go-concise-encoding VS lowdefy

I'm not sure, TBH... Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment?

I'm currently partway through refactoring all of the portable unit tests for Concise Encoding ( https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding/tree/master... ) and it is a SLOG! I mean, so goddamn boring and tedious that I wanna stick an ice pick through my skull. There's easily another 200 hours of this terrible work ahead and I'll be right back to it the moment Dogma v1 is published in a few weeks (Dogma has been kind of a vacation from it in a lot of ways).

Do I dread it? Yes. Am I still going to do it? Yes. Because at the end of the day I want to be able to stand back and say "I made that. I completed it - ALL of it. It's not perfect, but it's doing its job and people are using it."

It's still in the prerelease stage, but v1 will be released later this year. I'm mostly getting hits from China since they tend to be a lot more worried about security. I expect the rest of the world to catch on to the gaping security holes of JSON and friends in the next few years as the more sophisticated actors start taking advantage of them. For example https://github.com/kstenerud/concise-encoding/blob/master/ce...

There are still a few things to do:

- Update enctool (https://github.com/kstenerud/enctool) to integrate https://cuelang.org so that there's at least a command line schema validator for CE.

- Update the grammar file (https://github.com/kstenerud/concise-encoding/tree/master/an...) because it's a bit out of date.

- Revamp the compliance tests to be themselves written in Concise Encoding (for example https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding/blob/master... but I'll be simplifying the format some more). That way, we can run the same tests on all CE implementations instead of everyone coming up with their own. I'll move the test definitions to their own repo when they're done and then you can just submodule it.

I'm thinking that they should look more like:

    c1

I'll be working on the reference implementation [1] of Concise Encoding [2], which is a secure data format for the modern world. My aim is to replace insecure and clunky formats like JSON and XML and the various binary formats that do similar things less conveniently.

In a nutshell:

- Existing ad-hoc formats are too loosely defined to be secure, and that's becoming a huge problem as the bad guys become more sophisticated. CE is tightly specified and designed to mitigate exploitation of codecs.

- CE is a twin text and binary format. Humans view and edit in text, and machines send it in binary, so you get the convenience of text and the efficiency of binary for free.

- CE supports the fundamental types natively. Stringifying is buggy, causes incompatibilities, and opens security holes. And it's completely unnecessary with a properly designed data format.

[1] https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding

[2] https://concise-encoding.org/

I'm building a general-purpose data format for the modern age. The old ones are too bulky, too insecure, and too limiting.

* Secure: As a tightly specified format, Concise Encoding doesn't suffer from the security problems that the more loosely defined formats do. Everything is done one way only, leaving less of an attack surface.

* Efficient: As a twin binary/text format, Concise Encoding retains the text-based ease-of-use of the old text formats, but is stored and transmitted in the simpler and smaller binary form, making it more secure, easier on the energy bill, and easier on the planet.

* Versatile: Supports all common types natively. 90% of users won't need any form of customization.

* Future-proof: As a versioned format, Concise Encoding can respond to a changing world without degenerating into deprecations and awkward encodings or painting itself into a corner.

* Plug and play: No extra compilation steps or special description formats or crazy boilerplate.

https://concise-encoding.org

Reference implementation (golang): https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding

One thing golang did right is the go playground. When I put code in my README, I also include a playground link.

Example: https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding#library-usa...

I could use some help if you're interested in implementing an ad-hoc data format codec in different languages.

https://concise-encoding.org is nearing release, but building the reference implementation (https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding) has taken so much of my spare time that I couldn't even think about other languages (especially since I'll need to focus on the schema format next, and the proto-RPC protocol after that).

I've started doing this in my larger projects e.g. https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding/blob/master...

An architecture document should be the code equivalent of a combined street map and tourist guide. Its purpose is to bring strangers up to a minimum level of familiarity with the code as quickly as possible. That includes where things are, why it was architected this way, things to look out for, and a few interesting points of weirdness perhaps.

Concise Encoding: https://concise-encoding.org

The friendly data format for human and machine. Think JSON, but with 1:1 compatible twin binary and text formats and rich type support.

* Edit text, transmit binary. Humans love text. Machines love binary. With Concise Encoding, conversion is 1:1 and seamless.

* Rich type support. Boolean, integer, float, string, bytes, time, URI, UUID, list, map, markup, metadata, etc.

* Plug and play. No schema needed. No special syntax files. No code generation. Just import and go.

I'm in the process of finishing up the reference implementation (https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding), after which I'll start on the schema specification. Once that's done, I have a low-level communication protocol that will use this format under the hood.

I'm really enjoying reading through the docs and the tutorial. We've created Lowdefy, a config web-stack which makes it really simple to build quite advanced web apps. We're writing everything in YAML, but it has it's limitations, specifically when doing config type checking and IDE extensions that go beyond just YAML.

I've been looking for a way to have typed objects in the config to do config suggestions and type checking.. PKL looks like it can do this for us. And with the JSON output we might even be able to get there with minimal effort.

Is there anyone here with some PKL experience that would be willing to answer some technical questions re the use of PKL for more advanced, nested config?

See Lowdefy:

https://lowdefy.com/

https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy

Awsome! With Lowdefy we tried to build a low-code framework that works like code. We’ve developed a schema in which to define applications and we’ve built all kinds of apps for enterprise customers. Massive, advanced CRM systems, call centre solutions, ticketing systems, a light MRP, all kinds of survey apps and so many dashboards. Even our docs and our website are Lowdefy apps!

Give Lowdefy a try and reach out it you have any questions or want to see what is possible :) (We need to invest a lot more into content and examples, bootstapping is a grind!)

https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy

Also add Lowdefy onto the list https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy

co-founder here :)

100% this. And yes, good documentation takes a lot of investment but it pays off like compound interest. But with that done, it becomes even more important not to pull the carpet for no good reason, you are building a tower and documentation is at the foundation.

We’ve built Lowdefy [1] as an open source project and documented it with all effort, 200 pages of docs. I often forget why or how something works and then jump to the docs. This investment keeps on paying of as we use Lowdefy to build customer apps, new devs in the team typically take less than two week to get up to speed and start making contributions, the sharp ones, just a two or three days.

This year, we’re extended our documentation onto customer apps aswell, with flow diagrams, state machine definitions, detailed field level explication schema definitions, and end user test procedures. The key here for this documentation is detail. It should be easier to reach for the docs and the the answer, than to dive in the code and interpret it.

1 - https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy

https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy Co-Founder here.

Check out https://lowdefy.com/ they even have a sample survey app as one of their examples.

You can build an app that would do this

Lowdefy is a low code tool that uses AG Grid as a block component, allowing you to create apps which render data in AG Grid without a lot of coding knowledge. There is a Lowdefy example using AG Grid here.

Shameless plug, also check out Lowdefy - https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy

I’m also going to jump in here and say try Lowdefy https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy - co-founder here.

We take a different angle and believe that low code should still work like code. We focus on a developer first approach.