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Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code

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Re: Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code

#281

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

ozim wrote: post #273
nickff wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are radically underestimating the perceived barriers to entry with programming. You sound a lot like the Linux advocates who think everyone should just memorize a bunch of commands, and get used to using shell. This type of insider view is often referred to as 'the curse of knowledge'.

Point of low code is to get rid of those smart ass developers who know those magic incantations and demand loads of money for their work. What you get in low code reality are smart ass business consultants that know magic configuration options and demand loads of money for their work. Just look at SAP, Salesforce etc. From my point of view any barrier to entry doesn't matter because at some level you just trade one c…

Doing anything nontrivial in SAP and Salesforce also requires coding, only now you're doing it in proprietary scripting environments like ABAP and Apex respectively instead of general languages like Java and Python.

Re: Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code

#282

Post by sbr464 »

careyrouse wrote: post #157

Co-Founder of https://www.cloudternal.com . I'm really surprised they have a limit of 100k records on their tables. They will have the same issue that Airtable has, it's just not suited for enterprise. We believe there is still a gap in the "database app for non-technical users" space, so we created one that can handle millions of records, provides granular permissions down to the cell level and targets those creativ…

I agree, I tried to upload a 1 Megabyte sized CSV and was promptly shut down (on the trial tier). In 2020, a floppy disk worth of data is too much?

Re: Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code

#283

Post by TheHypnotist »

ozim wrote: post #273
nickff wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are radically underestimating the perceived barriers to entry with programming. You sound a lot like the Linux advocates who think everyone should just memorize a bunch of commands, and get used to using shell. This type of insider view is often referred to as 'the curse of knowledge'.

Point of low code is to get rid of those smart ass developers who know those magic incantations and demand loads of money for their work. What you get in low code reality are smart ass business consultants that know magic configuration options and demand loads of money for their work. Just look at SAP, Salesforce etc. From my point of view any barrier to entry doesn't matter because at some level you just trade one c…

There is nothing "low code" about work in SAP. Any time you need something remotely custom you need to blow the dust off of ABAP and code it yourself. This happens a lot.

Salesforce even requires you go write up some Apex when you want to get into heavy customization.

Re: Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code

#284

Post by TheHypnotist »

ajmurmann wrote: post #170
asah wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's one word counterpoint: Excel

It's interesting to me that Excel had a low barrier of entry, but more advanced stuff gets pretty unwieldy. I'm used to wiring complex SQL queries, but some Excel stuff takes me a while to understand.

If some of the longer logic chains you may put in a cell or series of cells were remotely readable, that might help.

Re: Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code

#285

Post by sbr464 »

jedieaston wrote: post #60
VRay wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, man, this looks like a beefed-up version of Excel macros Anyone who can write working spreadsheet macros could probably just learn to actually program. Maybe they aren't going to be making the next RTX Voice or proving P=NP, but I'll bet they could crank out some CRUD

Deploying the CRUD securely is a problem, though. Things like this and AirTable are entirely managed by their developers and your IT department, and Excel sheets can just be dropped into an email. If I write a cool python script, how is the rest of my team supposed to use it if none of us are developers and haven’t done it before, and with IT probably trying to stop me?

Also to point out, since mentioning the security aspect, any file/attachment/etc uploaded to AirTable are 100% open and unsecured as long as you can obtain the URL from any AirTable spreadsheet. They don't have a concept of authentication in regards to any files you've uploaded, regardless of your plan.

Re: Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code

#286

Post by OOPMan »

cbdumas wrote: post #135
nickff wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are radically underestimating the perceived barriers to entry with programming. You sound a lot like the Linux advocates who think everyone should just memorize a bunch of commands, and get used to using shell. This type of insider view is often referred to as 'the curse of knowledge'.

I think you're right about perceived barriers to entry, and I certainly didn't say (nor did I mean to imply) that anyone should "just" learn to code. But I think the promise of "apps without code" is a siren song, always ending in frustration. I'd never tell anyone that learning to code is easy (only that most people can do it with some hard work), but I would also never tell anyone that tools like this will make it…

It's not even a new siren song.

Every few years someone comes along with a new toy that promises to finally deliver.

It's been going since at least the 90s (when I was old enough to start reading programming magazines (remember those?))

Truly, software development is sisyphean in nature...

Re: Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code

#287

Post by benhurmarcel »

TheHypnotist wrote: post #284
ajmurmann wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to me that Excel had a low barrier of entry, but more advanced stuff gets pretty unwieldy. I'm used to wiring complex SQL queries, but some Excel stuff takes me a while to understand.

If some of the longer logic chains you may put in a cell or series of cells were remotely readable, that might help.

I don't understand why Microsoft (or Google) never worked on making the formula bar easier to read. It doesn't seam hard to imagine a more visual mode to help work with complex formulas.

Re: Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code

#288

Post by OOPMan »

pjmlp wrote: post #269
shaan7 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you don't really believe that people use the terminal because it is "the hard way". That simply isn't true. There are things where the shell makes it _easier_ to do things - the most common being batch operations. There have been attempts to build GUIs around such tasks but they actually take more effort to understand than using the terminal. Just like every tool, the terminal has its place. So do GUIs.

Yes I do, my UNIX experience goes all the way back to Xenix and I have used most of the UNIX commercial clones, and also did porting across multiple platforms. Whatever the UNIX shell provides, can be more comfortably over an interactive graphical REPL, which even allows for proper graphical debugging tools when pipelines don't work as they are supposed to be. Secondly, since UI/UX has always been one of my focus, I…

So...where I can get this awesome new shell it sounds like you're working on?

Re: Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code

#289

Post by OOPMan »

mehrdadn wrote: post #96
lubujackson wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the theory, but don't forget the time you spend upgrading Python because some dependency needs it, but some other part isn't compatible with the new version so you spend an hour on Google trying to sort that out. Or the time you spend trying to debug some basic functionality you've written 20 times before because it isn't quite working with everything else for some reason...

Is there even a way to update Python on Windows? I haven't figured out any way other than duplicate installs, a bunch of manual copy/paste/extract of older packages, and hoping for the best.

WSL(2) and pyenv?

;-)

Re: Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code

#290

Post by OOPMan »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #145
cbdumas wrote: post #73

I think the thing that "coding without code" fundamentally misses is that learning to actually write Python or Java or whatever is not the hard part of being productive in a business context. The hard part of creating useful software is that you have to understand a business process and its requirements so precisely that you can write it down for the computer to do. I work with business stakeholders creating internal…

~20 years ago, I spent a year or so mostly creating and updating Lotus Notes 'apps' for internal use at my employer. Most of these were CRUD apps to support existing business processes. The v1 of each one, which was immediately useful and used, usually took me 4 to 8 hours to create. That includes the time talking to the main user to understand what they needed. I can't achieve the same speed with Django or Flask. Ma…

If all you need is a simple CRUD app then Django Admin + your model definitions is literally all you need.

In my experience, that's a 4 to 8 hour project.

Oh, and runs against a real database.

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