Show HN: Mesh IDE – a code editor that feels like a spreadsheet

Re:Show HN: Mesh IDE – a code editor that feels like a sprea... by dyarosla on Friday July 21, 2017 @07:13PM (#14824440)

It looks nice and all... but what can I do with it? Citing Paul Graham[0] You Need an Application to Drive the Design of a Language.

What is the use case here? The readme describes vaguely that it's more suited to arbitrary length data processing and generation... but I can't come up with a practical example for which this IDE is applicable. I wish the developer would showcase SOMETHING besides the base interactions. Anyone have any ideas?

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/langdes.html

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Mesh IDE – a code editor that feels like a sprea... by delhanty on Friday July 21, 2017 @10:47PM (#14825131)

>What is the use case here?

Clicking through on the link that says "more discussion here" [1] the OP does at least explain the original problem with Excel that he was trying to address:

>Mesh was started because I couldn't find a way in Excel to output the results of a formula across an arbitrary number of cells. ...

This is definitely on the right lines.

But it's a very difficult problem, both from a UI design point of view and actually producing a performant implementation in Javascript.

[1] http://chrispsn.com/mesh-preview.html

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Mesh IDE – a code editor that feels like a sprea... by function_k on Friday July 21, 2017 @08:08PM (#14824657)

I'm in the same thought as you about this. IDE's are designed for one common purpose: Efficiency. In fact, everything that has to do with software engineering drives towards efficiency. This appears more like a pet project than a product with a vision of solving a specific problem.

[ Parent | on HN ]