I have to know .. any chance the name was inspired by Alan Kay? :]
Nope, different Alan ;) You'll figure it out.
Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
51–60 of 178 posts
Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe it is a head with a shirt collar. But at first glance, I thought it was a beer mug.
I'm disconcerted after reading this thread, seeing that some people somehow think that "low code" means "low-level code" (really?) and mistaking a collared shirt for legs. I'm going to assume it's because this post was made early in the morning and no one has had their coffee yet.
It really does not look like a collared shirt. Perhaps if the collar was filled in with white...
Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
#53All states should be defined? Then how to write an app takes two numbers and returns the sum?
Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
#54How do you compare yourself against other "low code" platforms in the 4GL landscape? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...
I would also like to see this comparison. Another thing is; HN is really the wrong audience for this. Technologists here will spin up a vm/container with their stack of choice. Indeed; ruby and rails, django, node, all fill the void 4GLs did decades ago. Finding and reaching users for this type of tool is the challenge imo. Implementation is the easy part.
We anticipated that HN wouldn't be a perfect fit, but it's a critical audience and usually open to something new. It needs to become more mature before mass adoption amongst citizen developers and exposure to the developer community is one way to make some steps in that direction.
Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
#55Any thoughts on pricing model yet? I see it's free for personal use. Who do you view as your competition?
We're still feeling out the market here, to see where we can take it. It will probably stay free for personal use and then grow from there with services like hosting, etc. Pricing model for businesses is something we're looking at from case to case currently. Competitors include Mendix, Outsystems etc., when it comes to low-code and serving citizen developers. Excel as well. On the other hand there are still a lot of…
That's helpful...thanks. I had been very interested in Google's Appmaker (https://developers.google.com/appmaker/), but their model where only paid Gsuite users can access applications was a showstopper, as it made access to the general public impossible.
Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
#56How come the "behind the scenes code" is unavailable?
Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
#57How do you compare yourself against other "low code" platforms in the 4GL landscape? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...
4GL solutions are one way to attack the problem of scaling and maintaining large applications. However, you tend to end up with a traditional code base and a relational database, without a strong core specification. Especially once you start customizing an application like that, you run into the same problems as a 3GL stack.
Alan plays a longer game, with a drastically different approach to specification and development of applications of any level of complexity. Models drive everything and you can't look "under the hood" to look at or modify the implementation. Even at the level of the platform itself, models and code generation drive down the amount of 3GL code we have to deal with. WYSIWYG editors and drag-and-drop UI builders aren't a starting point, it's something we might grow towards supporting in the future.
Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
#58I like that this picks up where excel drops off. But I would like to see some concrete examples. Someone here mentioned a video, that would be good, or even just a list of several specific use cases.
Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
#59How do you take this from here to the next step? Let's say I want to develop a multi user todo and I've followed the examples and now have some Users who log in entering a password. Someone points out that I shouldn't be storing passwords in plain text so I want to store them hashed. Despite there being hints in the documentation that this is possible (migrations shows the password hashed), it's not clear how to carr…
Well, in this particular case passwords are always hashed. So the platform deals with that for you. Other changes to the data model need a migration, which is covered here: https://alan-platform.com/pages/tuts/migration.html
Where is the definition of the password being hashed? The tutorial defines it as text:
/* 'Users': collection { 'Password': text }*/
How does the platform know to hash that? Is it looking for magic property names?
Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
#60This is very interesting. I'm looking through the Hours [0] code. Instead of:
'Week Day': stategroup (
'Monday' -> { }
'Tuesday' -> { }
'Wednesday' -> { }
'Thursday' -> { }
'Friday' -> { }
'Saturday' -> { }
'Sunday' -> { }
)
'Week Day': stategroup ('Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday', 'Thursday', 'Friday', 'Saturday', 'Sunday')
'Week Day': stategroup %w(Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday)
'Active': stategroup @default: 'Yes' %w(Yes No)
'Subsidized': stategroup @default: 'Yes' %w(Yes No)
'Active': stategroup @default: 'Yes' Boolean
'Subsidized': stategroup @default: 'Yes' Boolean
can-create: user +'Roles'?'Manager'|'Yes'
|| user +'Roles'?'Project Manager'|'Yes'
can-update: user +'Roles'?'Manager'|'Yes'
|| user +'Roles'?'Project Manager'|'Yes'
|| equal ( user , $ >'Project Group'>'Owner'>key )
can-create: user +'Roles'?'Manager'|'Yes'
|| user +'Roles'?'Project Manager'|'Yes'
can-update: &can-create || equal ( user , $ >'Project Group'>'Owner'>key )