Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 118 posts

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#41

Post by cschreiber »

instagary wrote: post #32

Congrats on the launch! I really enjoyed the simple demo on the landing page. I think this has great potential to be a better alternative to Firebase/Supabase for frontend developers. Especially if I never have to worry about what is happening under the hood or integrate a cluncky SDK into my project. I look forward to trying it out on a side project!

Happy to hear that you like the demo, we added it to the website this week. We worked with multiple Frontend developers in our private beta and the common theme was that they enjoyed the simplicity with which they could deploy APIs on top of their data. There is still much to build but our goal is to make the backend work as easy as possible. Would love to have you on board and would also appreciate any feedback you have once you start using it for a side project.

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#42

Post by cschreiber »

ushakov wrote: post #22
cschreiber wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, thanks for asking! Windmill and Airplane have done some cool stuff and while we do share some common elements with both, there are a few key distinctions. Here’s how we think we’re carving out our own niche in the space: 1. Visual Flow Builder - We've gone all-in on making the interface really interactive and visual. Drag-and-drop actions to build rest APIs and workflows - it's super intuitive and handy fo…

Is there a way to develop and run the APIs/workflows locally?

At the moment, no. Our focus has been on providing a cloud-based low-code experience that you can access from anywhere without the need for local setup. However we are exploring ways to support it. For more details check out my other comment in response to a similar question.

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#45

Post by 999900000999 »

How does this handle load ?

Does each customer get their own VM to run requests against?

Do you have a rare limit built in ? What if I need to do something more complex, is it possible to have a block of say Python code that executes?

Honestly I'm not sure who this is meant to serve,AWS has a rather robust API offering with the added bonus of integrating with AWS services.

Anything more complex than that might be better served by coding it yourself in Python or another high level language.

Is it possible to export the API with source code if I need more control. That would perk my interest.

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#46

Post by cschreiber »

marcklingen wrote: post #39

Congrats on the launch! Played around with fastgen some weeks ago and liked the focus on creating APIs and workflows. I have built many API endpoints with Make.com in the past as it made it easier to manage external connections compared to using lambdas but felt limited by the Make.con data model. How/when do you plan to - catch up on integrations other workflow tools have already built? E.g. my workflows often rely…

The last couple of weeks we were mainly focused on transition between the private and public beta, so that the development of new integrations had to be paused for a bit. For the coming weeks we have the next 9 integrations planned as well as external DB connectors to various sources. We’ll definitely consider your input and see which integrations are requested most.

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#47

Post by internetter »

lerchmo wrote: post #43

Pricing is crazy. team plan with 2 million actions ($300 is already expensive for this) + $29k? This is not realistic in any way.

As a point of comparison - cloudflare workers costs 0.30$ for the same (2 million) requests, plus a 5$ monthly fee. If my math is correct, in their eyes the visual aspect is worth 100,000x as much?

edit: it's actually 200,000x, the cloudflare base fee includes 1 million requests. Is it possible that they added an extra couple zeros?

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#48

Post by nolanholden »

lerchmo wrote: post #43

Pricing is crazy. team plan with 2 million actions ($300 is already expensive for this) + $29k? This is not realistic in any way.

In the end, is suspect none of these tools will be able to gatekeep hosting (especially with outrageous rates). The dev process is their key offering, not hosting. The moat on hosting will be nil, totally commoditized. If they were totally charitable, this would be an open source tool letting people export stuff.

Anybody could build that, and someone probably will.

Post reply on HN