I agree with the title, but not with the article. I expected to see something like how you can make your friends and family lives easier using your skills as a software developer.
From time to time I come up with micro-projects that solve very particular issues my friends are facing. Ones that are not easily solved with existing apps on the market. When I see my friends use them, it brings me joy!
But! For this I had to use traditional software development tools I was already familiar with - IDE, source control, etc. Scrappy or similar tools would not help me at all. The tool is targeting someone like my non-developer friends, but I doubt they could come up with a design for a solution, implement it in scrappy and then maintain it when something changes in the outside world.
On a separate node, I had great success with spreadsheets as both Frontend and sometimes Backend in various personal projects. And I'm not the only one, my friend made an addon for Google Sheets that pulls data from my specific bank's API - I use it to track my expenses. That's the kind of stuff I wanted to see in the article.
RodgerTheGreat · 3h ago
CardStock[0] isn’t mentioned in this article, but seems broadly similar in goals and approach to Scrappy. Unlike Scrappy (so far as I can tell) CardStock is open-source and can be run locally.[1]
Decker[2] (which is also open-source) has answers to several of the things outlined on Scrappy’s roadmap, including facilities for representing and manipulating tabular data with its query language and grid widgets and the ability for users to abstract collections of parts into reusable "Contraptions".
One of the best things that I did was spending a week making a simple app that can put all my Apple Watch walks on a single big map, then sharing it with my friends after it got published on AppStore. It's been a year since I worked on it, but I still get messages from my friends (and some random people who found it!) how they've walked through an entire city or something. Really rewarding experience, despite having zero financial gains from it.
OP is right, making simple apps for your friends for fun!
bryantt · 1h ago
This sounds great, could you link the app please?
dewey · 1h ago
Not the OPs app but there's an app doing something similar that I enjoyed for many years, you can also import from GPS trackers and others: https://fogofworld.app
drchaos · 41m ago
Not OP, but https://dawarich.app/ seems to do the same (open source and self-hostable, also has an iOS App).
blips · 15m ago
"We believe computers should work for people, and dream of a future where computing, like cooking or word processing, is available to everyone."
generic...
"with live updating — all for free. LLMs ar..." also see a fair few of these long dashes (18x) which is either a tell tail of you've used ChatGPT to generate the text or you've started writing like the AI.
I havn't thought about it that hard yet but i don't really like consuming AI generated content at all as soon as i see signs of it part of my brain turns off. And no slight to the creator, I have as much interest in writing this kind of copy as any developer would i'd imagine.
ben_w · 11m ago
> "with live updating — all for free. LLMs ar..." also see a fair few of these long dashes (18x) which is either a tell tail of you've used ChatGPT to generate the text or you've started writing like the AI.
It's also my IRL writing style for the last 10-15 years :P
That said:
> I havn't thought about it that hard yet but i don't really like consuming AI generated content at all as soon as i see signs of it part of my brain turns off.
Likewise.
At least, when someone else did the prompting — I do like what LLMs can output, but when LLM answers are sufficient I prefer to cut out the middle-man and ask the LLM directly myself.
nilirl · 2h ago
It's nice but I've yet to see a more usable end-user programming environment than the spreadsheet.
thunspa · 10m ago
Or learning to actually code. I can't see why I would ever learn to use these kinds of tools.
As a developer, I can just make it myself. Now with LLMs, if it's very simple and bounded, I can just vibe most of it with very little to lose.
As a lay person, I don't see what the TAM for this is. Who will spend the time to learn how to drag and drop an application?
selcuka · 3h ago
I think "vibe coding" will not replace developers in the short term, but it will be the strongest competition for such simple systems. I asked a few LLMs to make apps like these (plain HTML with embedded JS), and they got it right after a few edits. They are also visually more appealing [1].
I am vibe coding a hobby project to find out what's the state of things.
I've found that every few hours I get stuck on an issue that the LLM can't solve and a user with no programming experience would have little hope to crack it either.
I suppose this issue might depend on technology and scope of the project.
physicsguy · 44m ago
It's got a bug, if you enter a non-integer like 3 + 2 = 5.1 then it marks that as correct
melagonster · 2h ago
You are right. They are the natural opponents of vibe coding. vibe coding is from a funny X post; this is the OG purpose.
hiAndrewQuinn · 45m ago
You can make an awful lot of useful little tools with an LLM, vanilla JavaScript, GitHub Pages, and the user's own localStorage as a semi-persistence layer. Two 9s and cross-platform to boot.
Recently I made a diet checklist [1] that I've been following more or less to the letter 5 days out of the week. I have a little Android button that just opens right up to the web page. I click, click, click, then move on with my day. If I feel I need to change something I can copy a plain text screenshot of what's on there currently and chat with Gemini about it.
+1 over this. As someone without a deep technical background, LLMs enabled me to improve my life unimaginably, being able to quickly sketch and develop small features that remove every day annoyance.
indyjo · 27m ago
So you drag UI elements onto an empty sheet, fight with the grid snap (because it doesn't match the size of your UI elements) and are then supposed to enter raw JavaScript, without any code completion, visual programming, API help or AI support? And that's it?
riffraff · 3h ago
I am 100% behind the idea of "scriptable components" vs block-based programming for beginners.
I'm on mobile now but I'll try this on desktop ASAP.
But I think one thing missing on the analysis is: people want ease of share and zero cost.
It's surprisingly simple to build a minimal app in some environments but then you get to distribution (app store are a huge gatekeeper) and/or hosting and e.g. my wife or kids won't be bothered to pay 5$/momth for it (and neither will many professional devs).
DougN7 · 3h ago
You could self host with your OS’s web server and a dynamic DNS service pointing to your home computer.
franga2000 · 2h ago
Except the OS has no web server, so you have to find and install one, make sure it auto starts, set up port forwarding (which you might not be able to if you're behind CGNAT or your ISP just doesn't let you)... Then you need to explain to your partner that your computer is running 24/7 to host your shared shopping list or whatever, which will definitely cost more in electricity than a 5$/mo VPS, which was already presumed to be unacceptable
vincnetas · 2h ago
"... my wife or kids " you already lost them at "... self host"
abcd_f · 2h ago
GP was suggesting that you would self-host for your wife and kids, not that they would self-host themselves.
stevoski · 3h ago
Sadly, free hosting or distribution for fun ideas like this one leads to bad actors abusing the service.
swyx · 1h ago
> All Scrappy apps are multiplayer, like a Google Doc is. You can even edit them while they are being used by someone else!
ok where is the scrappy backend? what data do you see? where do i make an account? i wish that this was more transparent/discussed since obviously this software is not entirely local?
> LLMs are getting better and better, and while they are far from able to make a full-fledged app without a lot of help from a software engineer, they can make small apps pretty reliably.
mildly disagree. llm generated apps tend to look better + i dont have to learn or stick to your preset primitives. even nontechnical people run into this pretty quickly
otherwise, nice labor of love. good going OP.
Peteragain · 1h ago
I feel we are coming at this as programmers, and the opportunity is the community aspect. What about starting with the family run app stores? Masterson style.
No security (you're all friends right) and no way to contribute without an invite. Just a thought.
account-5 · 1h ago
> You drag objects out on the canvas — a button, a textfield, a few labels. Select an object, and you can modify its attribute in an inspector panel. Certain objects, like buttons, has attributes like “when clicked” that contain javascript code.
Swap JavaScript with VBA and this is the MS Access workflow.
I'd only start using this if it became ooensource though, can find anything to suggest it is.
jackgavigan · 2h ago
I love the concept. I think the trick to being successful with a project like this is cracking the user experience in a way that makes it powerful enough to be truly useful, while keeping it simple enough that a child can build (scr)apps (c.f. Super Mario Maker).
Making it possible to lookup and store data in a spreadsheet (maybe using something like the Google Sheets API) could unlock a huge amount of use cases.
I'll be watching this project with interest!
DustinEgg · 14m ago
A very good idea.
lastdong · 2h ago
Google Studio IO apps seems like a step in the same direction. Now if only we could host it on github and take advantage of static github pages.
In the future, optimised open models will enable more people to develop tools locally, and with an open source AIDE (does this term exist yet? Artificial Intelligence Development Environment) publish / share it in different ways.
filcuk · 1h ago
Just trying this out and it appears in Firefox, the drag & drop handle on new elements doesn't cover the whole rectangle, just the label.
jayd16 · 3h ago
I guess this fits into the Google Forms, SharePoint space?
croniev · 3h ago
I like the idea! Now you're just left with the dilemma of what happens when you reach many people with it - will Scrappy be made for thousands of users, polished and flashy?
jwblackwell · 1h ago
This is just crying out for AI to help you get started.
atemerev · 2h ago
So, just like Delphi?
(I wonder if somebody ported Delphi / Lazarus to WASM)
elric · 2h ago
I was going to call this "a less-feature rich Delphi without Borland's corporate greed", but then I noticed that Delphi is apparently still alive (somehow?). Delphi was one of my earliest programming experiences in the 90s. Blast from the past.
atemerev · 2h ago
Yes, it is still alive, it still works great, and if you want something open source, there's Lazarus which is nearly as good.
EZ-E · 2h ago
Very nice. For me, LLM fills that niche when I need to build something very small. Just built a dumb tiny flashcard webapp (literally a standalone index.html) because I was tired of apps either being either overly complex for my simple use case, or asking me to register/pay/see ads.
s_ting765 · 2h ago
Cool but no link for the source code negates entire point of sharing apps.
abcd_f · 2h ago
It absolutely doesn't.
Surac · 1h ago
Ok do this apps run on IOS?
bowsamic · 3h ago
I would if Apple didn’t put such tight restrictions against hobby app creation
InsideOutSanta · 2h ago
I often create small apps like these for my friends, but 100% of them are written in PHP and plain HTML with some JavaScript. They need to be built quickly, deployed quickly, updated quickly, run on every device, and be runnable by sending a link on WhatsApp.
So it doesn't matter what Apple does because I'm never going to put something like that into any App Store.
bowsamic · 2h ago
Well the reason why you are having to use a web browser rather than sharing the app written using native APIs is because Apple forces you to use the App Store, so you yes did matter what Apple does. They prevent you from using the native toolkit and your use of the browser is partly a workaround for that
EDIT also Apple are in full control of what functionality they expose in their web APIs so even then it matters hugely
jimbob45 · 1h ago
iPhone Shortcuts can get you surprisingly far. I agree that building hobbyist apps has too high of an entry barrier in the Apple ecosystem but Shortcuts handles CRUD stuff with ease.
starvar · 1h ago
1. Start up the app
2. Try dragging a block
3. Doesn't work
From time to time I come up with micro-projects that solve very particular issues my friends are facing. Ones that are not easily solved with existing apps on the market. When I see my friends use them, it brings me joy!
But! For this I had to use traditional software development tools I was already familiar with - IDE, source control, etc. Scrappy or similar tools would not help me at all. The tool is targeting someone like my non-developer friends, but I doubt they could come up with a design for a solution, implement it in scrappy and then maintain it when something changes in the outside world.
On a separate node, I had great success with spreadsheets as both Frontend and sometimes Backend in various personal projects. And I'm not the only one, my friend made an addon for Google Sheets that pulls data from my specific bank's API - I use it to track my expenses. That's the kind of stuff I wanted to see in the article.
Decker[2] (which is also open-source) has answers to several of the things outlined on Scrappy’s roadmap, including facilities for representing and manipulating tabular data with its query language and grid widgets and the ability for users to abstract collections of parts into reusable "Contraptions".
[0] https://cardstock.run
[1] https://github.com/benjie-git/CardStock
[2] http://beyondloom.com/decker/index.html
OP is right, making simple apps for your friends for fun!
generic...
"with live updating — all for free. LLMs ar..." also see a fair few of these long dashes (18x) which is either a tell tail of you've used ChatGPT to generate the text or you've started writing like the AI.
I havn't thought about it that hard yet but i don't really like consuming AI generated content at all as soon as i see signs of it part of my brain turns off. And no slight to the creator, I have as much interest in writing this kind of copy as any developer would i'd imagine.
It's also my IRL writing style for the last 10-15 years :P
That said:
> I havn't thought about it that hard yet but i don't really like consuming AI generated content at all as soon as i see signs of it part of my brain turns off.
Likewise.
At least, when someone else did the prompting — I do like what LLMs can output, but when LLM answers are sufficient I prefer to cut out the middle-man and ask the LLM directly myself.
As a developer, I can just make it myself. Now with LLMs, if it's very simple and bounded, I can just vibe most of it with very little to lose.
As a lay person, I don't see what the TAM for this is. Who will spend the time to learn how to drag and drop an application?
[1] https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/bb451732-9559-401a-8000-b...
I've found that every few hours I get stuck on an issue that the LLM can't solve and a user with no programming experience would have little hope to crack it either.
I suppose this issue might depend on technology and scope of the project.
Recently I made a diet checklist [1] that I've been following more or less to the letter 5 days out of the week. I have a little Android button that just opens right up to the web page. I click, click, click, then move on with my day. If I feel I need to change something I can copy a plain text screenshot of what's on there currently and chat with Gemini about it.
I'm really liking this new wave of technology.
[1]: https://hiandrewquinn.github.io/diet-checklist/
I'm on mobile now but I'll try this on desktop ASAP.
But I think one thing missing on the analysis is: people want ease of share and zero cost.
It's surprisingly simple to build a minimal app in some environments but then you get to distribution (app store are a huge gatekeeper) and/or hosting and e.g. my wife or kids won't be bothered to pay 5$/momth for it (and neither will many professional devs).
ok where is the scrappy backend? what data do you see? where do i make an account? i wish that this was more transparent/discussed since obviously this software is not entirely local?
> LLMs are getting better and better, and while they are far from able to make a full-fledged app without a lot of help from a software engineer, they can make small apps pretty reliably.
mildly disagree. llm generated apps tend to look better + i dont have to learn or stick to your preset primitives. even nontechnical people run into this pretty quickly
otherwise, nice labor of love. good going OP.
Swap JavaScript with VBA and this is the MS Access workflow.
I'd only start using this if it became ooensource though, can find anything to suggest it is.
Making it possible to lookup and store data in a spreadsheet (maybe using something like the Google Sheets API) could unlock a huge amount of use cases.
I'll be watching this project with interest!
In the future, optimised open models will enable more people to develop tools locally, and with an open source AIDE (does this term exist yet? Artificial Intelligence Development Environment) publish / share it in different ways.
(I wonder if somebody ported Delphi / Lazarus to WASM)
So it doesn't matter what Apple does because I'm never going to put something like that into any App Store.
EDIT also Apple are in full control of what functionality they expose in their web APIs so even then it matters hugely
_nice_