[March 10] Interesting Things I Learnt This Week

1. Kitten - The Streaming HTML framework - Kitten is a small, JavaScript-based web framework designed for people who want to build web applications easily. It is designed to be easy to use and fun to work with. Kitten accomplishes this by using plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Additionally, Kitten supports features like WebSockets, htmx, and Alpine.js. A starter tutorial for it is at https://ar.al/2024/03/08/streaming-html/


My Take:  This is a new framework that I find it very interesting, and it's worth keeping an eye on. It introduces some intriguing concepts, including streaming HTML and a JavaScript Database (JSDB). While this approach seems more suited for small web applications rather than web-scale ones, it might not be relevant for large organizations. However, for hobbyists like myself, it presents an exciting opportunity to try something new. I'll definitely be following this closely.

 

2. Radicle Heartwood Protocol & Stack -  Heartwood is the third iteration of the Radicle Protocol, a powerful peer-to-peer code collaboration and publishing stack. Radicle was designed to be a secure, decentralized and powerful alternative to code forges such as GitHub and GitLab that preserves user sovereignty and freedom.

My Take:  Similar to small web applications, P2P web applications represent another exciting area on the web. Currently, P2P applications are primarily associated with torrents and cryptocurrencies. However, I hope to see more projects emerge that utilize this technology for innovative purposes. This could potentially lead to the preservation of user sovereignty and freedom online.

 

3. Flexagon -  A flexagon is a fun geometric model, essentially a folded strip of paper that can be flexed in specific ways to reveal hidden faces. Imagine it like a secret message encoded on a piece of paper. It can come in variety of different shapes.

A hexaflexagon, shown with the same face in two configurations

My Take: While searching for origami flowers for my kid, I stumbled upon something fascinating: flexagons. It wasn't entirely new to me –Anand had mentioned them at Barcamp Bangalore and we even built one ourselves. However, revisiting the concept sparked my interest again. What particularly intrigues me about hexatetraflexagons is their cyclic nature, i.e. they lack dead ends, allowing for continuous folding until you return to the starting position.


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