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

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21–30 of 118 posts

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

#21
I'm always excited by tools like this.

How do you feel about Bubble and how it compares? One thing that put me off Bubble was reports of it not scaling very well past a certain point (slow) - unsure why. Is this something you have heard/considered? I see debug mode, but if performance issues were to occur, could one x-ray the generated code or PSQL DB to rectify?

One bonus question, what can't it do right now that a Django or Rails API can? :)

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

#22
post #4

Congrats on launching! How do you differ from Windmill.dev (open source) / Airplane? Both backed by YC.

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?

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

#23
post #2

Looks cool! Will try it out later this week to build a ChatGPT plugin.

That sounds great. Keep us posted on how it goes. If you run into any issues, we have a slack community where the whole team is answering questions. We are also building out our educational content in our documentation and will post some GPT showcases there soon.

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

#25

I signed up and want to try it out. The one thing on the account creation page that absolutely grinds my gears , though, are the password requirements. Some use pass phrases. Please please please consider changing these rules, and use 2FA as a security guarantee instead. It makes me dread that I'm going to get a mandatory password reset demand in a month, at which point I have to revert to cycling between insecure pa…

Noted, thanks for the feedback! Will consider changing the requirements for the password. 2FA is on the roadmap and we’re planning to release it within the next two weeks.

The official NSA advice for several years has been "do not enforce restrictions on characters in passwords".

It's simple to calculate the actual entropy and check against a list of common weak passwords (large lists are easily obtained and kept up to date)

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

#26
Body validation is too simple, for example I want the be able to configure the min max from the DB or interdependent validation i.e. if you pass in and Id and a search string I want to return an error.

The DB Query editor is too simple requiring the user to manually create sql queries rather than visually build them.

The DB editor doesn't allow foreign keys and complex DB relationships to be defined visually as well.

The response editor is also not powerful enough. For example I want to send back links (HATEOAS Style) to the objects just created. I also want to send the object just created back in the response.

There is no Authorization only Authentication.

To be honest this isn't really that useful other than very simple Apis that have no real logic in them.

Pricing on Actions is an insane pricing strategy. The pricing looks too high to be reasonable. Even a simple Api would cost me a lot with the pricing strategy.

I see the UI component is coming soon. Without a way to build a nice UI to connect to my Api this isn't really a low code solution.

No details on hosting on this either. Is my api hosted in the US/Europe/Asia. This will make a big difference to most as I don't want long roundtrip times on my UI.

If I'm going to build my next big thing on a Platform I need confidence that the company won't shut down next week and my app is toast. Is there some way that I could be convinced that you won't run out of money and shutdown tomorrow and leave my project dead with you ?

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

#28
Hi, I like this! I'm curious what drove the decision to use the vertical block builder style you chose. I'm partial to node-based editors and have been building things with React Flow recently. LangFlow [1] is a good example, but there's lots of UIs that use a similar interface (e.g. Blender [2] and Unity [3]).

[1] https://github.com/logspace-ai/langflow

[2] https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/3.5/interface/controls/no...

[3] https://unity.com/features/unity-visual-scripting

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

#29
post #20

I signed up and want to try it out. The one thing on the account creation page that absolutely grinds my gears , though, are the password requirements. Some use pass phrases. Please please please consider changing these rules, and use 2FA as a security guarantee instead. It makes me dread that I'm going to get a mandatory password reset demand in a month, at which point I have to revert to cycling between insecure pa…

What do you think of password-less sign-ins, e.g. email-based sign in or OAuth 2?

The email-based “magic link” approach I’m seeing a lot more of lately, and I despise it.

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

#30

I'm always excited by tools like this. How do you feel about Bubble and how it compares? One thing that put me off Bubble was reports of it not scaling very well past a certain point (slow) - unsure why. Is this something you have heard/considered? I see debug mode, but if performance issues were to occur, could one x-ray the generated code or PSQL DB to rectify? One bonus question, what can't it do right now that a…

Bubble is a solid platform, but we definitely saw lots of opportunities for enhancements. We’ve talked to lots of users of low-code tools before starting to build and lack of performance was a common complaint which is why we designed Fastgen with a strong focus on performance, UX and scalability. As for the debug mode, while it doesn’t yet show execution times for different steps, that’s an excellent suggestion - we’ll explore! Addressing the bonus question: we don’t currently support custom code/scripts, but rest assured, it’s on our roadmap as part of our commitment to having as minimal restrictions as possible :-)
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