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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

#41

Post by Pamar »

wslh wrote: post #30
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.

Speed vs reliability is a common tradeoff in the workplace. Everyone hates the apps or tools that were built before you start working.

In my experience speed vs. reliability soon transmogrifies in inertia vs. rational (and usually inertia wins).

I'd like people that create "quick prototypes" and "just a throwaway excel with a few macros" realized that while they are valuably shortening the time to get something usable they are also shortening the time before their thing turns in a sort of albatross tied to the neck of the users.

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

#42

Post by taneq »

dgudkov wrote: post #38
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…

Programming in assembly isn't harder (in fact quite the opposite), it just takes more grunt work. The actual difficulty of solving a problem (the 'irreducible complexity') is the same regardless of language.

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

#43

Post by dirktheman »

dgudkov wrote: post #38
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…

For a good programmer, the language is just a tool to make what you've just thought out. To me, programming isn't about how to code, but about what to code. What makes somebody a good programmer is the thought process before a single character of code is written.

Someone who assembles an Ikea cabinet isn't necessarily a master furniture maker (altough they could be!). If all you need is a cheap, cookie cutter coffee table it'll not only do, but it'll be the fastest and cheapest option. However, if you're looking for a bespoke cabinet with dovetails, you're going to need a furniture maker.

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

#44

Post by oblio »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #19
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…

True, but there are many people who can handle consistent logic but are not familiar with all the technical detail required for general purpose software development. There is a lot of complexity that is completely unrelated to the core logic of a solution to a particular problem.

Is there any of these higher level languages that doesn't add its own accidental complexity? (essential complexity being the one included in the core logic of the solution to the problem).

They usually have their own jargon/terminology and concepts to learn.

So they just move the goal posts...

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

#45

Post by prepend »

Pamar wrote: post #41
wslh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed vs reliability is a common tradeoff in the workplace. Everyone hates the apps or tools that were built before you start working.

In my experience speed vs. reliability soon transmogrifies in inertia vs. rational (and usually inertia wins). I'd like people that create "quick prototypes" and "just a throwaway excel with a few macros" realized that while they are valuably shortening the time to get something usable they are also shortening the time before their thing turns in a sort of albatross tied to the neck of the users.

I find this better than the people who try to build 3-tier sql dB driven apps for all those scenarios.

My estimate is that for every 20 “throwaway Excel,” only one becomes used heavily and required a painful redesign.

Trying to build all these correct from the start is actually inefficient because 1) you don’t know which 20 is right until quite a while in; 2) the idea that better requirements gathering and design is a myth as functionality and use is frequently, in my experience, new based on the spreadsheet and users don’t tell this to the design team; 3) the cost of properly designing all 20 is enormous so trying to pick only the most likely 5 is still expensive and has a decent probability of producing zero useful systems.

So while it sucks to be the engineer cleaning up some yahoo’s hack that got used by the CEO, I’m not sure what the solution is that is best for the enterprise.

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

#46

Post by prepend »

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 worked for a huge consulting firm that had built a lot of workflows around Lotus. I hated it at the time, but then I moved to an org using Exchange. I asked how to do something simple like send a five question survey by email, allowing editing, and combining results into a dB and was surprised Exchange didn’t have an equivalent.

The Exchange people pointed me to the SharePoint people who explained this is an entirely different license and then showed me how to do my survey. It took more development time and somehow had an even worse UI than Lotus.

So there is stuff worse than Lotus, and I think that enterprises do need some simple way for non-devs to make modules or apps or whatnot that they can integrate into workflows. Basically like Access was in the early days where normies would make databases for paper stuff.

The idea that a non-dev should hire people for simple data collection and analysis, while nice philosophically to me as a dev, is pretty crazy in the long run as it doesn’t scale.

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

#47

Post by p_l »

Pamar wrote: post #40
m_mueller wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yet Excel is probably one of the best "UIs" you could support for data entry in the workplace.

Damn easy to create new forms, actually not that bad to implement import if the forms aren't brain damaged, it probably beats whatever you make in terms of UX for data entry not to mention ability to massage data locally.

The problem is, IMO, the lack of middle ground. A lot of those solutions are old, and integration of more modern functionality is lagging - it's there, but it's not well integrated because the concept of multi-user system with access controls wasn't a concern when the system was originally made!

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

#48

Post by zeisss »

pjmlp wrote: post #27

> any other database that supports JDBC Did they implement the JDBC p̶r̶o̶t̶o̶c̶o̶l̶ API in JavaScript?! EDIT: Apparently they did exactly that, https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/jdbc/

JDBC is not a protocol, so they probably just created a binding between Java/JDBC and whatever AppMaker uses

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

#49

Post by p_l »

jarfil wrote: post #21
cottsak wrote: post #7

How will this not become hell on earth for software developers, al-la Microsoft Access, Oracle APEX, etc.. ??

If it doesn't lock in data access like MS Access did, it could be seen as just an interface designer. Whatever data it gets fed, could be migrated from a simple database to a proper backend if such need arises. It could even coexist with other front-ends. As long as it doesn't let too much business logic to be programed into it without a simple way to extract it, it shouldn't be a problem.

The problem isn't that Access locked in data, it was that people stuck with MS JET engine instead of hooking ODBC server properly - then Access became a funky, useful UI tool for databases.

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

#50

Post by konradb »

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.

I'm also interested in why you think it is a crap idea as opposed to complaints about the implementation or UI.
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