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

Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 95 posts

Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?

#71

Post by cookie_monsta »

namaria wrote: post #62
cookie_monsta wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all a sales person, but... I think that a lot of the problems that general wisdom thinks are implicit to no/low code are so prevalent precisely because the barrier to entry is so low. You get a lot of people who have never programmed anything who can basically put together something that almost works by tweaking tutorials and googling around. But where they get stuck is lacking the programmer's mentality - of…

Yeah code is not a bad thing. It constrains us and make the hard things about designing and building non trivial systems up front. It may seem like a good idea to postpone such considerations. And it might even be in some situations. But complexity will still bite you in the ass even if you sweep it under the carpet and tell people not to worry about it (for now). But if people say you can't replace a railroad consis…

> Yeah code is not a bad thing

I think code is a great thing, just that the "everything looks like a nail" argument goes both ways

Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?

#73

Post by yaaang »

zadokshi wrote: post #13

No code has its role, there are many simple things it can make easier. For most non trivial systems, no code will get you 80%-90% to a solution and the last 20% of your solution will be extremely difficult, complex, or impossible to deliver in any maintainable way. Developers are hostile to these types of solutions specifically because once you go past basic CRUD your no code solutions make everything so much harder…

As a "no-code sales person," I actually agree. It's why we started on https://plasmic.app, to bridge the gap between low-code and code—we think there can exist low-code tools that integrate deeply with existing code and codebases, to allow scaling in complexity.

A very nice effect of this is cross-functional collaboration—once it's possible for the team's developers to provide the right components as building blocks, then the non-developers in operations, design, marketing and product functions can compose these into full pages.

Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?

#74

Post by morbicer »

I am surprised I don't see Strapi mentioned here. https://docs.strapi.io/

It's primarily headless CMS but you can push it beyond that into any CRUD app.

You get:

- PostgreSQL db with quite sensible schema, indexes, keys etc

- You build your models and relations in UI but they get checked out as yaml files into git

- Admin UI

- standard REST and GraphQL endpoints out of the box

- OAuth connectors

- Easy overrides / customization with typescript through multiple layers (controllers, services, orm)

- Fully opensource

- Easy deployment

- Community plugins

If you want to eject, you have good db layout so you can move functionality to another system if you outgrow it. No vendor lockin.

Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?

#75

Post by kjellsbells »

The problem isnt the means of production, its the robustness of the outcome in the real world (aka hostile environment). If your LC environment includes components and runtimes that will survive, then you might be ok. For example, ita one thing to have an LC app that takes in, say, an mailing address, but quite another to expect that widget to handle users typing in addresses half baked, or across multiple countries, or while wearing gloves, or if you have not 100 users but 100,000, or any other of the bazillion things that happen in the real world.

If the environment is under tighter control, say, an internal intranet app, or tye LC runtime provides high quality widgets and plumbing that handle scale, protections, etc, then LC can be awesome.

The nearest analogy I can think of is using Squarespace vs rolling a website. Squarespace is great, and has all kinds of widgets, and is fab, until it suddenyl isnt and you need to add custom code, whereupon it all grinds to a halt. Rolling by hand is insane, slow, crazy, until you realize that its the only way to get what you want on your terms. Horses for courses.

Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?

#77

Post by codingthirty »

morbicer wrote: post #74

I am surprised I don't see Strapi mentioned here. https://docs.strapi.io/ It's primarily headless CMS but you can push it beyond that into any CRUD app. You get: - PostgreSQL db with quite sensible schema, indexes, keys etc - You build your models and relations in UI but they get checked out as yaml files into git - Admin UI - standard REST and GraphQL endpoints out of the box - OAuth connectors - Easy overrides / cu…

Agreed. When building projects or POC I always default to Strapi and Remix. Because it allows me to build things fast.

Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?

#79

Post by dang »

wakahiu wrote: post #64

Here's the short answer - Retool - Anvil - Bubble - Airtable - Webflow The reality is that you shouldn't be turned away from these tools simply because of the negative developer perspective they tend to have, but you should consider the practicality of your situation. What matters is that you are aware that these platforms have limitations, and that you solve the inherent business problem you are seeking to solve imm…

Please don't use multiple accounts to upvote things (that's very much against HN's rules and will get you banned here), and please don't use HN primarily for promotion (it will eventually get your thing added to a spam filter).

Both of these points are in the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), so if you'd please review them and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?

#80

Post by namaria »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #71
namaria wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah code is not a bad thing. It constrains us and make the hard things about designing and building non trivial systems up front. It may seem like a good idea to postpone such considerations. And it might even be in some situations. But complexity will still bite you in the ass even if you sweep it under the carpet and tell people not to worry about it (for now). But if people say you can't replace a railroad consis…

> Yeah code is not a bad thing I think code is a great thing, just that the "everything looks like a nail" argument goes both ways

This whole hammer metaphor gets too stretched in the context of software. Code is not a single thing, it's a whole approach to programming computers. It's hard won territory, seeing people had to use machine code and op code tables to program for a good chunk of history. And the allergy some people feel about it is unjustified in my opinion. The strengths of coding tooling are well worth the investment and trying to avoid code as if it ware a deterrent to "getting things done" is failing to understand what is hard about programming. Not learning how to code (and properly, with version control, code reviews etc which are surprisingly shunned by some professional programmers). The hard things about programming non trivial computer systems are made easier by the scaffolding of programming languages. Not harder.
Post reply on HN