cardi VS TiddlyWiki

> Deta Space made it really easy for me as dev to build something like WebCrate quickly and it's also awesome for users. The app keeps running even if I disappear and hosting, auth etc. is all handled for me

Ah yeah, love the concept, I had similar goals in mind when making Cardi (although I wasn't aware of many options at the time for putting data in control of the user -- I ended up just having people log in with AWS access keys and it stores data in DynamoDB, which is weird but has actually been working great so far).

https://github.com/pickledish/cardi

Anyways Deta seems interesting, looking forward to seeing where it goes from here! Would love more/better options in this space.

Ha, I'm very interested in this!

I had this same problem for my own app[0], I ended up solving it by just using dynamodb in my personal AWS account as the storage. Generous free tier, great uptime, and no users, security, etc to manage for me, like you mention.

It's way more technical than I'd like of course, since anyone who wants to use it needs to have a personal AWS account. And it isn't "synced", like you say, it's just using the AWS JS SDK to speak to dynamodb directly. But still it's been a real pleasure to build a web app this way -- the fact that anyone can use the app by plugging in their own storage is kind of the web development holy grail IMO.

[0] https://github.com/pickledish/cardi

Hey thanks! I wouldn't say it's a hard dependency, in fact it can work with other things that are API-compatible with DynamoDB, like Scylla for example if you wanted to self-host everything:

http://scylla.docs.scylladb.com/master/alternator/alternator

And in terms of using something like Firestore, the storage needs of this are very simple so it wouldn't be very hard to add that in. I tried to keep all the persistence-related functionality separated off for this purpose:

https://github.com/pickledish/cardi/tree/master/src/dynamodb

> What does ownership mean here?

It means owning the code and the data. With webapps, the code and data are hosted and owned, the users do not own the code, cannot run it independently. This is a clear dileneation between owner and user, and the owners can use that clear line to create artificial scarcity of various kinds. (The most popular being the subscription SaaS model). It's also easier to defend your IP since end users never see your binaries.

I like to make my software single html files whenever possible. People can just save them and run them locally. Havent met anyone who cares yet though.

I like that idea a lot, and I care. I think others care, but yes, it's a niche interest. Take a look at https://tiddlywiki.com/ for an example of a fairly successful project that uses the single html format running locally. However it suffers from limitations on File|Save which often requires a separate runtime of some kind to support.

Another project that approaches this ideal is https://redbean.dev/, @jart's tiny, performant, featureful single-file webserver. In this case the "single file" is a server executable + zip whose state must be updated on the command-line, but I think hits a sweet spot in terms of practicality, and a global minima when it comes to minimizing dependencies. (Redbean bundles SQLite and Lua so it's also possible to do through-the-web state updates as in a traditional webapp.)

My own project, Simpatico, aspires to be something along these lines. Eventually your browser tab is both a client and server process, connecting via websockets to other connected browsers, storing all state locally. I call this pattern "monomorphism", a play on the "isomorphic" javascript SPA. The server[2] is currently written in ~1 node file, but eventually I would like to port to redbean (and greenbean, the websocket version of redbean, but it isn't quite ready yet). The server grew several features to support a fast, practical BTD loop using markdown[1], and safe, performant execution on the public internet[2], but ultimately I'd like to pare it down to serving a single html file and allow the connected clients to provide all diversity of experience. I've used it to explore all kinds of browser apis, from crypto[3] to svg[4] to writing my own libraries (combine[4] and stree[5]). And it's all running locally, and easily hosted on a $5 VPS, and its all open source.

1 - https://simpatico.io/lit.md

2 - https://simpatico.io/reflector

3 - https://simpatico.io/crypto

4 - https://simpatico.io/combine

5 - https://simpatico.io/stree

I use TiddlyWiki. It's a portable editable wiki that doesn't require a web server or web hosting. You open it from your computer, edit it, and save it. You get all of the linking that you'd expect to see in a wiki, and it's super readable and easy to use.

It is a single-HTML-file TiddlyWiki instance that runs in a web browser (offline as well as online), meant to be downloaded and stored wherever suits you best. Everything that you see when working in BASIC Anywhere Machine (everything that makes "BAM" work as an IDE and all BASIC programs) exist in the one HTML file.

TiddlyWiki still works as intended: https://tiddlywiki.com/#GettingStarted but there are so many different clients to run on. Mobile or Desktop ? What OS? What Browser?

This effort https://val.packett.cool/blog/tiddlypwa/ is remarkable as the mobile side of saving is not as robust as on the desktop side of things and there is a scaling limit on performance as the number of tiddlers grows. Also the syncing between tw documents between different desktop/mobile clients can be a challenge with diffing.

Since then I've moved back to plain vanilla vim for a wiki (map gf :tabe ) but tw.html is still good for data other than plain text and TiddlyPWA https://tiddly.packett.cool/ is a great effort to revisit TiddlyWiki again.

You should check out TiddlyWiki as it’s designed around the concept that small linkable notes are the best way to organize.

https://tiddlywiki.com/

It’s html based so you can access it in the same way you would access a website but it can be locally stored. Saving is a bit tricky but there are multiple solutions detailed on their site. https://tiddlywiki.com/

Hi, you can use tw on nodejs with npm package tiddlywiki....