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Ask HN: Could you please evaluate my idea - tinytool.net

30 points by czadzik ↗ HN
I'd appreciate any constructive feedback from the community. I am a software developer and like we all do, I like to automate things by writing some scripts. I am 100% percent sure that most of them were already written by some other developers.

Sometimes you may have and idea for very cool script/tool but you would not bother creating a separate webapp just for it.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a website were you can easily create such a script in a language of your choice, with some GUI generated automatically and share it with the world. This way we would have a growing catalogue of useful tools, all in one place.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a place when you can catalogue your own private tools and be able to access them on any computer.

This is what tinytool.net tries to achieve. Of course it dose not have to be all about tools for developers.

What do you think? Any comments about the idea itself as well as the way it has been implemented will be valuable. And of course if anyone would like to participate in the project, let me know.

Again the project is locate at : tinytool.net

Thanks in advance.

Tomek

17 comments

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samarudge
The idea is awesome, I can see loads of handy maths and computer tools coming allong (RAID calculators, size converters, arithmatic functions etc.)
mother
Need to spellcheck the front page. You have a couple errors.
nodata
I would definitely consider changing the name.
ryan42
what about ToolPool?
retube
That doesn't work in the UK!!
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veyron
You provide python and beanshell as options, yet the templates seem to be ruby-only. You should put demos of both examples in all languages you support
sktrdie
I don't see why someone would consider executing their script on your server rather than their server. If it's just for fun, I don't see the fun in sharing random scripts - GitHub is already a full-blown library repository to find the script that I need - also your site doesn't allow people to see the source code of each script. But I suppose if you're not a programmer and want to simply run some calculations based on some input, this could be sort of helpful.

Anyhow, cool concept and good work.

dshipper
I think the value comes from having so many useful scripts together. You (theoretically) get a bunch of traffic raising the likelihood that your script will be used by someone instead of just sitting unused on it's own site.
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LukeShu
I don't see the point, most of these tools belong in $HOME/bin, not in a web app.

Although, where your idea does have some merit is the quick and easy toolkit for forming a script into a web app.

tansey
Could be a cool idea. I like the column-removal tool you have up there. Need to reach a critical mass then you can become the imgur for tools. Keep building out the examples and tutorials, and keep driving traffic. Maybe have a blog with regular posts about new scripts and how useful they are?
phugoid
I like the execution of your idea, but I'm not so sure about the idea itself.

It seems the source code for any tool is not shown. I can't check it to make sure it works correctly, and I can't modify it or extend it. What if there's a bug?

BillSaysThis
Put the Popular/Public Tools box on the homepage. If you want to appeal to geeks skip the marketing and go right to the value. If I came across your page arbitrarily and not because you asked for feedback I'd have never clicked into it.
gojomo
There is definitely potential for active, public, small code-sharing. See also http://codepad.org and http://jsfiddle.net — each with their own emphases.

If you get the right UI for easy use/review/improvement, people might grow to rely upon and pass along the links to their favorite tool pages. Having something that appeals to coders but also is understandable/usable to non-coders (via the prominence of the web input/output and good demo/review/rank/search) could be your niche. Good luck!

sciurus
So, this is a place to run scripts where stdin and stdout is your web browser?
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