Hacker News: skalkin

New comment by skalkin in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)"

skalkin — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 02:43:44 +0000

A platform to efficiently work with any data right in the browser. Like interactively visualizing millions or rows, and at the same time augmenting the data with domain-specific capabilities. For instance, the cheminformatics plugin automatically recognizes molecules and provides proper rendering, substructure search etc. Sort of a Swiss Army knife for scientific data.

Not really a new idea, been working on it for many years already :)

New comment by skalkin in "Show HN: Sqlite3-dump - a fast SQLite to CSV and parquet"

skalkin — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 15:34:03 +0000

Thanks for sharing!

If converting SQLite to CSV/parquet is a one-off task for you, you can also import SQLite files (among the other 50+ formats for tabular data) and export to multiple supported formats (CSV and parquet included) using Datagrok (https://datagrok.ai/). Just drag-and-drop the sqlite file, then use the "export" button on top. Everything happens inside the browser (so there is a limit on the max size of the dataset, probably around 1GB).

Disclaimer - I'm one of the developers of Datagrok :)

New comment by skalkin in "Flutter desktop shells"

skalkin — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 18:48:12 +0000

I was productive in Dart after few hours, it really fells a lot more solid and thought-out compared to JS or TS. Everything just works immediately and as expected, and the language is super simple yet expressive.

New comment by skalkin in "Google’s Flutter = React and Java Swing"

skalkin — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 02:14:12 +0000

I understand where you are coming from - however, Dart is super easy to start using, you will feel at home in no time. Solid, though-out standard library, everything just works out of the box. Honestly, it's a very refreshing experience compared to JS / TypeScript. I bet you'll love it after a day or two.

New comment by skalkin in "Dart 1.24: Faster edit-refresh cycle on the web and new function type syntax"

skalkin — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 15:56:29 +0000

This is awesome - kudos to the Dart team! Dart was a pleasure to work with since the very beginning, and it is getting better with each new release. I absolutely love the recent focus on strong mode support. DDC is an important addition to the platform, hope hot reloading will follow. Also, can't wait to see what Dart 2.0 brings us!

New comment by skalkin in "Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value"

skalkin — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 21:39:26 +0000

Sorry for not explaining the reasons, I thought they were obvious. First, dealers cut into margins; second, they are not interested in selling vehicles that require very little service; third, they won't be able to provide great customer experience - no one likes negotiating with dealers.

New comment by skalkin in "Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value"

skalkin — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 15:59:30 +0000

Let me disagree with some of the points:

> Ford has all the infrastructure that Tesla is attempting to build now

* no battery production facilities * no charging infrastructure * no vertical integration (unlike Tesla, Ford has to sell through the dealershits - I see it as a big disadvantage)

> They know how to mass produce cars

Yes - but can they produce the car the public will want in three years from now, when affordable all-electric, high-performance, autonomous Model 3s will redefine what modern car means?

> They have a large manufacturing and maintenance base that, frankly, Tesla can't replicate

I admit that they have some hurdles ahead, but what would stop Tesla from being more efficient at manufacturing than Ford? It is one of their objectives - and their track record is pretty good, to say the least.

New comment by skalkin in "How one announcement damaged the .NET ecosystem on Windows"

skalkin — Tue, 24 May 2016 18:08:46 +0000

Same here. I have been heavily exposed to C# / .NET at that time, but after the announcement came out we started looking into other platforms, and it has never been the same ever since.

New comment by skalkin in "Firefox 41 can screenshot a single DOM element"

skalkin — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 01:58:51 +0000

Clicked on it hoping that this is a new browser feature that I can access from the web page via JavaScript... but this is just a dev tool. I hope that this feature will eventually appear, currently taking snapshots from the client side is a major pain point.

New comment by skalkin in "“We have decided not to integrate the Dart VM into Chrome”"

skalkin — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 19:09:59 +0000

This is a great move by the Dart team. There is now a single story for the web development, their efforts can be more focused, and accusations regarding trying to break the web will stop. Win-win-win.

After developing with Dart for quite a while, I can just not see myself going back to JavaScript, the platform is just that much better.

New comment by skalkin in "Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO"

skalkin — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 20:56:05 +0000

"Without Bing, GOOG would pretty much print money and pour money on whatever futuristic projects they feel like. "

You say it like Google's futuristic projects are bad things; if anything, we need more of them!

New comment by skalkin in "Google launches Portable Native Client"

skalkin — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 20:52:18 +0000

Silverlight was a big success up until Sinofsky decided to kill it (with Silverlight, you could create rich apps and bypass Windows Store). Worst decision ever, I hope PNaCl takes over the world now.