Nordcraft Engine: A New Era for Web Development with Andreas Møller

The Frustration Behind Nordcraft Engine

• 💡 Andreas Møller, with 20+ years in web development, felt frustrated by the traditional design-to-developer handoff, where developers often just replicate static designs without adding their own input.
• 🚀 This frustration, coupled with the observation that gaming development heavily relies on visual tools, inspired the creation of Nordcraft Engine.
• 🎯 The goal is to provide a powerful platform for professional product teams, bridging the gap between design and development.

Visual Programming and Game Engines

• 🎮 The concept of visual programming is not new, with early examples dating back to 1967, but it has only truly thrived in the gaming industry.
• 🧩 AAA game development, despite its complexity, utilizes visual tools for logic and design, a stark contrast to the typical web development workflow.
• ⚠️ This disparity highlights a missed opportunity in web application development, where visual tools could significantly enhance productivity and collaboration.

Nordcraft Engine's Technical Approach

• 🛠️ Nordcraft Engine is described as a programming language with a built-in framework, but without the traditional text-based code.
• 🧠 Instead, it manipulates an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) stored in a database, with a visual editor for manipulation.
• 🎨 The engine focuses on providing a superior UI for working with web platform standards like HTML and CSS, ensuring developers have full control and see direct mappings to CSS properties.

Formulas, Actions, and Custom Code

• 📈 Nordcraft separates computations into formulas (pure computation) and actions (operations with side effects like API calls), each with distinct visual editors.
• 🔗 Workflows are managed through an event system, allowing developers to define what happens when an element is interacted with, such as updating a variable or triggering an API call.
• 💻 For complex or unsupported functionalities, a custom code option (custom actions/formulas) allows integration with external JavaScript libraries or custom logic, acting as a foreign function interface.

Rebranding from Totle to Nordcraft

• 📛 The rebrand from Totle to Nordcraft was driven by the need for a more professional image, as the name 'Totle' was associated with 'toddling' and lacked a .com domain.
• 🎯 Nordcraft aims to signal a focus on B2B professional teams and developers, moving away from the 'no-code' perception.
• ✨ The new branding is intended to convey gravitas and seriousness, aligning with the tool's capabilities for building complex applications.

Open Source and Future Development

• 🚀 Nordcraft is committed to open-sourcing its editor project, allowing the community to inspect and contribute to its development.
• 🌐 The runtime is already open-source, enabling users to self-host their applications.
• 💡 Future developments include an animation editor, inspired by the visual workflow of tools like Flash, to make web animations more accessible and refined.