polyapp VS notion-auto-pull

https://gitlab.com/polyapp-open-source/polyapp is a self-hosted, MIT-licensed form builder with reporting I created. It can be adapted to handle asset tracking & relicensed under AGPL.

Basically, it works by reading the JSON; using https://gitlab.com/polyapp-open-source/polyapp to recursively create form HTML, validation, and schemas; and using polyapp again to import the data contained within the form.

A lot of people will jump at this and say, "but without a developer, you can't calculate X Y Z!" or "those tools aren't flexible enough to replace the app I'm building!" Obviously someone needs to code everything, but in large developer ecosystems someone has probably already coded something just like what you're writing and your job is reduced to configuring that thing. Most of the code I used to write was configuring components someone else wrote on the front end and transforming data from the database into the UI and back again on the back end. Even those things are just configuration. HTML is configuring components defined by the HTML standard. Typing out a data model in C# and setting up Entity Framework is just a way to configure the .NET framework. You could write a UI with all of the different choices for HTML and Entity Framework model choices as a form, and have someone select from the list of choices and all of that work would be poof - gone. Incidentally, this is sort of how Polyapp works.

My perfection had a name: Notion.

I manage my non-work and work-adjacent tasks in Notion. Whenever I have an idea, regardless of how big or small or silly or achievable it is, I'll add it to Notion, and use labels to categorise it by type of output (e.g. blog, silly project, website update). Today I wanted to write a short post for my site. I clicked on the filtered blog post view, and selected this one (because I hoped it would be a quick one!).

Notion.so redefines workspaces. With its intelligent organization and collaboration features, it's more than a productivity tool—it's a digital haven. Discover the art of streamlined and efficient teamwork.

A quote as I could not directly send a discord screenshot and am not sure that people want to make an account at notion.so simply to see the FAQ:

I work on a large SPA: https://notion.so

It’s a document editing application. A document title might occur in the browser’s titlebar, in the header of the main editor, in a “mention” (a link to the document), and in multiple places in the user’s sidebar - like in both their “Favorites” section and in the the contents of their team.

When the user edits the document title, we need to update all those UI bits to render the new title. I have a hard time imagining some imperative code that iterates over all the possible views that may render a title to mutate them.

Notion (Notion.so) is an all-in-one workspace where you can write, plan, collaborate and get organized - it allows you to take notes, add tasks, manage projects & more. Imagine a lego structure. Notion provides the building blocks and you can create your own layouts and toolkit to get work done.

I think Notion (notion.so) is a good tool for managing Captain's Log games (and RPG games in general) but there is a bit of a learning curve. If there is interest, I would consider writing a more detailed tutorial on how to use Notion for Captains Log (as I figure the game out). I'd also recommend Thomas Frank's website and youtube channel for tutorials on how to use Notion.

my personal thoughts: regardless of how many people prefer not to believe it, and the fact that some startups do use non-dotcom (Notion owns notion.com by the way, but still redirects to notion.so - i suspect it's because it's too much of a hassle to do so rather than .so being their preferred TLD), the truth is that the .com still has a certain brand allure to it to mainstream consumers. personally i paid 10k for my startup's .com even though the other TLDs were cheap as hell (which i also bought anyway). i thought it was crazy expensive, but i still felt it was money well spent for the branding.