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App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business apps, comes out of beta

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Re: App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business apps, comes out of beta

#31

Post by m_mueller »

Pamar wrote: post #26
rahimnathwani wrote: post #2

During my first job after university, I spent a bunch of time developing apps using Lotus Notes. Because all of the company's 2000+ employees already used Lotus Notes for email and calendering, deploying these apps was easy. And in many cases I was able to develop the basic functionality of a workflow app whilst I was talking with the main user to gather requirements. And, although the platform supported a proper pro…

Hi, I am the guy that came in a few years later and had to reimplement a bunch of custom (undocumented) Lotus Notes applications in order to move actual documents to a proper document management system (with access profiles and searchability) integrating the apps in an intranet portal, allow them to talk with other applications and finally put everything under SSO. Thank you for the experience.

Hmm all of the features you describe can be done with Notes/Domino. Granted, it's not pretty, but it's there.

Re: App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business apps, comes out of beta

#32

Post by wycy »

mcroft wrote: post #24
rahimnathwani wrote: post #2

During my first job after university, I spent a bunch of time developing apps using Lotus Notes. Because all of the company's 2000+ employees already used Lotus Notes for email and calendering, deploying these apps was easy. And in many cases I was able to develop the basic functionality of a workflow app whilst I was talking with the main user to gather requirements. And, although the platform supported a proper pro…

I always got the impression that Lotus Notes was a great idea, but very poorly implemented. The concepts in it were good, it was just a shame it inflicted so much suffering.

What aspects of Lotus Notes seemed like a good idea? Genuine question. I remember being horrified by almost everything about Lotus Notes. Sametime was great, though.

Re: App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business apps, comes out of beta

#33

Post by pavlov »

I suspect Google App Maker will end up effectively abandoned like Google Web Designer: https://www.google.com/webdesigner/

Google dabbles in these tools, but the business case isn't really there. If anything Web Designer should have been more likely to succeed because it had a direct application — designing rich ads — that would benefit Google's primary moneymaker.

Re: App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business apps, comes out of beta

#34

Post by ratsimihah »

pavlov wrote: post #33

I suspect Google App Maker will end up effectively abandoned like Google Web Designer: https://www.google.com/webdesigner/ Google dabbles in these tools, but the business case isn't really there. If anything Web Designer should have been more likely to succeed because it had a direct application — designing rich ads — that would benefit Google's primary moneymaker.

To add some subjective constructive feedback, I think the idea behind App maker is crap.

Re: App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business apps, comes out of beta

#35

Post by lostcolony »

Pamar wrote: post #26
rahimnathwani wrote: post #2

During my first job after university, I spent a bunch of time developing apps using Lotus Notes. Because all of the company's 2000+ employees already used Lotus Notes for email and calendering, deploying these apps was easy. And in many cases I was able to develop the basic functionality of a workflow app whilst I was talking with the main user to gather requirements. And, although the platform supported a proper pro…

Hi, I am the guy that came in a few years later and had to reimplement a bunch of custom (undocumented) Lotus Notes applications in order to move actual documents to a proper document management system (with access profiles and searchability) integrating the apps in an intranet portal, allow them to talk with other applications and finally put everything under SSO. Thank you for the experience.

I'm one of the team that was hired to take the Excel app that one overdue-to-retire person had spent 20+ years developing (without documentation, and inserting every miscellaneous feature he felt was desirable, regardless of actual need, and which, of course, he wanted all of to be kept) for the entire company's metrics and reporting, and turn it into something that could actually be understood by anyone else, with proper database normalization, API access, etc.

Re: App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business apps, comes out of beta

#36

Post by lostcolony »

royjacobs wrote: post #25
bigato wrote: post #17

After more than two decades in the industry, you start getting cynical towards these kind of "programming for non-programmers" tools. All of them are trying to abstract away the complex parts of the programming problem. Guess what, it doesn't matter how many layers of abstraction you pile up, you never abstract away the need for consistent logic. You end up requiring the same kind of people that have the brain skills…

But a lot of apps nowadays are essentially just forms to send data to a backend. If those apps can be 'trivially' made then that's a clear win, I'd say? It will certainly not replace a lot of complex applications, but if you just want a quick "order a mouse at the internal servicedesk" app then what's the harm?

If the needs never change and are 100% addressed by the app maker, fine.

In my experience that never happens, though, and you either have an incredibly painful process trying to work around the limitations of the app maker, or you end up with a rewrite anyway.

Re: App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business apps, comes out of beta

#38

Post by dgudkov »

bigato wrote: post #17

After more than two decades in the industry, you start getting cynical towards these kind of "programming for non-programmers" tools. All of them are trying to abstract away the complex parts of the programming problem. Guess what, it doesn't matter how many layers of abstraction you pile up, you never abstract away the need for consistent logic. You end up requiring the same kind of people that have the brain skills…

It's all relative. One can argue that "true" programmers program in Assembly and languages like Python or Javascript are just high-level abstractions over Assembly. SQL is another type of abstraction which was originally intended to be used by business users (hence the English-like syntax) yet developers are happy with it now.

There is a need for wide variety of programming tools, ranging from very low-level to very high-level. Any of them is a trade-off in terms of flexibility / cost of development. Picking the right tool for the right job will always be a problem to solve, but having more tools to choose from would never hurt.

Re: App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business apps, comes out of beta

#39

Post by esrauch »

ratsimihah wrote: post #34
pavlov wrote: post #33

I suspect Google App Maker will end up effectively abandoned like Google Web Designer: https://www.google.com/webdesigner/ Google dabbles in these tools, but the business case isn't really there. If anything Web Designer should have been more likely to succeed because it had a direct application — designing rich ads — that would benefit Google's primary moneymaker.

To add some subjective constructive feedback, I think the idea behind App maker is crap.

Can you explain why the idea is crap? Broadly it seems bad if it takes a software developer to make even the most trivial app.

Re: App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business apps, comes out of beta

#40

Post by Pamar »

m_mueller wrote: post #31
Pamar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I am the guy that came in a few years later and had to reimplement a bunch of custom (undocumented) Lotus Notes applications in order to move actual documents to a proper document management system (with access profiles and searchability) integrating the apps in an intranet portal, allow them to talk with other applications and finally put everything under SSO. Thank you for the experience.

Hmm all of the features you describe can be done with Notes/Domino. Granted, it's not pretty, but it's there.

I'll gladly take your word for this. My company was contracted to do the stuff I described, but the decision came from the customer's IT staff. Maybe it was political to milk more budget for the project.

The point I wanted to raise is that excel, DBIII+/Clipper, VB, Access and other "low code" solutions are fine as long they help a single individual (or, at best, a small team like 2-3 people max) to be more efficient.

The moment that they need to scale, they become a liability, like... having to add .csv import to your application because the users do all their planning/what-if scenarios on some excel sheet prepared by someone who already have left the company and then they prefer to upload the results (bypassing any of your carefully designed server-side business logic) instead of retyping each value manually.

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