mkrd

I posted BudgetFlow here two years ago and got around a hundred comments of feedback. I have kept working on it since then, and this is what changed:

- A complete overhaul to simplify how budgets are built based on user feedback

- Step by step tutorials that build example budgets

- Retirement planner using Monte Carlo simulations

- Split expenses: track shared costs in a group and settle up

The tech stack is pretty minimalistic, it is a Flask app with htmx and SQLite on a single small server.

I would like to hear from you what could be improved, and happy to answer any questions about how it is built!

When sending json data, the browser has to run javascript to parse incoming data, keep track of it, and assemble the UI based on that data. One of the hardest parts of webdev is to synchronize server and frontend state, so there is a lot of things that can go wrong here, you are essentially maintaining the same state in two locations.

With htmx, there is no frontend state. The html always just reflects the state of the server passively, meaning it cannot go out of sync. When you do something on the frontend and submit some request, the server will update its state and replace the frontend html to reflect that exactly.

Here is an example. Traditional react app: Submit new todo item, append to some reactive js list, update frontend list, send new item to server. Here, you have to ensure that both sides did exactly the same thing, and if either side errors, you have to backtrack. Htmx app: Submit new todo item, send request to server, server stores it into its database, renders new list based on new database state, client replaces the list. Here, the server has the complete authority, and the frontend merely reflects that. If something fails, the server returns the old list plus an error.

This is a tradeoff in efficiency, but the hope is that eliminating frontend state management is worth it.

I am one of those who left. Very happy where I am now. As some say, if you want to see all German stereotypes fulfilled, go to Switzerland!

Seems to be fully AI generated, so most data is likely wrong and hallucinated

Open source models seems to be 1-2 years behind the frontier, so I am very excited to see what happens when those open source labs get their hands on capabilities like this to accelerate their own development speed.

God, I whish there was a code harness I don’t have to install a JavaScript runtime for

A low effort AI written blog post, about a slop-company destroying itself, posted by someone who clearly has no idea what LLMs actually do, which he anthropomorphizes, trying to assign accountability and intent to matrix multiplicatuons.

I wonder why this garbage even gets upvotes, maybe because of how much of a trainwreck the entire situation is

Have you already observed some interesting evolved knowledge? What is the goal, should they at some point autonomously generate valuable new insights?

A phone only has roughly 1 million times the memory, as I am roughly 20 meters tall

Ah shit, back to poetry

Haha, didn’t know about that, maybe I should use that as the example on the landing page :D

Working on a budgeting app which uses interactive sankey diagrams.

https://budgetflow.cc

It has some dynamic features like sending excess cash or taking missing cash from somewhere else, making it quite useful.

Also, you can connect with our partner or flatmates for shared budgets.

I am actively using it myself together with my girlfriend, and adding new stuff as our demands for budgeting become more elaborate!

Yes, this is pretty annoying. You give it a file and want it to make a small focused change, but instead it almost touches every line of code, even the unrelated ones

True, I think the biggest problem of the latest models is that they hopelessly over-engineer things. As a consequence, I often can only copy specific things from the output

Really nice, thanks for linking this!

Good catch, thanks! I fixed it.

Hey, thanks a lot for the feedback! It's not harsh, direct feedback is by far the most useful. You are right, it is not super clear how the simulation is done, I'll add that to the page. Currently, you enter a volatility rate, and then the simulation randomly draws from a normal distribution according to the volatility. Doing this around 1000 times gives the range of possible scenarios. In the future I'm planning to add simulations based on historical data. The code is not open source, however you also don't have to connect any banking to it, it can be used as-is. I am taking privacy pretty seriously, that is why there is a legally binding privacy policy on the bottom of the page. But yes, I could put more emphasis on it, and explain how the page is keeping data secure.

That thought keeps me motivated to continuously work on a project of mine. That one day, maybe years from now, it will reach that point where it is good enough to get the ball rolling. Only a few, which where there from the beginning, will be able to imagine the efforts that had to go into it.

Same thought, I am absolutely blown away by how much vercel overcharges. I host a similar application on netcup (like hetzner) for 3$ per month, and when it was on HN, it easily handled over 10k requests per hour

Hey, thanks for the info, I didn't know that there is a wait period. The version I posted back then was still very much in its alpha stage, compared to now. I would say it is a major difference, but I also get that HN doesn't want too many product updates posted