Love the UI. One bit of feedback: on https://parabola.io/ under "Self Documenting and Repeatable" I keep clicking the play buttons in the screenshot.
Did the exact same thing.
Show HN: Parabola.io – Automate your work with visual programming
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Re: Show HN: Parabola.io – Automate your work with visual programming
#22Re: Show HN: Parabola.io – Automate your work with visual programming
#23Hi HN! I’m Alex from Parabola ( https://parabola.io ). Parabola is a visual programming tool for creating functional data flows that everyone can use. It’s entirely drag-and-drop, handles data sizes much larger than a traditional spreadsheet, calculates everything live, and can run your flows on a schedule of your choosing. I used to work in strategy consulting, doing data analytics for SMBs and Fortune 500 companies…
Hey, nice work.
What would you say differentiates this service from say, Zapier?
Re: Show HN: Parabola.io – Automate your work with visual programming
#24Looks a bit like http://luna-lang.org to me. Are there similarities?
Re: Show HN: Parabola.io – Automate your work with visual programming
#25Any plans for a “grab the latest file of this naming pattern from an SFTP” workflow?
We do indeed! We're adding name pattern matching to our file storage sources (dropbox, box, etc.) and also adding an FTP source. If you send an email to hi [at] parabola.io we can add you to the list to get notified. Also let us know if there are any edge cases you'd need it to support so we can make sure you'll be good to go.
Re: Show HN: Parabola.io – Automate your work with visual programming
#26How is this different from Zapier or IFTT?
Re: Show HN: Parabola.io – Automate your work with visual programming
#27Hi HN! I’m Alex from Parabola ( https://parabola.io ). Parabola is a visual programming tool for creating functional data flows that everyone can use. It’s entirely drag-and-drop, handles data sizes much larger than a traditional spreadsheet, calculates everything live, and can run your flows on a schedule of your choosing. I used to work in strategy consulting, doing data analytics for SMBs and Fortune 500 companies…
Hey, nice work. What would you say differentiates this service from say, Zapier?
I really like how dbranes described it below:
>"drag-and-drop data transformation pipelines that comes with app integrations at both ends"
Parabola is very focused on data transformation/manipulation. Our best customers end up with hundreds of steps in their flows, essentially creating full-fledged programs. As part of this focus on data transformation, we primarily operate in a batch-processing fashion. We also perform calculations live while you work on your flow, similar to a spreadsheet or a python notebook.
Zapier on the other hand is great at connecting with TONS of tools, and makes integrations between those tools really smooth. It operates best in an event-based paradigm when you don't need to do much transformation/calculation in between connection points.
There's probably a small amount of overlap at the edges, but in general it's pretty clear when a use case will be a good fit for a tool like Zapier or when it's a good fit for Parabola.
Re: Show HN: Parabola.io – Automate your work with visual programming
#28Hi HN! I’m Alex from Parabola ( https://parabola.io ). Parabola is a visual programming tool for creating functional data flows that everyone can use. It’s entirely drag-and-drop, handles data sizes much larger than a traditional spreadsheet, calculates everything live, and can run your flows on a schedule of your choosing. I used to work in strategy consulting, doing data analytics for SMBs and Fortune 500 companies…
Greetings!
I'll get straight to the point. I've used Node-Red (https://nodered.org) in building my own IoT network along with automating quite a lot of things. I run my own Node-Red instance locally as well as online. Node-red has 1500 different functionality plugins, including things like "push flow to another node-red installation". Node-red also uses javascript as its frontend and backend. I can share whole code by giving someone the js block - which means that backing up flows is trivial. Sharing is also as easy.
So, I looked at your solution. It seems like a prettified version of Node-red with backup, js, and lack of ecosystem.
So, what's your buy-in? What're you doing better than a spare VPS running node-red? Not everyone is going to install and maintain a server.... but you're here on HN. I'd say that 95% or higher could get Nodered up and running here.
Re: Show HN: Parabola.io – Automate your work with visual programming
#29Obviously this is meant for companies or individuals without developers or technical skills. If you have the technical knowledge a lock in service like this doesn't make much sense.
The problem is that someone without a technical background won't initially see the value in a tool like this and I doubt non technical companies/individuals will need as much automation to justify it's price.
Edit: I think a much more sensible pricing would have been to offer a desktop app and then charge users for the automations they want online on a consumption basis.
Re: Show HN: Parabola.io – Automate your work with visual programming
#30How is this different from Zapier or IFTT?
More transformations it looks like. You could probably pipe things through Google Sheets to replicate most of what this is doing but that’s an extra step. The whole point is to eliminate those.