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Launch HN: Refine (YC S23) – Open-source platform for enterprise web apps

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41–50 of 94 posts

Re: Launch HN: Refine (YC S23) – Open-source platform for enterprise web apps

#41

Why do people keep comparing refine with nocode tools like windmill or tooljet? Refine just scaffolds your codebase, gives you a good start and has some really cool hooks for common operations like auth / data management / tables etc. I use it for my SaaS and it's great (though they never replied to any of the enquires i made for enterprise). Once you scaffold the project, then you're on your own.

> Why do people keep comparing refine with nocode tools like windmill or tooljet?

Because they market it like that. Their tagline is "Open-source Retool for Enterprise", and retool is a nocode (or low-code) tool.

Re: Launch HN: Refine (YC S23) – Open-source platform for enterprise web apps

#42
I see windmill mentioned a few times (founder here). I think we are both anchoring our tools around "Retool for enterprise" because Retool is known and it give a quick overview of the domain we are in: Internal tools, but the audience and pain solved by refine and windmill are likely to be quite different. Windmill caters towards software engineers that want to write powerful backend logic in typescript/python/bash/go, long running jobs and complex workflows for internal use (we compete there with temporal, airflow, airplane), and share them with the rest of their orgs with all permissions handled for them, ability to scale on large clusters, and observability baked in (full history of all executions, including args, logs, and result) AND in addition have a low-code dashboard builder similar to retool because webhooks, schedules and automatically generated UI from scripts are not always sufficient.

Refine looks more like a headless retool for software engineers that are comfortable with frontend frameworks but want an opinionated stack that is tailored toward internal uses and do not want to deal with the rest of the boilerplate, user management, and connection/management of databases etc. I could see myself preferring refine for some use-cases and would probably recommend it if you are comfortable with writing frontend and the logic is limited to CRUD. So I wish them good luck and I am happy to see such diversity in the open-source space!

Re: Launch HN: Refine (YC S23) – Open-source platform for enterprise web apps

#43
post #36

One suggestion, as someone who is an Infra engineer and doesn't know frontend too well anymore, the first step in the demo asks me to "Select your React platform" I don't know what that means, and what the implication of choosing between Vite, Remix, or Next.js -- it's meaningless to me.

ha-ha, brother, I feel you. Infra engineer (VP last position) and built an app with Refine. I was exactly in your position not a long time ago. I tried to choose "The Best Framework Ever" and made a lot of mistakes, and at the end, if you don't know frontend go with the flow: React + Next.js. Not because they are Best Ever, but because the majority of content online is dedicated to these frameworks. StackOverflow, Ch…

The deceptive part of these types of frameworks is this: on the first day, you think it will solve all your problems. On the second day, you're happy, thinking about how much you've sped up because you chose this framework for your project. On the third day, you have a custom need, and you research how to do it within that framework. On the fourth day, you hack the framework to make it flexible. On the fifth day, you say, 'Why didn't I start from scratch myself?'

Our goal and motivation in developing refine is to ensure that the developer continues to feel the way they felt on the first day, even on the day they finish the project and begin to maintain it.

Re: Launch HN: Refine (YC S23) – Open-source platform for enterprise web apps

#45
post #19

Congratulations and welcome to the open source low code club: Budibase https://github.com/Budibase/budibase Appsmith https://github.com/appsmithorg Tooljet https://github.com/ToolJet

Also add Lowdefy onto the list https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy

co-founder here :)

Re: Launch HN: Refine (YC S23) – Open-source platform for enterprise web apps

#48

When I go to the win95 admin portal demo my entire monitor starts to flicker (almost with the refresh rate). Is this just brain playing tricks? https://win95.refine.dev/

Oops, we haven't heard of this issue before. We're looking into it. Thank you

Re: Launch HN: Refine (YC S23) – Open-source platform for enterprise web apps

#49

"Retool for Enterprise" I assume you have no ties to Retool but using it to explain your product ? Sounded like it is a product offered by Retool so you might want to rethink that.

Sorry, that's partly my fault - I've replaced "open-source Retool for enterprise" with a more generic phrase now. Is it better?

Re: Launch HN: Refine (YC S23) – Open-source platform for enterprise web apps

#50

Why do people keep comparing refine with nocode tools like windmill or tooljet? Refine just scaffolds your codebase, gives you a good start and has some really cool hooks for common operations like auth / data management / tables etc. I use it for my SaaS and it's great (though they never replied to any of the enquires i made for enterprise). Once you scaffold the project, then you're on your own.

It’s something like https://www.airplane.dev/ a closer alternative to Refine? Or how does it compare?
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