Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac • Hacker News Board

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#61

Post by SwellJoe » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 1:56 AM UTC

doomtop wrote: post #48

andyfleming wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it isn't as nice and it doesn't have any solution for cloud/team syncing, right?

Commenter mentioned OSX native app being the main thing for them. It is an OSX native app. But no, it's not a good team solution. And I'd agree that Paw is subjectively more "nice", but I'm not sure I'd agree it's 12x more nice... If it were $9.99 instead of $49.99, I would have already purchased it. As it stands, I'm sticking with Hypernap, which gets the job done for my needs.

It doesn't have to be 12x better. It only has to save you $45 worth of time more than a $5 alternative, or $50 more than a free alternative. Most engineers are paid on the order of $30-$150/hour, depending on whether full-time, contractor, level of experience, etc. So, it has to save about 1.5 hours over the alternatives to be worth the price.

I don't know if it does that, as I've never used it, and don't use macOS.

There are other things it could save instead of or in addition to time: Hassle, maybe it doesn't have any external dependencies or complicated setup; stress, maybe it works reliably while others are buggy and unreliable; etc.

Again, I don't know. And, I tend to choose OSS solutions, even when it costs me more time/hassle/stress. But, there's a number of reasons one might choose a more expensive tool that does roughly the same job as lower cost alternatives, and it might be the right economic decision to do so.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#62

Post by wmccullough » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 1:57 AM UTC

flyosity wrote: post #54

I can't believe some of the comments in this thread. Paw is an advanced developer tool with serious functionality for testing APIs, and many of the most upvoted comments are basically just posting links to similar tools, with substantially less functionality, that are free. How many of these commenters make thousands of dollars every month as professional software engineers? How many make thousands each week? Paw is…

I've observed a very similar thing for awhile now. I'm to the point where I rarely delve into the comments anymore. I've noticed what you've seen about product announcements, or people just generally being contrarian for no reason that adds value to a discussion. I'm eagerly waiting for the day that I see this happen, and I mean literally:

"Scientists find a new reason to explain why the sky appears blue."

HN: I know nothing about science but the sky is definitely azure, not blue.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#63

Post by jamestnz » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 2:00 AM UTC

Paw is a great tool, but I can also attest to the excellent support of the developer. I made a mistake when uninstalling it off my old Mac, and found myself unable to activate the serial on my new Mac. Micha replied personally, took me at my word regard the issue I was having, and immediately added a second seat to my serial for free, as the simplest way to guarantee I'd never have the problem again. I appreciated that.

Secondly, there are indeed many similar tools, but I've found that Paw in particular has well-thought-out implementations of a number of useful features (cookies, JSON parsing, auth methods, history) as well as a neat way of managing requests across environments e.g. dev machine vs test server vs production API.

Paw isn't the only tool I use when testing/developing API endpoints, but I find it to be the most featureful while also playing nice as a Mac app, with a decent UI and the expected things like remembering my previous window positions/states the next time I launch it.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#64

Post by elmigranto » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 2:01 AM UTC

flyosity wrote: post #54

I can't believe some of the comments in this thread. Paw is an advanced developer tool with serious functionality for testing APIs, and many of the most upvoted comments are basically just posting links to similar tools, with substantially less functionality, that are free. How many of these commenters make thousands of dollars every month as professional software engineers? How many make thousands each week? Paw is…

I don't really see how any of the facts you mention makes linking similar tools here a bad thing? Unless someone's bashing on Paw for being a paid software in a disrespectful manner, I think it is fine to link to others, why not?

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#65

Post by cwp » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 2:04 AM UTC

flyosity wrote: post #54

I can't believe some of the comments in this thread. Paw is an advanced developer tool with serious functionality for testing APIs, and many of the most upvoted comments are basically just posting links to similar tools, with substantially less functionality, that are free. How many of these commenters make thousands of dollars every month as professional software engineers? How many make thousands each week? Paw is…

Yeah. I bought Paw and love it. It's easily paid for its self in time saved.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#66

Post by brennebeck » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 2:12 AM UTC

jamestnz wrote: post #63

Paw is a great tool, but I can also attest to the excellent support of the developer. I made a mistake when uninstalling it off my old Mac, and found myself unable to activate the serial on my new Mac. Micha replied personally, took me at my word regard the issue I was having, and immediately added a second seat to my serial for free, as the simplest way to guarantee I'd never have the problem again. I appreciated th…

Exactly. My interactions with support have all been fantastic and the app is, for me, by far the most featureful and robust tool in this space. And they're continually adding additional features.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#67

Post by brennebeck » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 2:14 AM UTC

mightykan wrote: post #60

Why do I need to create an account with an email and password to purchase this if it’s not a subscription service? To add insult to injury, I have to agree to some Terms of Service that probably indemnifies this company from doing whatever they want with my data. Who comes up with these brilliant ideas? The Mac App Store is absolutely horrible (lots of bugs, slow, inconsistent, almost unusable, absurd certificate exp…

Honest question: what apps that you purchase don't ask for your name or email?

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#68

Post by swilliams » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 2:18 AM UTC

flyosity wrote: post #54

I can't believe some of the comments in this thread. Paw is an advanced developer tool with serious functionality for testing APIs, and many of the most upvoted comments are basically just posting links to similar tools, with substantially less functionality, that are free. How many of these commenters make thousands of dollars every month as professional software engineers? How many make thousands each week? Paw is…

I was a happy Postman user for a long time. I tried Paw on a lark (the importance of free trials) and loved it. Totally worth the money to me, and I've only scratched the surface with it. I especially like the plugins ecosystem.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#69

Post by tooFastFuckYou » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 2:21 AM UTC

flyosity wrote: post #54

I can't believe some of the comments in this thread. Paw is an advanced developer tool with serious functionality for testing APIs, and many of the most upvoted comments are basically just posting links to similar tools, with substantially less functionality, that are free. How many of these commenters make thousands of dollars every month as professional software engineers? How many make thousands each week? Paw is…

I don't buy a lot of software, but when I do buy it from a small-time developer, I'm pretty psyched to support their efforts. Application development, especially by good designers, seems to be dying. We need to reward good design.

So I wish the Paw guys well and have already downloaded the trial. Unless it sucks, I'll buy it.

And people: Do NOT buy music-centric phones with no headphone jack.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#70

Post by pikzen » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 2:30 AM UTC

flyosity wrote: post #54

I can't believe some of the comments in this thread. Paw is an advanced developer tool with serious functionality for testing APIs, and many of the most upvoted comments are basically just posting links to similar tools, with substantially less functionality, that are free. How many of these commenters make thousands of dollars every month as professional software engineers? How many make thousands each week? Paw is…

>Paw is an extremely high quality, native Mac app, made by a small team trying to provide for their families by building software for other software engineers like all of us. It's a paid tool but it's probably the most sophisticated API testing tool that exists.

Thing is, most of us don't care. I don't care if Paw engineers aren't selling their software. Just like they shouldn't care if I'm not selling mine. People are not going to stop using software that does 80% of what Paw does (but probably 100% of their needs) because it hurts their feelings.

If Product Z is less good than Paw but still fills my needs and is free, Product Z is going to be my choice. Bonus points if it's FOSS.

There's also the fact that not all of us work on Mac. I'd love to try out Paw, but unless I see a .deb somewhere, I'm out of luck. So my solution is to grab alternatives.

>Check Out Product Z, It's Like Product Y But Free (And Less Good) makes me hate coming to HN.

At the other extreme, we have software monoculture. Variety of software is good. Making FOSS software known is good. I'm actually going to go a step further and say that if FOSS software copies pixel for pixel Paw's UI and UX, that is a good thing.