Show HN: A beautiful and open-source paste service

http://paste.pm/

by jdiez17 • 13 years ago

11 31 13 years ago

paste.pm

jdiez178• 13 years ago

The source code is available here: https://github.com/jdiez17/pastepm

dindresto• 13 years ago

Pretty cool, also wrote one yesterday, using Flask and Cassandra

mfincham2• 13 years ago

Loads to a blank white page with JavaScript disabled. Utter failure.

aoprisan• 13 years ago

try browsing half the web without JS enabled and it'll look just as bad

andreimic2• 13 years ago

I am, actually, and it's not half as bad as you would think. I don't think that js-less browsing is so uncommon, either.

bpatrianakos2• 13 years ago

Utter failure? Seriously? Why is it that whenever someone shares something cool someone else inevitably wants to tear it down? This is far from an "utter failure". In 2013 you'd be hard pressed to find someone who has disabled JavaScript or is using a browser that doesn't support it. Furthermore, its safe to assume that a user who has purposely disabled JavaScript is sufficiently technical enough to know why they did it and re-enable it if they really want to use the site.

Calling this an utter failure is total hyperbole. Okay, so the site doesn't gracefully degrade. That's a failure for best practices. But best practice isn't always so black and white and a site that doesn't degrade gracefully isn't always absolutely an utter failure. Consider the target audience of this. It'll be more technically inclined people. It's again safe to assume these people will mostly have JS enabled and most people won't have a problem. Even beyond that, we're not talking about a website that's trying to capture the hearts and minds of the entire Internet using population who'd ever want to use a Pastebin. It's some guy or girl who put together a beautiful side project and open sources it at that.

But in the end whether you're right or wrong, have a good point or not, just doesn't matter. It's this pervasive culture of seeking out and focusing only on what's wrong with a project around here that seriously needs to stop. There was a project on the font page last night that wasn't the most impressive piece of code but served a cool purpose and the overwhelming majority of comments just wanted to tear it down and call it useless. It was pretty disgusting really because the project wasn't useless at all. It was just that the commenters didn't personally have a use for it and for some reason couldn't see anything beyond their own personal preferences as if they thought the entire world did (or should) have their same tastes or something. This needs to stop. If it doesn't we'll either no longer get anyone submitting their cool projects or all of HN will be overrun with over zealous critics or both.

niggler8• 13 years ago

"In 2013 you'd be hard pressed to find someone who has disabled JavaScript or is using a browser that doesn't support it"

I and many other people still use lynx/elinks. Which is not to say that I expect every service to work on a text browser, but to dismiss text browsers for a service catering to developers is a bit presumptive

mfincham2• 13 years ago

You're right, "utter failure" might be taking things too far.

"Consider the target audience of this. It'll be more technically inclined people. It's again safe to assume these people will mostly have JS enabled."

I disagree with that sentiment completely. The target audience for this is people who're most likely to be (sensibly, imo) running with NoScript or with JS completely off.

Given that, and given the site is implementing a function that doesn't require JS /at all/, to not even have the page throw an error message is pretty lousy in my books.

Posibyte• 13 years ago

I like this a lot. It's super simplistic and ultimately out-of-the-way. The design is nice.

A couple things I would add would probably be some way to do syntax highlighting and a quick button to create a new paste from any page. Clicking the bottom left logo will do that, but it's not terribly obvious at first.

So, yeah, I like this a lot. Kudos.

EDIT: I see the syntax highlighting now, I just hadn't triggered it yet.

jdiez178• 13 years ago

It does have syntax highlighting, but the detection is not very good yet. At any rate, you can always change the extension on the URL and it will try to highlight that language.

Thanks for the kudos!

niggler8• 13 years ago

Is there syntax highlighting for shell scripts (.sh)?

ibelimb• 13 years ago

What's the paypal functionality for? Donations?

jdiez178• 13 years ago

We intended to add account functionality; a pay what you want thing. More like a donation, yeah.

But the frontend guy is kind of busy so we reckoned it's better to release without that rather than not releasing at all :)

niggler8• 13 years ago

hastebin has shown me what a good paste service should support. The most important thing is a shell client (`do_something | haste`). What is the analogue for this service?

bpatrianakos2• 13 years ago

It's funny you mention that because I'm working on it now. Maybe it's not exactly what you're looking for but it might be close. It's https://writeapp.me Before (or if) you check it out please know that this started out as another distraction-free writing tool but through my own use and how I see my users using it, it's evolving more into a writing platform with a web client, mobile client, a Sublime Text 2 plugin that posts to the site, posts by SMS and email, and I'm working on a Rubygem right now that'll do exactly what you're describing from the command line. I'm not trying to self promote or steal the OP's thunder here, I just got excited when you mentioned this because it made me feel like what I'm working towards is validated.

jdiez178• 13 years ago

Well, here you go: http://paste.pm/hh.py

niggler8• 13 years ago

How did you specify hh? I dont see an option in the UI to specify a name ...

bradsmithinc• 13 years ago

Pretty Nice. Couple of small issues I noticed: If you try to save an empty Paste you get a server error. Also, The Save Icon itself feels very 1990s to me, you might want to consider trying out a few others.

baggiobanglio• 13 years ago

Hi, Paste.pm's designer here. I thought that same thing about using the floppy disk icon as a metaphor for "saving" things, I really wanted to use any other icon to represent that because I also had that feel of 1990s. But after some research, I arrived at the conclusion that the very much hated floppy disk icon is also the most representative one for this action.

jimmytucson• 13 years ago

I never thought I'd find a paste bin to be beautiful but damnit, wrong again.

Show HN: A beautiful and open-source paste service

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