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brainstorming prototype

Thinking about a prototype

I want to build a prototype to clear some of the ideas/concepts. It’s not an MVP but more of a proof of concept.

I think "strings/arrays/numeric/dates" would be a great start. It would be a tool capable of transforming/manipulating strings easily and stitch together a bunch of cool programs I already have:

  1. string search (ack-grep, fuzzy finder)

  2. highlight

  3. all string functions from languages/frameworks/utilities (underscore)

  4. formatters, beautifiers, highlighters

  5. validators/detectors/matchers (email,url etc.)

  6. pattern recognizers (ala import.io / awk)

All the challenges can be found in building that utility:

  1. visualizing + handling (UI)

  2. discovery problems (UX)

  3. passing parameters + variables (UX)

  4. how to faas tools from other languages/frameworks

  5. versioning etc.

Focusing on a basic piece of data, a string would help me clear up what I want out of that tool.

kinda like :

  1. http://codebeautify.org/

  2. http://textmechanic.com/

  3. http://www.online-toolz.com/tools/string-functions.php

  4. http://string-functions.com/

  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages_%28string_functions%29

  6. http://www.freeformatter.com/string-utilities.html

  7. http://www.convertstring.com/

  8. https://www.functions-online.com/string.html

  9. http://manytools.org/http-html-text/string-manipulation/

  10. http://onlinephpfunctions.com/categories/String+Manipulation

  11. https://strfunc.net/

  12. http://tools.knowledgewalls.com/onlinestringmanipulationtool

  13. http://string-op.com/

Versions

  1. ability to call any string function from a language as a service

  2. cli version / wrapper

  3. add support for advanced libraries

  4. add support for multiple languages and inter-language communication

  5. faaas / saas simple utilities / projects

  6. web UI

  7. billing

  8. ability to extend faas library and publish easily (aliases, examples, forks etc.)

technical concerns

  1. calling from a single language is easy enough and providing a simple cli/wrapper around it

  2. calling for multiple languages would require json conversion. no need to get more complicated than that (e.g protocol buffers or such) since it is only strings at the moment

  3. ideally configuring the language + libraries should be done in a container. if we use containers, we can’t use aws lambda but maybe iron.io. for now, one container exposed as a service that contains everything for strings.

  4. billing is also tricky. I want a demo/free version but the goal is to get people to use it and build the library. However, no way I’m operating the servers at a cost.