyn APIs to
| handle code completion, reference tracking, workspaces,
| debugging, etc.
| dented42 wrote:
| This is so reminiscent of doing web development in smalltalk with
| seaside.
| genewitch wrote:
| Every time I see a smalltalk comment I hope to see a reply
| along the lines of
|
| > I've been maintaining a Smalltalk compiler, <URL>
|
| But alas. I wonder how hard it is to get a copy of the spec...
| skydhash wrote:
| It's a VM you need. Not a compiler. The Pharo Project's VM
| [0] is in C, and not that extensive. Most of the good stuff
| is written in smalltalk.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm
| igouy wrote:
| https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
|
| Download and search !Compiler in:
| ./Cuis7-0-main/CuisImage/Cuis7.0.sources
|
| :and you'll see the commented Compiler class source code:
|
| "The compiler accepts Smalltalk source code and compiles it
| with respect to a given class. The user of the compiler
| supplies a context so that temporary variables are accessible
| during compilation."
|
| It would be easier to install Cuis Smalltalk and use the
| Smalltalk browsers to explore the Compiler code.
| devdri wrote:
| Like other folks here I also made something similar for myself.
| It started as a jsbin clone, but then I wanted to play with
| tweaking the environment itself. So now it's become a single
| editable directory tree where both the editor and the actual
| projects/demos share common parts of code, all synced between
| local storage and the server. If I break the editor and refresh
| the page, there's a simpler alternative editor backup to fix it.
| Lots of fun with such setup!
|
| Here's a screenshot with the editor showing a preview when
| editing itself: https://imgur.com/a/RxMCrlf
| kostuxa wrote:
| I found it so useful
| pomdtr wrote:
| This looks fantastic, I'll make sure to try it!
|
| I've been working on a similar platform (https://smallweb.run),
| which allows me to host all my side projects from a single root
| folder. Each subfolder automatically becomes a subdomain, and I
| can just use vscode remote ssh or mutagen to live edit my
| websites.
| diggan wrote:
| > and I can just use vscode remote ssh or mutagen to live edit
| my websites
|
| What is old is new again :) Back when I started development, we
| did this via git remotes, and some projects even did what you
| created and created environments mapped from git remotes to
| apps running with subdomains (like Dokku is probably the
| first/most memorable FOSS service for this back in the day).
|
| And before that, I'm sure people were doing the same thing with
| Java WARs or similar, and before that, something else but
| similar.
| pomdtr wrote:
| Yeah dokku is an inspiration!
|
| The main difference is that smallweb use deno instead of
| docker for sandboxing apps, and leverages url imports (which
| can be used to distribute complex apps like VS Code):
|
| ```
|
| import { VSCode } from "jsr:@smallweb/vscode@0.1.7"
|
| const vscode = new VSCode({ rootDir:
| Deno.env.get("SMALLWEB_DIR") });
|
| export default vscode;
|
| ```
|
| You can play with a live instance of smallweb at
| https://demo.smallweb.live
| diggan wrote:
| > The main difference is that smallweb use deno instead of
| docker for sandboxing apps
|
| Yeah, a single-runtime (smallweb) instead of any language
| (dokku) + I'd probably say the avoidance of using git for
| the delivery would be the two biggest differences I can
| glance.
| pomdtr wrote:
| Yeah, I see smallweb as a playground.
|
| I want to "develop in prod", not rely on successives git
| pushes to see changes.
|
| If I need semantic releases, I publish the dev version as
| a package on jsr, and I then import it from the "prod"
| app.
|
| I still uses github as way to store my apps though, you
| can find them at https://github.smallweb.run
| yencabulator wrote:
| By "VSCode" here you mean something like a HTTP API for
| file read/write[0] that can be used _from_ VSCode, I think?
| VSCode also can be made into a web app[1], but I don 't see
| that happening here.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/pomdtr/smallweb-
| vscode/blob/main/extensio...
|
| [1]: https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server
| https://github.com/coder/code-server etc
| pomdtr wrote:
| By vscode I mean vscode-web + an fsprovider extension.
|
| You can play with it at https://vscode.demo.smallweb.live
| (the code is located in the `vscode` folder)
| ashu1461 wrote:
| `live edit my websites`
|
| This will only work if your websites are in vanilla javascript
| / html right ?
| pomdtr wrote:
| Smallweb also allows you to run server-side code using deno.
| The main process watch for changes in the app directories,
| and automatically restart the corresponding deno processes
| when a change is detected.
|
| If you ever interacted with cloudflare workers or
| https://val.town, it is a similar experience.
|
| Feel free to join our discord at https://discord.smallweb.run
| if you're curious !
| qudat wrote:
| Very cool, very similar to SSHFS support on https://pico.sh/pgs
| and https://pico.sh/tuns
| pomdtr wrote:
| I love pico.sh! Some of their service can be reimplemented as
| smallweb apps.
|
| Ex: prose.sh is similar to
| https://jsr.io/@tayzendev/smallblog, an app created by a
| member of the smallweb community (we have a server at
| https://discord.smallweb.run). You can see it running from
| smallweb at https://blog.tayzen.dev
|
| I even use the underlying lib ssh implementation of pico.sh
| in smallweb (https://github.com/picosh/pobj), and I plan to
| introduce a cloud service similar to their (you can subscribe
| to the waitlist at https://cloud.smallweb.run)
| research-studio wrote:
| Oh wow! And I did not expect to click on this and see a Tyne &
| Wear Metro project. I can see why you may have wanted to create
| one though. Good luck with it!
| varun_ch wrote:
| This is seriously awesome! I made something extremely similar
| called Dock'n'Roll, but this looks far more polished. I think we
| should make our own tools more often.
|
| https://varun.ch/projects/dockn
| anildash wrote:
| Christian's been an awesome Glitch community member for a long
| time; I had caught Thinkserver when he first posted about it the
| other day. Generally, over the last 7 or 8 years we've seen super
| users be inspired to make their own tools like this every few
| months and it's great! Every single one has good ideas and brings
| new things to the table, and also there's a lot to learn from the
| overall trends. (Like, in this case, support for coding on
| phones, where we're still not very strong.)
|
| The other takeaway I got from his original blog post is a little
| bit of that trepidation you get when you put this stuff out
| there, where it can be a little nerve-wracking, because you don't
| want folks to rip it apart or file a million bug reports. fwiw
| I'm glad folks are being mostly chill about it.
| jackeilles wrote:
| Fair bit of whiplash seeing my local metro system on one of the
| examples haha, Tyne and Wear metro FTW!
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Very cool. Caddy in front with some basic auth and off I go on
| the internetz?
| rbanffy wrote:
| For a second I thought this was about using a Lenovo server...
|
| Damn names...
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(page generated 2025-02-13 23:01 UTC)