Ask YC: Review my app (pycmds, a web-based command line)

The auto-suggest gets annoying because it's always displayed. You should only display it when you have a partial match.<p>This query crashes the site: <a href="http://www.pycmds.org/#youtube" rel="nofollow">http://www.pycmds.org/#youtube</a> search for miley

Bug report, when doing a search for 'albums by [muse]' (btw oops is not spelled opps ;-)):<p>Opps! You found a bug. Here's the skinny:<p><pre><code> Traceback (most recent call last): File "/base/data/home/apps/pycmds/1.34/main.py", line 36, in get out = self.dispatch(cmd) File "/base/data/home/apps/pycmds/1.34/main.py", line 59, in dispatch data = func(**kwargs) File "/base/data/home/apps/pycmds/1.34/pycommands/entertainment.py", line 67, in albums_by "type": "/music/artist" File "/base/data/home/apps/pycmds/1.34/pycommands/freebase.py", line 26, in mql_read return result['qname']['result']</code></pre>

It's DOM-injectable:<p><a href="http://www.pycmds.org/#albums%20by%20" rel="nofollow">http://www.pycmds.org/#albums%20by%20</a>['foo']%22%20onclick=%22alert(1)%22<p>It gives me Python stack traces on most funky commands.

I did the same thing as you - <a href="http://geeky.siong1987.com" rel="nofollow">http://geeky.siong1987.com</a> . Anyway, I really love the way you layout your web application and it has better UI than mine. Work hard on it. My application does support API developed by developers. But, I implemented this feature in a very poor architectured way.<p>So, I really think that you should add the features that other developers can developer commands for you

To be honest it's too slow to be of any use. It just feels clunky. I would use it if it were fast, but having to wait for the javascript to catchup is pointless. The autocomplete doesn't help when it pops up after I have paused for a second. If I type "you" very fast and hit tab, it won't always autosuggest in time. To make things worse, you are going to be directly competing against Ubiquity.<p>Another big annoyance is how dumbed down it makes a terminal. If I want to do a youtube search i feel like I should be able to simply write "youtube blue man group". I don't want to have to add in "search for" or add in square brackets around my query.<p>The main problem is that I can see that it's there. I use a terminal to avoid having to interact with an interface. I agree with Google's Chrome philosophy, that they don't want you to notice the browser at all. Spend your time figuring out how to make it faster and easier and then you've got something you can show off. I would be worried about Ubiquity though as a browser plugin can work so much faster than javascript.

It's cool, but I don't see how it's useful at all. Some of the commands are even more verbose than going to google and typing in a search.

You need to tell people to enable javascript.<p>Also please make the obvious commands like "help" or "info" do something useful.

I think "bash for the web" is a cool idea. I think it might make more sense to see this as a firefox plugin, though.<p>One reason we see these things as hosted apps is because authors are excited about users doing a lot of the work for them and submitting commands. (I know, I've worked on something like this).<p>Mostly, I think the core language and interface are more important than the libraries, and these will run better client side (unless you connection sucks). The core has to be robust because only real nerds will use it anyway, and they won't use it if it won't save them much time.<p>So, make the core more important, run it locally, make the user submitted libraries easily downloadable/syncable, and always assume the core language is more imporant that library usage (so optimize keystokes for core operations).<p>my 2 cents.

I bet it's great, only it's almost utterly unusable in WebKit/Safari.

It would be helpful if you had, at minimum, at least a fraction of the 12k+ commands already available at YubNub.<p><a href="http://yubnub.org/" rel="nofollow">http://yubnub.org/</a>

1)Why require brackets? They seem superfluous. Unless theres something in the design of your code that requires them, I see them doing no good. 2)Shorthand versions of commands. "wiki stargate" instead of "wikipedia stargate" 3) The UI is nice. It took me a second to realize it wasn't a plug-in/extension like Ubiquity, but I had to type in commands at the bottom.<p>What are you reasons for making this app? I like it, but I can't see myself using it every day.

At first I didn't notice there's a command prompt at the bottom. At least you could point visitors to it.

I use shortcuts on Firefox to do exactly the same thing, but without the need to open a web-page.

Good work. We had a similar idea and we see potential in this. Dont stop!

Why is your AuthDomain "gmail.com"?