DEV Community

Discussion on: Dark devlog #1: Fresh start

Collapse
 
allanjeremy profile image
Allan N Jeremy

Definitely does sound like you've got a tonne on your plate Paul. So far, things are looking promising and I did enjoy experimenting with Dark quite a bit.

As a person looking forward to contributing (learning OCaml at the moment), I definitely agree with your plan to move to a more community focused approach. The question on this that I think most would ask would be, what kind of license would this be under? From what I understand, it is still "closed"-source (ish).

And of course reaching out to folks to see what I can do to make contribution easier.
Quite noble!

It's still quite challenging to get started with Dark, and while we have some docs and some in-product tutorials, there's a ton to do still.

Was about to suggest the from python and from javascript but seems to be on the roadmap. The links do seem to be broken though. My two cents would be to do something like From NodeJS/Express , which focuses more on what people are using to build APIs currently than it does on the general technology (Javascript). I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Part of the problem with Dark so far has been that programming is pretty general, and so it's been hard to make Dark really great for a tiny niche.

Unreal engine's blueprints seem to be the recurring thought when reading this. By far the most intuitive visual programming tool I've used.

On a similar note: perhaps the solution lies in collecting data on various use-cases and finding meaningful abstractions that would cover what most people want. I realize that it is easier said than done and personally believe that Dark has actually done a pretty darn good job on this.

A related problem is about how we position Dark. "Dark is a cool new way to program" doesn't tell anyone about Dark or how to use it.

What do you think of "Dark is the fastest way to build an API"?

I think I've typed a tonne and this comment will turn into a blog post so I'll hold it off for now. I'd be open to a zoom call later on (will message on slack) if you'd be down.

Collapse
 
paulbiggar profile image
Paul Biggar

I'll be thinking more about the license in the future for sure, and I'll discuss it when I announce the open repo.

Was about to suggest the from python and from javascript

Would love help with docs like that - we threw up some barebone docs - but having someone dig in and design a great learning experience for people who know Python/JS/Ruby/etc would be awesome. The docs repo is open and would love ideas.

What do you think of "Dark is the fastest way to build an API"?

I like it! We've been toying with variations of that for a while. Developer tools are notorious for claiming "fastest" about everything and not really being specific about what it means. The other thing is we've been trying to be super specific that Dark is code (as opposed to something like Zapier).