The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5)

Software Ill never write..

Hey.
Im guessing Im not the only one here to have new ideas for software every other day or so. I figured it'd be fun if we shared some of those weird, impossible, cool or briliant ideas we have but cant be arsed to do anything about. Ok, here goes...

**Fantasy vision debugger**
A program that can take the code of a smaller program and use it as a script for an RPG/RTS style visualization. All objects, variables, messages and events become characters, castles, battles in the scenario.
Imagine, rouge varibles riding off into the wild, couriers riding back and forth between camps in an infinite loop and unused goblins standing around scratching their bellies.

**HTML wordprocessor**
Yeah, I know this is pretty well covered by existing products. But I would like a word processor that ONLY saves in HTML. It should have all the normal WP features but all formatting should be done with CSS. The only exception should be directions for printing/page layout which could be included as comments. Also, The app should have the ability to connect directly to a DB server so that it bypasses the normal open/save procedures and stores only in a DB.
Why? Documents that can be read anywhere! Documents that can be transparently stored in a DB and indexed for searching. Documents that can be repaired manually if they break...and a system that enforces a policy that would benefit a great deal of corporations.

**Meta Navigator**
An addition or plugin for Google. Instead of a list of search hits the meta navigator would deliver a visual display with boxes representing the pages and arrows for the links so that you get a web of possible sources. Good hits could be darker in colour or something.
Why? Well, In searching for specific information one must often follow links in the pages one finds. Having a map (on a differnt tab or something) would simply be nice and helpful. You could see where youve been and what is yet to be explored and you wouldnt have to use the back-button so much.

Ok.. anyone else?

Eric DeBois
Saturday, September 27, 2003

> **Fantasy vision debugger**

I read about someone who somehow mapped Doom to their computers - the monsters were processes. They'd go in and blast the offending process, though sometimes a larger, more important process got in the way... Oops. I'm reasonably sure the article wasn't a joke.

What about software to organize random notes? A combination outliner, wiki, blogger, search engine, etc. I know exactly what it looks like and what it does, but I'll never write it.

Mark T A W .com
Saturday, September 27, 2003

Software where I click a button and nice crisp $100 bills start spewing out of the A: drive.

Realist
Saturday, September 27, 2003

I believe you're referring to this:
Doom as a tool for system administration
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/

Amon
Saturday, September 27, 2003

YES ! DOOM AS A TOOL FOR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION. I don't even like Doom but I love this idea...

Mark T A W .com
Saturday, September 27, 2003

language/dev environment where you cannot make buggy programs :)

buggy, in terms that the problem won't compile if there is any chance that there is an exception, and you do not handle correctly.

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software emulator / code snippet replacer where after analyzing a part of code the system reasons what are the possible outputs, and with that info it can optimize it.

silly example, but a for (i=0; i<10000; i++);b=i*2;return b; has only one output, so we can make it 10000 faster :)

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the rest is so secret, that you think I'm crazy and should go to therapst :)

na
Sunday, September 28, 2003

I was under the impression that "impossible to write buggy software" environment was precluded by the halting problem, but maybe it could work for your more limited case.

The software to organize all categories of notes sounds like JWZ's "Intertwingle" idea, or maybe Mitch Kapor's Chandler.

Chris Hoess
Sunday, September 28, 2003

Is this anything like how you imagined the meta browser:
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

Matt
Monday, September 29, 2003

Actually.. yes, pretty much. Morphic resonance?

Eric DeBois
Monday, September 29, 2003

How about a powerpoint compiler that turns all those fancy architecture slides into binaries....

pod
Wednesday, October 1, 2003