Amazon Honeycode – build web and mobile apps without writing code • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by sharker8 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

rimliu wrote: post #296

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'.

There are enough bariers in the earlier steps for those barriers to entry with programming not to matter. 1. Understand the problem 2. Break the problem into subproblems. Goto 1 till subroblems are small enought to be tackled. 3. Develop the algorithms for each of the subroblems you got after step 2. No handwaving allowed. 4. Implement the algorithms. I'd say for majority it ends around the step 2. Programming only m…

I think you are doing software engineering at step 2 as well (base case and build recursion for example). The reality is, CS skills are useful even in low and no code scenarios.

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

#312

Post by shireboy » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:27 PM UTC

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…

I feel like this is pretty spot on to my experience with these tools. I've tried lots of these tools, and been in place to have to recommend them to customers looking for workflow and forms tools "so our business analysts can build things". Inevitably, the developers end up having to use the tool and feeling hamstrung by it.

After tinkering with this one, areas I see lacking are 1) no authentication 2) no images and 3) limited automation options. I'm sure it's coming in later releases, but just an example. Even tools like AirTable etc. that do have auth are often lacking. For scenarios where you want users to only see "their" data, managers to see their employees' data, and vps/admins to see all data are common scenarios that are often hard to implement in these tools.

I'm watching this space for a breakaway, but haven't seen one that I feel is better than written code. I admit bias as a dev, but I do wonder if written code is not fundamentally superior in most cases. Even "Visual Studio" ceased being visual drag-and-drop for most people ages ago. Sure, you _can_ still drag-and-drop windows forms apps, but most devs will write XAML, or in web space, use a CSS framework and markup instead of a drag-and-drop designer.

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

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Post by dataminded » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

NOGDP wrote: post #179

dataminded wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I would never rely on it for a business. You sir have options. Every place I have ever worked has at least one app that someone hacked together through some combination of PDFs, Excel and Access. This is a tremendous opportunity for those folks. The ones who will never learn to code, never learn to deploy an application and never get enough visibility to have a developer assigned to their project. For the every…

> Every place I have ever worked has at least one app that someone hacked together through some combination of PDFs, Excel and Access... I continue to be amazed by what dedicated people pull-off with these no-code solutions. VBA, SQL, etc, which is probably what these apps are written with, are code though. Honeycode is a language of it's own too, it's just a trade off between flexibility/power and learning curve.

I should have been more explicit, the things are built in Excel and Access with the front-end interfaces not VBA or SQL.

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

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Post by binaryblitz » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #281

ozim wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't forget SOQL. SF's own special query language.

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

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Post by kinj28 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

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…

I agree. I am a NoCode fan. I run a small operations of a few million dollars and to run it in Systemic way I built a lot of systems with NoCode as i didn’t have the luxury of putting engineers on the job. While I am an engineer myself, my day job was to run the ship and which meant I had little time available to make systems. 1st google spreadsheet is where I started and quickly made apps for recording attendance and crm and other stuff. Soon I hit a wall and had to have engineers deployed. However since last year I started using a NoCode tool to build all internal apps and today I and my HR manager have put up a fully functional system right from attendance, pms, timesheets, project management, crm , sales , purchase and everything you can imagine as a fully usable web and mobile app.

I must say if the tool has a right type of user identified then nothing can beat noCode.

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

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Post by ozim » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

TheHypnotist wrote: post #283

ozim wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now take a look at honeycode templates, those look exactly like things that SAP and friends promise you won't have to code. Inventory management and customer tracker, this looks like they try to sell the same things. Even if SAP is not marketing their stuff as low code or even if you have to write a lot of code there.

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

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Post by miek » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

pandalicious wrote: post #127

fosk wrote: post #101

Yahoo! Pipes tried this more than a decade ago, it's interesting to see that the dream of "apps my mom could build" never dies. Except most people want to be consumers of applications, not creators. And those who really want to be creators they learn how to code. So, like with Pipes, I am not really sure who is the target audience here. Microsoft Popfly[1] was another one from back in the days. [1] - https://en.wikip…

"apps my mom could build" kind of describes Excel workbooks. People effectively use excel to build (highly constrained) GUIs for processing data using custom logic that they specify themselves. And excel's popularity speaks for itself, it's completely pervasive. So that's the answer; the audience isn't programmers, it's the officeworkers all over the world currently using Excel to automate office tasks and want a bet…

You are spot on. I know a ton of people who fit your description. I wish this were higher up the comment stack. So many people are missing this simple viewpoint.

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

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Post by datavirtue » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

nmcfarl wrote: post #197

joebergeron wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to disagree here. The thing that makes writing business software take a long time (using code, to be pedantic), isn't the fact that it's in code -- it's the fact that the requirements are often so fast and complex that there's no way to capture them in the application without taking a good chunk of time. If you want an application that doesn't actually meet your requirements, but at the very least, exists, get…

It has been my experience over and over again that having a mix of engineers and business folk, does not lead to the business folk getting the engineers to do what they want. Which is why we see so many things built in Excel and Access - the business folk know what they want, but their bosses send the engineers off is some crazy other direction. A MVP is quite often exactly what these people need to get the bosses en…

You guys are all describing the root problems we have been trying to solve with Agile for decades. It's gotten to the point where tech has thrown up thier hands and just exists to bill people for running around like a headless chicken.

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

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Post by justanotherc » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 12:33 AM UTC

nickff wrote: post #81

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…

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 he's partially right, and you're also partially right.

Learning to code is an extremely high barrier to wntry, but its also highly transferable. If you can write Python, there's tons of jobs you can get writing Python, and with a little extra work, you can pretty easily transition to another language with a whole other world of opportunity.

The problem with these "visual" languages, is its a lower barrier to entry, but its still takes a detail oriented person, and ends up being very specialized, so there's less opportunity to leverage that to another job. So if you're a person than can learn a visual language effectively, you might as well go the extra 30% and learn to code in a "real" language.

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

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Post by justanotherc » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 12:46 AM UTC

shaan7 wrote: post #265

pjmlp wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like some developers should learn that developers are users too, and not all of us enjoy doing the stuff the hard way just because it feels better somehow.

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.

I agree. The shell, just like all other programming languages, allows you to trade the time spent learning a domain specific skill for an easier method of doing things.

Using the batch operations example -- if you know shell scripting, you can save yourself time doing things manually -- but you need to have already traded in the time to learn Shell scripting.

GUIs allow you to reduce time spent learning a domain specific skill at the expense of overall efficiency.