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A comment on Skip the API, Ship Your Database. Parent comment

Re:Skip the API, Ship Your Database by Freedom2 on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @10:46PM (#37504345)
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. As HNers, we should want more control, not less over our work. Auto-save means that the company, no matter how nefarious, decides on their terms when my work is saved - regardless of what I've entered into the document (I write documents in a very stream of conscious manner).

I want to decide when to save, and how, not the application. I am not a product, I am a user!!!

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Skip the API, Ship Your Database by kristianp on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @10:50PM (#37504373)
This makes me smile, because it's satire, right?
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Re:Skip the API, Ship Your Database by porker on Thursday September 14, 2023 @03:47AM (#37506133)
No. I value a meaningful "Last updated at" timestamp.

If I open a word document, redact a few bits, save to PDF and close it - I don't want my changes saved but they are (real scenario from last week. I'd only just moved the file into Onedrive so autosave had turned itself on)

Ditto sorting and filtering spreadsheets.

Software engineers: By all means save in the background so I never lose anything, but don't assume I want the latest changes.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Skip the API, Ship Your Database by rmbyrro on Thursday September 14, 2023 @04:43AM (#37506436)
What you want, then, is versioning of your documents. MS Office and Google Suite do that.

This is not trivial to implement, though. Complexity will depend a lot of the application and the data. I'd say it'll only make sense for mature apps. A startup will most likely don't consider this in its roadmap.

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Re:Skip the API, Ship Your Database by lukevp on Thursday September 14, 2023 @01:27AM (#37505306)
Seems like on-by-default auto save with the option to disable, and a separate save button, satisfy all your requirements. That’s a pretty common set of customizations on saves from what I’ve seen.
[ Parent | on HN ]