[HN Gopher] Nebu: A Spreadsheet Editor for Varvara
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Nebu: A Spreadsheet Editor for Varvara
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 119 points
Date : 2025-03-02 03:06 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (wiki.xxiivv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wiki.xxiivv.com)
| ravetcofx wrote:
| Devine's work on these projects along with the language that it
| is written in Uxntal https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/uxntal.html is
| nothing short of astounding and frankly a much healthier
| sustainable way of computing. They created the language after
| getting tired of the endless dependency chain massive language
| stacks that are required to make ios apps, electron/web apps etc.
| Having a set of applications that is only a few kb in size and
| source code that fits in one file could mean that this stack will
| stick around for decades to come. Their way of viewing
| sustainability in computing has brought back some passion that's
| been drained out of me by this industry. Rek and Devine's joint
| website is also a joy to behold https://100r.co/site/about.html
| dchuk wrote:
| I can't pronounce two of the four words in that domain, that's
| impressive.
| anta40 wrote:
| >> "They created the language after getting tired of the
| endless dependency chain massive language stacks that are
| required to make ios apps, electron/web apps"
|
| As a mobile app dev, I definitely understand this pain:
|
| -For developing iOS app: needs XCode and and some simulators
| which can easily take something like like... 40 GB
|
| -For developing Android apps: after working on some Android
| projects, your Gradle folder can take at least 15 GB
|
| But what can we do to improve the situation? Many years ago,
| before Android Studio and Gradle days, Android development was
| definitely less painful.
| an_ko wrote:
| For completeness, a critique of Uxn (and other "simpler"
| computing stacks): https://applied-langua.ge/posts/i-dont-want-
| to-go-to-chel-c....
|
| This HN discussion about this critique is also quite
| interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31705239
|
| One of the replies is from Devine:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31708175
| MarceColl wrote:
| I'm a big fan of everything Uxn related. The architecture is fun
| to work with, and unlike most low-level architectures it is very
| event driven making interactive programs quite easy to make.
|
| I'm exploring building a game around it (not in it) with Kikai,
| an unholy marriage between zachtronics games and starcraft, where
| units (and buildings) are uxn machines with devices to interact
| with the outside world. This allows you to fully customize the
| whole army and strategy to be whatever you like.
|
| Buildings for example, take a bit of the role of linkers (or even
| compilers), they are just another Uxn machine with a Factory
| device. The most basic form of a building and the one that you
| will have by default is just a memcpy of bytes from a source ROM
| to bytes in the RAM of the newly created unit. But by investing a
| bit of time you could for example have pre-made behaviours that
| you can link on runtime based on that particular match needs.
| Units also have a radio and can send messages between them. WIth
| some more code you could have a handler that rewrites parts of
| the code broadcasted from a building allowing you to deliver OTA
| updates!
|
| My objective for the game is that it works out of the box as a
| normal RTS but that once you get the gist of it you can start
| automating here and there so there is no high cost of entry but
| there is infinite extendibility.
|
| There is another very interesting project in the same direction
| that Devine (the creator of Uxn, Varavara, Orca and Nebu, as well
| as many others) shared with me recently when I explained my
| project to him: Doldrusidus which is incredibly fascinating. It
| goes in the same vein, small ships in a multiplayer universe each
| of them running Uxn machines inside.
|
| Kikai and devlogs: https://marcecoll.itch.io/kikai Doldrusidus:
| https://desertslug.itch.io/doldrusidus
| jfaulken wrote:
| I did something similar in Unity a few years ago but the agents
| were all 6502s with memory-mapped peripherals that were
| software defined. It was neat but I could never really find an
| application for it. Never considered making an RTS.
| 5- wrote:
| an rts-lite has been likely the most commercially successful
| implementation of this concept (later open-sourced):
| https://colobot.info/
| Martinussen wrote:
| I assume you've seen it, but Screeps was(/is?) a very enjoyable
| game to play around with for the programming-strategy/RTS
| blend.
| MarceColl wrote:
| Yeah, part of the idea came from Screeps. However I had a
| problem with Screeps and it's the onboarding. It feels like
| you have to build a lot of code just to start playing. Which
| is it's own niche of course, but I wanted the onboarding
| experience to be more incremental.
|
| I'm a very quick-feedback-loop interactive developer so I
| kinda struggled with that.
|
| I'd like people starting with my game to start where they
| feel comfortable. If they want to go directly into full
| coding and automating they can do that, if they want to start
| playing, get a feel for the game and automate incrementally
| they can do that as well. In Screeps you feel like "Immunity
| will end in a few weeks, hurry up, rush to something so you
| don't get destroyed" and I want to avoid that feeling if that
| makes sense.
|
| I think factorio really nailed this, almost everything you
| want can be done manually first. You start mining coal
| yourself, then start incrementally automating more and more
| as you understand how materials flow in your factory. I want
| a similar feel.
|
| This is also why the first part I'm building is the sandbox
| where you can edit units, spawn them, play with them and
| debug them all from the same screen, it serves both to refine
| the development loop and to help me build the basic unit
| behaviours.
| MarceColl wrote:
| Another thing I wanted to do is bring a bit of a lower
| level programming. Closer to a Zachtronics game, where you
| have a simplified microcontroler-like architecture and a
| nicely written datasheet-like manual you can print and
| browse at your convencience.
| agentk9 wrote:
| One of my biggest gripes with csv/tsv is that they don't have
| formulas, for good reason (most of the time) - this format
| however is REALLY nice imo.
|
| hard (but probably possible) to shoot yourself in the foot, and
| yet it's not nearly as easy as it is in excel.
|
| Are there other "smart csv" formats/editors out there?
| rcarmo wrote:
| I love the old-style Mac window decorations. Part of me still
| associates that with simple, usable UX.
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