Re:Show HN: Visualizer for High Level System Design
by 66d8kk on Friday August 06, 2021 @05:51AM
(#28085089)
Congrats on the launch!
I currently work on projects where HLDs are nothing more than brain dump / thought organising experiments just prior to getting some PoC code bashed out.
I usually go as far as paper -> draw.io which gets wildly out of date within weeks (which is fine for what I do / scale we work).
Had a little play with this, I like it. My gut is that for my use case it could strike that perfect balance of quick "brain dump" while providing me an interface to think in "PoC code" (actions / sending data).
I'm going to have a deeper look at this over the coming days and recreate one of our smaller, simpler systems (with which the "HLD" is already out of date).
Thank you for sharing. And of course the work required would be insane but hooking this up to implementation routes/controllers/services/whatever.
Re:Show HN: Visualizer for High Level System Design
by alhasaniq on Friday August 06, 2021 @09:47AM
(#28087107)
I just wish more components exist.
I struggled to decide where my async data pipeline ends.
There should be a generic component (something like "Cloud") that i can use when 3rd parties are actioned (i.e. push notifications, emails, log, api trigger).
Re:Show HN: Visualizer for High Level System Design
by iblaine on Friday August 06, 2021 @04:20PM
(#28092299)
I can see this being useful for virtual sys design interviews. Having to rely on Lucicharts, Miro or Google Drawing for virtual system design interviews is usually a challenge. People have to search for icons, name them, draw associations and on and on. An interface that does much of that busywork for you would be nice.
Re:Show HN: Visualizer for High Level System Design
by ollysb on Friday August 06, 2021 @11:09AM
(#28088217)
Pinch zoom only works if you're over the canvas. If you for instance zoom out enough that the mouse cursor is outside of the canvas then the page itself starts zooming.
I currently work on projects where HLDs are nothing more than brain dump / thought organising experiments just prior to getting some PoC code bashed out.
I usually go as far as paper -> draw.io which gets wildly out of date within weeks (which is fine for what I do / scale we work).
Had a little play with this, I like it. My gut is that for my use case it could strike that perfect balance of quick "brain dump" while providing me an interface to think in "PoC code" (actions / sending data).
I'm going to have a deeper look at this over the coming days and recreate one of our smaller, simpler systems (with which the "HLD" is already out of date).
Thank you for sharing. And of course the work required would be insane but hooking this up to implementation routes/controllers/services/whatever.
Tip for others: You can click the lines in between components to add text to them
One question though, when I click on something, like "API Gateway", in the "Properties" panel it lets me add REST/GQL/gRPC etc endpoints
These seem not to do anything though? What is the purpose of the "properties" on most of the components?
Seems only one that does anything is the "Shard Database" button on a Database component
One note - why is the interface so big? It made me check my browser's scaling