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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

#61

Post by rahimnathwani »

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.

I still wish for a widely-deployed replacement for Notes/Domino.

Sure, I can build CRUDish apps with Django, but there are simple use-cases that take me a week with Django, that would have been a day with Notes. It's crazy that things are slower for me 20 years later. I'm pretty sure I'm not dumber now.

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

#62

Post by occams_chainsaw »

projectramo wrote: post #59
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.

I have also found that when I enter a new workplace, everything done before me was a mess of unwieldy, poorly documented and unstructured code. Worse it uses an old, archaic platform that is long overdue for a complete overhaul. Then when I arrive, I make everything logical, nice, structured and proper. After I leave, once again the place falls prey to disorganized minds who take my work and mess it up for flashy new…

You are also the people before and after you

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

#63

Post by pavlov »

segmondy wrote: post #54
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.

It's a tool for businesses to get a web site presence so they can pay Google money to promote their sites. If it makes money, they will keep it. Think about it, Google is paying $300-$400k per engineer, if they have 10 people working on this that's $3-$4 mil per year plus the cost of infrastructure. If the experiment doesn't pan out after a few years, they will kill it. It's strange to me that HN is a crowd that embr…

We’re basically in agreement, right? Getting App Maker to the point where its bottom line contribution can be shown to exceed $4M/a by 2020 seems like tall hill to climb.

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

#64

Post by occams_chainsaw »

segmondy wrote: post #54
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.

It's a tool for businesses to get a web site presence so they can pay Google money to promote their sites. If it makes money, they will keep it. Think about it, Google is paying $300-$400k per engineer, if they have 10 people working on this that's $3-$4 mil per year plus the cost of infrastructure. If the experiment doesn't pan out after a few years, they will kill it. It's strange to me that HN is a crowd that embr…

If they want to experiment with something, keep it in Google Labs

Oh wait...

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

#65

Post by shawn »

zenovision wrote: post #56

In the past years Google has deprecated more than 100 services, so I will never trust them to build any software using their proprietary stack.

Does it matter that App Maker is only available with a G Suite business subscription? I'm skeptical too, but at least this is (indirectly) a paid product.

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

#66

Post by bigato »

zenovision wrote: post #56

In the past years Google has deprecated more than 100 services, so I will never trust them to build any software using their proprietary stack.

I agree from the standpoint of a user of a service, but that's just how it is nowadays because they work like a giant startup incubator. Several ideas are tried, as many as possible, as fast as possible, and some are worth for them to keep. Most are not. At least if it is opensource, if Google abandons it but it still is useful for a reasonable number of people, one can hope that a community will form and take over development.

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

#67

Post by strig »

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.

How is that constructive in any way?

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

#68

Post by bigato »

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…

There's a difference between useful, tried and true abstractions like SQL or compiled languages. As you accrue decades of experience, you start to learn that some abstractions are just hopeless, like those tools that sell themselves as "programming for non-programmers" which promess you that you won't need to write code. A new version of this comes up every few years.

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

#69

Post by zellyn »

occams_chainsaw wrote: post #62
projectramo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also found that when I enter a new workplace, everything done before me was a mess of unwieldy, poorly documented and unstructured code. Worse it uses an old, archaic platform that is long overdue for a complete overhaul. Then when I arrive, I make everything logical, nice, structured and proper. After I leave, once again the place falls prey to disorganized minds who take my work and mess it up for flashy new…

You are also the people before and after you

That's the joke.

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

#70

Post by dgudkov »

dirktheman wrote: post #43
dgudkov wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

I tend to agree with it but there is a bit of idealization here. How to code does matter. It helps to not care about RAM barriers, CPU registers, memory pointers, etc. The span of human attention is only so much broad. Constantly dealing with low-level details obstructs seeing a bigger picture. Assembly coders don't think much in terms of type classes or lazy evaluation.

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