Show HN: Val Town – A Cloud Scripting Site Hey HN! We're so excited to show you Val Town ( https://val.town )! A "val" is a JavaScript/TypeScript function or value that runs on our servers. We aim to get you from idea to running code in seconds: type code, run it, get its API endpoint, schedule it - all from the browser, in a couple keystrokes. We're a startup of 4 people, mostly in NYC. We've been working on this for 6 months and are eager for feedback from the HN community. Why do we need yet another online coding IDE? While researching devtools[1], I found myself wanting something halfway between Replit and Zapier: a tool that makes hosting, deploying, scheduling, and authenticating easy, but is first-and-foremost a programming tool. We added `console.email` to the runtime to make it incredibly easy to email yourself. We don't have npm imports yet, but we do have a low-friction system that treats every user as a namespace, so you can refer to `@me.foo + 1` or `@yourFriend.bar()` right in your code. There are a lot of thorny implications this newfangled import scheme creates, but also many joyous and carefree coding experiences! One of my favorite features is that we store every evaluation, up and down the callstack, including inputs, outputs, logs, etc, which has been an amazing aid to debugging. So far, Val Town is mostly used for what we're calling "programmatic notifications": query a data source for new items on an interval and email them to yourself. Get notified when users you "follow" post on Hacker News: https://ift.tt/FRoywGH Get notified when to close your window during fire season in SF: https://ift.tt/F9S0xy3 Get notified when there are new citations on a paper: https://ift.tt/xPmSrad Subscribe to RSS feeds: https://ift.tt/hsItRQM A good place to get started would be forking one of those vals and modifying it to suit your needs. Some folks are using the tool in other ways, such as in webhook contexts, and we encourage those uses as well. We'd LOVE to pair-program with anyone looking to try out the tool and give feedback. Email steve@val.town :-) Main site: https://val.town Docs: https://ift.tt/1SPUXOv... Discord: https://ift.tt/0kYg3T9 Blog & Newsletter: https://ift.tt/j1qhMXk... [1] - Whole Code Catalog: https://ift.tt/ufSFXiY https://www.val.town/ January 12, 2023 at 01:18AM
Women Pioneers at Muni: Adeline Svendsen and Muni’s First Newsletter By Jeremy Menzies To close out Women’s History Month, here’s a look back at one woman whose work to bring Muni staff together in the late 1940s created a legacy that lives on to this day. Adeline “Addy” Svendsen was founding editor of Muni’s first internal newsletter, “ Trolley Topics .” Adeline Svendsen sits at her desk in the Geneva Carhouse office building in this 1949 shot. Trolley Topics was a new venture when it started in February 1946. As Svendsen wrote in the first issue it was created, “to bring a little fun, a little news, and a lot of good will to all our fellow employees in the Railway.” Just two years prior in 1944, Muni merged with the Market Street Railway Company, expanding the small municipal operation into the largest transit provider in the city with hundreds of employees, vehicles of every shape and size, and dozens of facilities scattered across town. The newsletter was meant to help unite ...
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