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Ask HN: Which NoCode platforms are fine?

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Re: Ask HN: Which NoCode platforms are fine?

#91

Post by iamcurious »

rcarmo wrote: post #3

It depends a lot on what you consider “Low Code” and what your target is. Corporate users tend to look at Mendix, OutSystems, etc. because they are typically looking at building end—to-end solutions, and those give you front-end, APIs and ORMs (or, rather, abstract all of those away). Most OSS or IoT folk will immediately point to Node-Red or n8n.io, which look similar but are actually quite different in focus (n8n i…

An alternative to Mendix and Outsystems is GeneXus. It's widely used in South America and parts of Asia.

Re: Ask HN: Which NoCode platforms are fine?

#92

Post by Aeolun »

tmcneal wrote: post #88
Aeolun wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 hours per month for $300? I run a combined 120h/day on AWS for less. Maybe it makes sense for some, and if people pay you for it then that’s great, but to me I cannot see the economics of that ever working out.

That's fair - if you compare us to raw compute we are going to be well over an order of magnitude more expensive, even with the volume discounts we offer at our "contact us for pricing" tier. Usually when folks are considering us, they're comparing us to the other alternatives which generally are either (1) have folks on staff do each regression test pass manually, (2) hire additional devs/automation engineers to bui…

Yeah, fair enough. If it wasn’t me maintaining our pipeline I can see how the value proposition quickly increases.

I guess there is a happy point in between too small and too large where you have a bunch of QA, but no dedicated people to keep your pipeline up (and if things like Cypress didn’t exist, it’d be more or less impossible).

Re: Ask HN: Which NoCode platforms are fine?

#93

Post by la6471 »

jinen83 wrote: post #44

NoCode platforms can be further divided into sub category of tools. Depending on your need you got to look at using one or multiple tools. 1) BPM tools: build workflows & business processes. Tools like Appian, Pega, kissflow, etc 2) Form builders: jotform, typeform, etc 3) automation: Zapier, integromat, etc 4) Frontend builder - Consumer apps -> bubble, adalo, etc - Internal apps -> Retool, DronaHQ, Appsmith 5) App…

Python based anvil, most versatile

Re: Ask HN: Which NoCode platforms are fine?

#94

Post by chris-orgmenta »

arey_abhishek wrote: post #55
akudha wrote: post #47

I like appsmith for internal apps. Tried budibase and retool, but feel appsmith is better. They are also ridiculously responsive on discord - fixing bugs, giving advice etc. Not affiliated with any of them.

Thank you for mentioning Appsmith! We do spend a lot of time on support, glad that you noticed it.

Out of interest, what makes all of these companies pursue 'internal tools' only (i.e. the tools can't be used for customer facing apps)?

Is the current sticking point auth & keeping data segregated?

Re: Ask HN: Which NoCode platforms are fine?

#95

Post by renaudpawlak »

rectang wrote: post #68

I would say "none of the No Code platforms I've seen are fine", because all the ones I'm familiar with have either inadequate testing or no testing at all. The problem is that apps built without testing don't scale past a certain level of complexity — and so complex projects built with No Code tend to fall apart as they become successful. It's not that it can't be done, but that there's probably very little demand fo…

If you use a no-code front-end builder (like Bubble.io), I guess you could use any UI test framework to test your app. It is not the same as unit testing, but it is more global and in the end, UI tests are quite powerful to detect regressions that matter to the users.

That said, if you think that unit tests are always required, then I think that you are a victim of code complexity. Let me explain. I do believe that unit testing is good to master complexity, which often becomes out of hands with classical approches because the code is complex by itself (new lib versions popping up all the time, breaking refactoring). The thing with low-code is that it lowers that complexity by proposing more declarative approaches, which are more stable and less broken when changing versions (think of a static web page for instance, you don't really need to test it that bad although the browsers versions bump all the time).

I think that it is more important to be able to control complexity in order to avoid testing, rather than having to test "no matter what", like your reaction suggests. Plus, testing implies CI/CD and a lot of automation that are extremely complex to set up and consume a lot of resources.

I wrote a blog post about this stand-point lately https://cincheo.com/2021/10/03/when-low-code-meets-local-fir...

DISCLAIMER: I am currently working on a new low-code platform for frontend development based on the local-first paradigm. (web site: https://www.dlite.io, platform, with examples: https://plaform.dlite.io).

Re: Ask HN: Which NoCode platforms are fine?

#96

Post by renaudpawlak »

For the record: dLite.io is a low-code platform I have been working on to build front ends (similarly to bubble.io). It is ongoing work, but it already has many examples (and the website itself is made with dLite.io). It differentiates from others because it comes with a built-in support of the local-first paradigm. (web site: https://www.dlite.io, platform, with examples: https://plaform.dlite.io). (local-first paradigm explanation: https://cincheo.com/2021/10/03/when-low-code-meets-local-fir...) [disclaimer: I am also the author of JSweet.org, but right now my interests are moving towards low-code!]

Re: Ask HN: Which NoCode platforms are fine?

#97

Post by rectang »

renaudpawlak wrote: post #95
rectang wrote: post #68

I would say "none of the No Code platforms I've seen are fine", because all the ones I'm familiar with have either inadequate testing or no testing at all. The problem is that apps built without testing don't scale past a certain level of complexity — and so complex projects built with No Code tend to fall apart as they become successful. It's not that it can't be done, but that there's probably very little demand fo…

If you use a no-code front-end builder (like Bubble.io), I guess you could use any UI test framework to test your app. It is not the same as unit testing, but it is more global and in the end, UI tests are quite powerful to detect regressions that matter to the users. That said, if you think that unit tests are always required, then I think that you are a victim of code complexity. Let me explain. I do believe that u…

I deliberately used the nonspecific term "testing" and avoided "unit tests" because arguments about unit testing vs. integration testing vs. ui vs. functional vs. system vs. [...] are generally not productive, and tangential to the point I was making.

> I think that it is more important to be able to control complexity in order to avoid testing,

I think that's a worthy ideal to strive for, but it's not so easy to control complexity in practice.

First, a lot of complexity arises from business logic requirements. Even if you have an "engineering" department, they're going to have limited ability to negotiate away complexity in business concerns. And many outfits who adopt No Code don't have engineering departments, and aren't well versed in engineering principles like simplifying, testing, or even keeping backups, let alone modularization, separation of concerns, loose coupling, or other approaches for managing complexity at scale.

And then there's time. It takes time to whittle something down so that it is simple and elegant. That time costs precious resources which small outfits may not be able to spare.

Re: Ask HN: Which NoCode platforms are fine?

#98

Post by yashgandhi »

The low code - no code space is a wide spectrum. There are platform sitting at different points on the scale. Completely no code to increasing level of coding . Accordingly a user can get the flexibility to build. I have recently started development in the low code space and worked mostly on the internal tools development. I have been using DronaHQ platform to develop internal tools, i feel the platform sits in between the spectrum, offering good no code solutions and also the flexibility to incorporate custom code in baked in.

Re: Ask HN: Which NoCode platforms are fine?

#99

Post by budibase »

akudha wrote: post #47

I like appsmith for internal apps. Tried budibase and retool, but feel appsmith is better. They are also ridiculously responsive on discord - fixing bugs, giving advice etc. Not affiliated with any of them.

Out of curiosity, why did you feel appsmith was better than budibase and retool - as a no-code platform?

Re: Ask HN: Which NoCode platforms are fine?

#100

Post by budibase »

[Founder of Budibase here]

I would like to add Budibase to this list.

The platform is open source, makes it incredibly easy to build internal tools, SSO is free, and its apps are responsive. Also, coding is optional (unlike other platforms listed in this thread)

Also, Budibase is currently free!

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