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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

#141

Post by mkane848 »

bsbechtel wrote: post #22
morog wrote: post #11

I for one am quite excited about app maker. Finally a CRUD tool that links to just about any data source (including spreadsheets), does not require desktop software, generates properly responsive applications, needs no maintenance or upgrades to be secure and will presumably be compatible with Google forms.

I think Microsoft PowerApps does all that you described, and has been around for a while now.

I recently started learning PowerApps due to work and yeah, this seems like Google's "answer" for lack of a better term. I feel like one of the main draws for PA is that it's got a lot of integration with O365 and the rest of the MS suite, but does Google have the same sort of enterprise presence to make this a realistic competitor for market space?

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

#142

Post by slantyyz »

degenerate wrote: post #136
slantyyz wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> All of them are trying to abstract away the complex parts of the programming problem. You're right, but you're also looking at it from the lens of a programmer. From a user's perspective, they have a problem to solve, and they just want a tool that will help them. From their perspective, they are not thinking about it like a programming problem. Even if they have to write a little bit of script/code, they don't ne…

But here's the problem: at some point, the user wants the tool to do something beyond what the tool can do. And at that point, the user is stuck. Customer service recommends posting a feature request in the product forums and all the user can do is wait... and hope something gets implemented that solves their problem, or find a new tool. But with programming, it's possible to execute scripts, make system calls, write…

>> But here's the problem: at some point, the user wants the tool to do something beyond what the tool can do.

Once again, this depends on the lens you view it with.

With any solution that does a good job, it will eventually grow. Sometimes it outgrows what it was already built upon.

I see this is as a good problem to have, because it's a validation that the problem was real, and that the solution has value. You can also now justify putting some resources against it.

If your starting point is "this problem needs to be solved with programming" and A) you don't have that skill, B) you don't have the money to hire a person to do it, C) your organization isn't willing to give you a skilled internal resource to build it, what are your options?

You can either do nothing and live with the problem indefinitely, or you can try to do something that doesn't involve "real programming" to make your life a little easier.

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

#143

Post by slantyyz »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #120
slantyyz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Filemaker Pro solve that problem?

I have never used it, but it's no longer available as of last month: http://www.filemaker.com/products/filemaker-pro/ "FileMaker Pro is no longer available. It has been replaced by FileMaker Pro Advanced which includes more features to help you develop and deploy custom apps faster and more efficiently."

IIRC, File Maker Pro Advanced is basically FileMaker Pro with additional features enabled. You would be able to use that in its place, but it might have a higher price tag.

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

#144

Post by fiatjaf »

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 wonder what people did with your big integrated and centralized ivory tower after you left.

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

#145

Post by spankalee »

neovive wrote: post #130
spankalee wrote: post #128

I started this as my 20% project many, many years ago. I since moved on to the Dart and now Polymer teams, but I'm very, very happy to see the project launch. App Maker has been a huge force multiplier internally at Google. Hundreds of smaller internal apps, many catering to very specific business and HR tasks were created by non-engineers, often times by the owners of the process themselves. This self-determinism in…

Congratulations on starting a great project!. I've been experimenting with App Maker for an internal Edu project and it looks great. I noticed that Drive Tables are gone; did they not scale well?

Thanks!

Drive Tables is a feature that came and went since I left the team, so I'm not sure.

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

#146

Post by spankalee »

j45 wrote: post #137
spankalee wrote: post #128

I started this as my 20% project many, many years ago. I since moved on to the Dart and now Polymer teams, but I'm very, very happy to see the project launch. App Maker has been a huge force multiplier internally at Google. Hundreds of smaller internal apps, many catering to very specific business and HR tasks were created by non-engineers, often times by the owners of the process themselves. This self-determinism in…

Congrats, my hope is something like this can become a more usable MS Access replacement.

That's the idea.

I did a bunch of FileMaker consulting before getting my CS degree and joining Google, so a lot of the ideas are based on that type of tool, but thinking of how to do it better: Client and server side scripting with real JS, multiple nested data-contexts per page, multiple data backends, etc.

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

#147

Post by 2_listerine_pls »

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…

> It's a tool for businesses to get a web site presence so they can pay Google money to promote their sites.

It's designed to make internal tools, read the freaking description.

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

#148

Post by adrianmonk »

degenerate wrote: post #136
slantyyz wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> All of them are trying to abstract away the complex parts of the programming problem. You're right, but you're also looking at it from the lens of a programmer. From a user's perspective, they have a problem to solve, and they just want a tool that will help them. From their perspective, they are not thinking about it like a programming problem. Even if they have to write a little bit of script/code, they don't ne…

But here's the problem: at some point, the user wants the tool to do something beyond what the tool can do. And at that point, the user is stuck. Customer service recommends posting a feature request in the product forums and all the user can do is wait... and hope something gets implemented that solves their problem, or find a new tool. But with programming, it's possible to execute scripts, make system calls, write…

I don't necessarily see that as a problem. When you get to that point, you've proved that this task, whatever it is, was worth automating. You've built a tool and even though it was clunky and limited, people found it useful.

So maybe now with that proof that a small investment paid off, it is time to take it to the next level and make a larger investment to do it better with professional grade tools this time.

Yes, you have to start over, but if the other alternative was never being able to get to that point in the first place, it's still better overall.

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

#149

Post by slantyyz »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #124
slantyyz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite... 1 - Document Store (iirc, CouchDB was inspired by Notes/Domino) 2 - Replication - even past the 90s, it was one of the best tools for disconnected users 3 - Low barrier to application creation (it was about as easy as building something in Filemaker Pro) 4 - Easy publication of applications to the web (this was BEFORE 2000, so kind of a big deal back then) 5 - Administration of servers was pretty easy 6…

Replication was huge, we didn't even have an internet connection when I setup a application replicating between three suppliers and a bank.

Yeah, when I first started to use Notes, using modems over POTS lines to call HQ was still a thing, so that replication was a big deal.

Hell, I don't even think all laptops had ethernet ports back then either. In a lot of cases, you had to buy PCMCIA cards for that.

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

#150

Post by SirYandi »

2_listerine_pls wrote: post #147
segmondy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's a tool for businesses to get a web site presence so they can pay Google money to promote their sites. It's designed to make internal tools, read the freaking description.

From what I read the applications go beyond just making internal applications, who's stopping anyone publishing the random little tool they made?

By the way, "read the freeking description" is against HN guidelines and a little unnecessary.

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