datasette-app VS til

Hah, Softbank isn't the goal here!

I realized that Datasette is the first project of my entire career where if I was still working on it in 15 years time I wouldn't feel bored yet. There's just SO MUCH scope for interesting applications of the core idea.

As such, I want to work on it for decades. But it's lonely working on it alone (the community around it has been growing and is delightful, but it's not the same as having a full-time team.)

So the question I'm trying to answer is how to make the project financially sustainable in the long-run - not just for myself, but so I can pay for a team to work on it with me.

There are plenty of other examples of open source projects that have turned SaaS hosting into a sustainable business model - WordPress and GitLab are just two of the best examples. It feels like it's a reasonably well-trodden path.

Plus... I want people to be able to use my software. Currently to use Datasette as an individual you either have to "pip" or "brew" install it, or you can try the macOS Electron app - https://datasette.io/desktop - but I want newsrooms to be able to use it to collaborate on data. And most newsrooms aren't well equipped to configure a Linux server.

So I realized that a hosted SaaS version can solve two issues at once: it can help the audience I care about actually benefit from the value of the software so far, and it provides a reasonably realistic path to financial sustainability for the project as a whole.

And yeah, I'd also like to make a ton of money out of it myself too!

It would be nice if his stuff worked better, ironically. The Datasette app for Mac seems to be constantly stuck on loading (yes I have 0.2.2):

https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/139

Amd his screen capture library can't capture Canvas renderings:

https://simonwillison.net/2022/Mar/10/shot-scraper/

Lost two days at work on that.

Speaking of technology not working as expected.

I'd love to get the desktop app working on Linux and Windows.

I did manage to get a prototype working on Windows, despite having VERY little experience working on that platform: https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/71

The bit I'm stuck on is how to turn that prototype into an application with an installer that's signed so people can download and run it.

I have trouble answering this question myself, and I created it!

The problem I have is that it can be applied to too many different problems.

I personally have used it for the following (a truncated summary):

- Publishing data online to allow other people to explore it, for example https://scotrail.datasette.io and https://russian-ira-facebook-ads.datasettes.com/

- Building websites, by combining it with custom templates. https://datasette.io and https://www.niche-museums.com and https://til.simonwillison.net are three examples

- Building my own combined search engine over a bunch of different data. https://github-to-sqlite.dogsheep.net is this for my GitHub issues and commits and issue comments across 100+ projects

- Similarly, building a code search engine across multiple repos (partly to demonstrate how far you can go with custom plugins): https://ripgrep.datasette.io

- Any time I have a CSV file I open it in the Datasette Desktop macOS app first to start exploring it: https://datasette.io/desktop

- As a prototyping tool. It's the fastest way I know of to get from some data files (CSV or JSON) to a working JSON API - and a GraphQL API too using this plugin: https://datasette.io/plugins/datasette-graphql

- Messing around with geospatial data - here's a write-up of my favourite experiment with that so far: https://simonwillison.net/2021/Jan/24/drawing-shapes-spatial...

This is a bewilderingly wide array of things! And I keep on finding new problems I can apply it to:

Of course, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But thanks to the plugin system (and the amazing flexibility of SQLite under the good) I can reshape my hammer into all sorts of interesting shapes!

I've been trying to capture some of this at https://datasette.io/for

This is one of my biggest marketing challenges for the project though. If someone asks you for an elevator pitch you need to do better than spending 15 minutes talking through a wide ranging bulleted list!

You can use my Datasette software to explore the database: https://datasette.io/desktop - that's the Mac version but you can run the underlying software on Windows too.

Then you can either run "pip install datasette" and "datasette healthkit.db" or you can install the Datasette Desktop app from https://datasette.io/desktop and use that to open the database file.

You may find my Datasette Desktop Mac application useful: it provides a read-only interface over SQLite and cdn oprn both SQLite files and CSV files: https://datasette.io/desktop

This is really interesting to see. I've been trying to solve a similar problem over the past few weeks - bundling up a Python web application as an installable Desktop app, in my case for https://datasette.io/desktop - so it's really interesting to see how they've approached the problem.

I ended up including a full copy of Python using https://github.com/indygreg/python-build-standalone - it looks like they've bundled Conda.

I wrote up detailed notes on how I solved the Python bundling problem in https://simonwillison.net/2021/Sep/8/datasette-desktop/#how-... and in https://til.simonwillison.net/electron/python-inside-electro...

I've been having a ton of fun building this. The code is all open source at https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app - it's my first time working with Electron and the biggest task was figuring out how to bundle Python inside an Electron app, which I wrote about in detail here: https://til.simonwillison.net/electron/python-inside-electron

> If you learn something the hard way, share your findings with others. You have blazed a new trail; now you must mark it for your fellow travellers. Sharing knowledge is an unreasonably effective way of helping others.

This is a really nice philosophy. It's one of the reasons why I have my https://til.simonwillison.net TIL site - any time I search for something and can't find the answer is a hint that there's a tiny gap in the internet which I can help fill.

Hosting these on GitHub is such a good idea:

- GitHub have world class backups - commit something there and it gets replicated to data centers on three continents (I believe) - and a free public repo there won't vanish if you forget to update an expired credit card

- Related: GitHub is free. I care about this not because of not wanting to pay now, but because I don't want my content to be at risk if I forget to pay in the future (or can't pay for whatever reason)

- GitHub has several great web UIs for editing content, in addition to being able to edit in any other tool that supports the git protocol

- GitHub Actions makes it possible to add all sorts of automations on top of your notes, again for free. I use that to deploy my custom https://til.simonwillison.net site (mainly to give myself search)

- GitHub's own search is pretty good though!

- You can also use GitHub Pages if you just want a custom static site version of your notes.

- if someone spots a typo in your notes they can submit a PR to fix it!

That's awesome. Parts of that sound a little bit like how my https://til.simonwillison.net/ site works.

I started publishing "TIL" posts a few years ago and everything in this post here resonated 100% with my experience of writing those.

The great thing about TILs is that once you form a solid set of habits around them they can be extremely quick to put together: the majority of my TIL posts take between 15 minutes and half an hour to write.

I make extensive personal notes on everything I'm doing (in GitHub issues threads or VS Code scratch documents) - turning those into a TIL is mainly about pasting those notes into a Markdown file and tidying them up a bit.

https://til.simonwillison.net/ is my collection so far.

I get a huge amount of value out of these. I don't particularly care if other people read them, the value is in helping me better understand the material and enabling me to refer back to them in the future.

I refer to some of them multiple times every week! This one for example: https://til.simonwillison.net/python/pyproject

I've started to consider "commit to writing about it" as the price I have to pay for giving into the lure of another project. It's one of the main reasons I publish so much content on https://simonwillison.net/ and https://til.simonwillison.net

A project with a published write-up unlocks so much more value than one which you complete without giving others a chance of understanding what you built.

I've maintained internal blogs (sometimes just a Slack channel or Confluence area) at previous employers for this purpose too.

https://github.com/simonw/til/blob/main/llms/llama-7b-m2.md

I'm definitely keen on suggestions for improvements I can make to the default UI.

Datasette provides both a JSON API (easily enabled for CORS access) and supports custom templates, so it's possible to customize the UI any way you like.

So far I've not seen many examples of extensive customization. I use the custom templates a lot myself - these four sites are all just regular Datasette with some custom templates:

- https://datasette.io/

- https://til.simonwillison.net/

- https://www.niche-museums.com/

- https://www.rockybeaches.com/us/pillar-point

Source code is on GitHub for all four.

I have trouble answering this question myself, and I created it!

The problem I have is that it can be applied to too many different problems.

I personally have used it for the following (a truncated summary):

- Publishing data online to allow other people to explore it, for example https://scotrail.datasette.io and https://russian-ira-facebook-ads.datasettes.com/

- Building websites, by combining it with custom templates. https://datasette.io and https://www.niche-museums.com and https://til.simonwillison.net are three examples

- Building my own combined search engine over a bunch of different data. https://github-to-sqlite.dogsheep.net is this for my GitHub issues and commits and issue comments across 100+ projects

- Similarly, building a code search engine across multiple repos (partly to demonstrate how far you can go with custom plugins): https://ripgrep.datasette.io

- Any time I have a CSV file I open it in the Datasette Desktop macOS app first to start exploring it: https://datasette.io/desktop

- As a prototyping tool. It's the fastest way I know of to get from some data files (CSV or JSON) to a working JSON API - and a GraphQL API too using this plugin: https://datasette.io/plugins/datasette-graphql

- Messing around with geospatial data - here's a write-up of my favourite experiment with that so far: https://simonwillison.net/2021/Jan/24/drawing-shapes-spatial...

This is a bewilderingly wide array of things! And I keep on finding new problems I can apply it to:

Of course, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But thanks to the plugin system (and the amazing flexibility of SQLite under the good) I can reshape my hammer into all sorts of interesting shapes!

I've been trying to capture some of this at https://datasette.io/for

This is one of my biggest marketing challenges for the project though. If someone asks you for an elevator pitch you need to do better than spending 15 minutes talking through a wide ranging bulleted list!

Make notes, in private and in public.

I have a private "notes" repo on GitHub where I keep notes in the issues (the repo itself is empty). Any time I'm trying out a new piece of software I open an issue there, then add notes on the issue comments as I figure things out.

I use GitHub issues because they have excellent backups and they show up on GitHub search - plus there's a really good API which I use to periodically export and backup my note elsewhere.

If something fits. I'll turn my notes into a TIL and publish them on https://til.simonwillison.net - that site uses the markdown format as GitHub issues, so publishing a TIL that started out as an issue comment only takes me a few minutes.