Show HN: Turn a markdown document into an interactive tutorial (opens in new tab)

Disallowing editing is only one solution I suggested. The other is: determining that they haven't actually changed the sample text from one of the pre-canned selections, and thus returning the result from a static copy of a previously-performed transformation.

Edit: in other words, if a user changes the text from one of the pre-filled selections (MD5 hash of the text would be sufficient to determine this, or even simpler, note whether a keyup event was raised by the textbox), put them in the queue you're using now. If there was no keyup event, then read which selection was made from the drop down and return the already-transformed-in-advance result.

Making a potential "ready to hear your pitch" customer wait in line is unnecessary. There can be an "express lane" without compromising the "scenic route".

I think what OP was getting at was is if you're processing each example on the fly, why aren't the unedited default examples cached so if a user just hits "Run" they can see it working, regardless of whether it's their own content or not.

I tried it a couple of times. You only get prompted to sign up if the system is overloaded and it dumps you into the waiting queue. Otherwise, it goes right into the demo which creates a clickable preview to auto enter commands or you can type directly into the shell.

This looks promising. Nice work Dan and Stacktile team. Looking forward to seeing what the community does with it.

Maybe I can also share a bit more insight into what's actually going on behind the scenes. When a user on stacktile creates a workflow, we are also executing a linux container environment on their behalf. This container provides the interactive environment to run the code in the workflow, but it's also a resource (and operational cost) which need to limit at the moment.

That and for those of us seeing the notification that their server is backed up, I can't even see it in action right now. Seems like this should have been cached

I'd get rid of it. Why would you add more confusion to your product? It's hard enough to grasp as a novel concept without adding misdirection.

I like it... that and the 404 error:

[root]$ ls moo

ls: moo: No such file or directory

That's a forkbomb, if memory serves? haha

By the way, there are already services at least for automatic diffing: https://www.changedetection.com/ etc. (I don't know if this one is better than others, but this one has a memorable name; I have it pointed at one page, and get notifications from time to time, but never actually cared to dive in and check the diffs... :/ )

I wholeheartedly invite you to create a workflow on stacktile.io that demonstrates how to do it! :-)

I would at least add a demo video or something to show how the product works. I had the same experience and was confused why the demo would require me to signup. At best, it came off as poor UX, at worst, a bit sleazy.

At any rate, it's an interesting idea. I would like to see a demo without having to signup for something.

My suggestion would be to simply tell people that the internet's hug has overloaded the servers, offer an apology, and let them know that you hope they will come back later.

The problem is that asking for email suggests people should trust the website at a time when there is no basis for trust and many people have substantial experience to suggest not trusting.

Just yesterday, I received a straight to voicemail all from a company from whom I once purchased software in 2007. My guess is that I'm in their lead database for upgrades that is given to new hires in phone sales. It got me thinking about email collection -- it's one of my standard feedback items on "Show HN".

Anyway, I thought for a moment about the fact that there is no company that I love so much that I want to receive periodic emails from it. Not even Taco and few companies do engagement emails as beautifully designed as Trello.

There's a scale at which bulk email operations make sense. I don't think the "doing things that don't scale" is the right stage for optimizing. Usually, emails are another TODO item in the receiver's inbox. They're not solutions.

My advice, focus on solutions.

Good luck.

Hi, This is Dan from stacktile,

first of all, thanks for checking us out!

I'm sorry if you hit an error, we're a victim of our own popularity at the moment. We're working to accommodate pretty huge the increase in traffic from HN.