Re:Automating screenshots for the Datasette documentation us...
by stavros on Saturday October 15, 2022 @06:36PM
(#33219289)
Ah yes, that was another one of my problems. I had a CSV and had to figure out a way to convert that into a DB. I could have created a table and written an import script, but I think I did end up using `csvs-to-sqlite`. You're right, if Datasette could import my data from the CSV, even if the schema wasn't very reasonable, that would have gone a long way towards helping my first-run experience.
Generally, the first-run experience is really important, because you may be getting lots of people in the funnel, but if you're losing them to complexity before they can get to the "this is nice" moment, it's for nothing.
Even something like finding plugins can be hard for first-timers, and you unfortunately don't hear about all the users who drop out, because they just stop using the software and never talk to you.
Running "brew/pip install datasette" isn't much help if you don't have a SQLite database already. So now you need to learn to use "sqlite-utils" or similar too to create one... by which point I could absolutely see most people having dropped off already.
I had a feature idea relating to this a while back which I should bump up the list: https://github.com/simonw/datasette/issues/1160
I opened a new issue based on this conversation here: https://github.com/simonw/datasette/issues/1845