Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform • Hacker News Board

Some feedback: * "low code" is confusing When I started reading I thought low code, meant low "level" code, something like assembly or rust. After reading a lot in the page I saw it meant not writing imperative code. I think the term Model Driven Engineering would be more appropriate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-driven_engineering

* How do I model business rules? How do I model a State machine?

  I want to specify that once an order has been created I want to send it to the procurement department.

* How do I connect with external APIs systems?

* You mention that you have an ERP system based on this platform. Can we look at that code? Can we have some testimonials?

Kudos: * It's good that you are doing a declarative approach to business software... this is still most of the software we use and I don't think it's a solved problem.

* On using a Graph database I think this is better to model complex domains. However which graph database are you using? Neo4j, Dgraph, OrientDB or is an inhouse graph database?

* On the name

Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform

#24

Post by WorkLifeBalance » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 12:59 PM UTC

How do you take this from here to the next step?

Let's say I want to develop a multi user todo and I've followed the examples and now have some Users who log in entering a password.

Someone points out that I shouldn't be storing passwords in plain text so I want to store them hashed.

Despite there being hints in the documentation that this is possible (migrations shows the password hashed), it's not clear how to carry out this kind of change.

A walkthrough of making a change would help convey the use case much better than just templates of "this incantation produces this output".

Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform

#25

Post by leandrod » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 12:59 PM UTC

Do that relationally, win the world.

Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform

#26

Post by codetrotter » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 1:05 PM UTC

elviejo wrote: post #23

Some feedback: * "low code" is confusing When I started reading I thought low code, meant low "level" code, something like assembly or rust. After reading a lot in the page I saw it meant not writing imperative code. I think the term Model Driven Engineering would be more appropriate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-driven_engineering * How do I model business rules? How do I model a State machine? I want to spec…

> "low code" is confusing When I started reading I thought low code, meant low "level" code, something like assembly or rust.

I expected that as well from the title but at the very start they link the meaning of the term so that those of us that don’t know what it means can quickly find out on Wikipedia.

I think it’s best to do like they are doing and link the Wikipedia article.

Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform

#27

Post by klageveen » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 1:06 PM UTC

sitepodmatt wrote: post #18

How does this compare to Google App Maker? And MS Power Apps?

I guess you could compare it to the model driven Power Apps. However, Alan's modeling language is more powerful. Especially the concept of state groups that allows you to specify complex business rules in the application model itself.

It's the process of laying down the rules for the data in your application that drives development in Alan. Unlike Google App Builder, you don't start from a drag and drop UI builder. Although a drag-and-drop UI builder is something we might want to add at some point. For most applications though, the generated UI is plenty powerful, because what it needs to support is perfectly specified in the datamodel.

Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform

#28

Post by warpech » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 1:08 PM UTC

shakna wrote: post #10

> See it with your own eyes I'd love to. You need to show it on this page. Even if a screenshot (or screen capture, or some code) is pretty useless, it helps give the right context, and tells me this is actually a thing, and not just a hope. This [0] should be front and center. [0] https://alan-platform.com/pages/tuts/helloworld1.png

There is an animated gif in the tutorial: https://alan-platform.com/pages/tuts/getting-started.html

Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform

#29

Post by tyingq » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 1:10 PM UTC

Any thoughts on pricing model yet? I see it's free for personal use. Who do you view as your competition?

Re: Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform

#30

Post by klageveen » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #19

I am not sure I get it right, but is this supposed to be a modern MS Access? If it is, I think it is a very welcoming innovation. I believe there are a lot of use cases in business that are currently under-engineered into Excel or over-engineered into complete web apps, SAP or salesforce applications. BTW, it is a mystery to me why MS Access itself, that is still around, lost this post.

You could look at it like that. But because data modeling language underneath is so much more detailed and powerful, the default UI is also much more useful than what you get in Access or any other relational database. The basic target audience is similar, but Alan scales a lot better to more complicated applications.

As you say, we see Excel being stretched to doing things it cannot do, and on the other hand custom apps being built for things that don't need to be so specific. There is a place for low code the way Outsystems does it for instance, but we believe a lot of businesses would be better served by something like we're offering here.