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pscanftoday at 5:13 AM6 repliesview on HN

I'm building an app that is, in a way, a modern take on Lotus Notes (https://github.com/superegodev/superego), and I couldn't feel this more:

> It is hard, today, to explain exactly what Lotus Notes was.

Whenever I try to explain what it does to a non-tech person, I'm met with confused looks that make me quickly give up and mumble something like "It's for techies and data nerds". I think to myself "they're not my target audience".

But I actually would like them to be, at some point. In the 90s "the generality and depth of its capabilities meant that it was also just plain hard to use", but now LLMs lower a lot the barrier to entry, so I think there can be a renaissance of such malleable¹ platforms.

Of course, the user still needs to "know what they need" and see software as something that can be configured and shaped to their needs which, with "digital literacy" decreasing, might be a bigger obstacle than I think.

¹ https://www.inkandswitch.com/malleable-software


Replies

WillAdamstoday at 12:07 PM

One noted science fiction author, C.J. Cherryh, notes, “It is perfectly okay to write garbage --- as long as you edit brilliantly.”[1] --- for a while I've been wondering if this adage was applicable to Vibe-coding, and your methodology would seem to be a reasonable approach/response to get the benefits of this and to shield against the detriments, and to ensure that a human developer understands the code before committing.

1 - https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/398754-it-is-perfectly-okay...

jasondigitizedtoday at 11:32 AM

If you squint, Notion and Coda are childish versions of Lotus Notes.

dharmatechtoday at 6:08 AM

Just watched your demo here:

https://youtu.be/vB3xo2qn_g4?si=y2udkdfezSR9ktUO

Pretty cool!

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cess11today at 11:41 AM

Thanks for sharing. The demo linked below looked pretty cool, I think this might be a nice complement to Glamorous Toolkit in some of my personal and work flows.

dharmatechtoday at 6:19 AM

Is there a story behind the old guy in the logo?

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dharmatechtoday at 6:19 AM

Many people seem to associate "ego" with negative connotation.

The name gives a weird vibe. But, it's free and it's your project so, whatever. ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

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