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Dry.io wants to democratize software development using AI

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Re: Dry.io wants to democratize software development using AI

#71

Post by TimTheTinker »

nickcassimatis wrote: post #58
TimTheTinker wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just saying I might have read the article if the headline explained using fewer buzzwords. [pithy word].io, democratize (that doesn’t mean anything anymore), AI (everything is AI these days) Without more descriptive words, it seems to mean simultaneously a whole lot and not very much.

This isn't a snarky response, but a sincere question: how would you have titled the article or expressed our mission? It's difficult to come up with something that's clear and captures our intent while also fitting into a single sentence. We'll take any help on that we can get.

This is less about the title/headline and more about the overall approach.

I think to gain any attention in today’s environment, you’re going to have to do more “showing” and less “telling”.

Remember how Ruby On Rails got its amazing dev mindshare? I’d encourage you to hit archive.org and go back to like 2006 at rubyonrails.org. They had a compelling demo that was just a simple screen share, but it blew people’s minds. Their headlines and body copy were also excellent.

EDIT: a couple of links:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060609235209/http://www.rubyon...

https://web.archive.org/web/20060612063620/http://www.rubyon...

Re: Dry.io wants to democratize software development using AI

#72

Post by harrisreynolds »

TheLegace wrote: post #69
harrisreynolds wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I am wondering the same thing. We are currently working on NimbleHQ [1] which is an app that lets you build apps. And it is pretty cool. But it doesn't use AI. Maybe we should say it does to get some press! :-) [1] https://www.nimblehq.com/

Hi, I am trying to sign up but I can't get it working on Firefox and Chrome[1]. Captcha Error https://imgur.com/xMHx0xY

FYI... it looks like hnchat is no longer a thing in case you want to update any way fellow HN'ers can contact you.

Re: Dry.io wants to democratize software development using AI

#73

Post by TheLegace »

harrisreynolds wrote: post #70
TheLegace wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I am trying to sign up but I can't get it working on Firefox and Chrome[1]. Captcha Error https://imgur.com/xMHx0xY

Wow... that is embarrassing. Fixed. I recently change the domain from nimblapps.com to nimblehq.com which I think is much better (but didn't get Recaptcha updated. Would love any feedback you have. It is early but some cool ideas are in there.

I really like the concept and design. Haven't used it fully to grasp how it works yet, but I did find a few bugs at first glance. I can send you info by email if you'd like.

Re: Dry.io wants to democratize software development using AI

#74

Post by CharlesColeman »

jmickey wrote: post #26
PostOnce wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the reply and genuinely hope you succeed, but it seems like an uphill battle and a hard sell. For a trivial CRUD app, the dev can just re-use one they already wrote, no need to learn this layer you've created ... and for a complex CRUD app or something more complicated than that, you're going to need to write real code anyway, so who is the customer? Why would I as a Python, JavaScript, or Ruby webdev le…

I believe that you are not the target audience here. Isn't the point of dry.io that a business analyst can replace a developer? :)

> Isn't the point of dry.io that a business analyst can replace a developer? :)

I've heard that promise before, from BPMS vendors. I don't think it ever pans out, and usually results in a hobbled system that usually still require developers to actually deliver the desired functionality. I think developing software requires a specific mental skillset that can't be replaced by technology, and promises to the contrary are snake oil.

Re: Dry.io wants to democratize software development using AI

#75

Post by harrisreynolds »

TheLegace wrote: post #73
harrisreynolds wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow... that is embarrassing. Fixed. I recently change the domain from nimblapps.com to nimblehq.com which I think is much better (but didn't get Recaptcha updated. Would love any feedback you have. It is early but some cool ideas are in there.

I really like the concept and design. Haven't used it fully to grasp how it works yet, but I did find a few bugs at first glance. I can send you info by email if you'd like.

Thanks man...def send over any bugs or issues you find. Still needs lots of polish. The idea though is that you can define your data model and then have a simple CRUD interface to update your app. The vision is then to start iterating on making the views more and more customizable as well as start to introduce conditional workflows to support more true app like functionality.

Re: Dry.io wants to democratize software development using AI

#76

Post by harrisreynolds »

harrisreynolds wrote: post #75
TheLegace wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like the concept and design. Haven't used it fully to grasp how it works yet, but I did find a few bugs at first glance. I can send you info by email if you'd like.

Thanks man...def send over any bugs or issues you find. Still needs lots of polish. The idea though is that you can define your data model and then have a simple CRUD interface to update your app. The vision is then to start iterating on making the views more and more customizable as well as start to introduce conditional workflows to support more true app like functionality.

You can respond to the email address you get the welcome email from after you sign up.

Re: Dry.io wants to democratize software development using AI

#77

Post by TimTheTinker »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #71
nickcassimatis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a snarky response, but a sincere question: how would you have titled the article or expressed our mission? It's difficult to come up with something that's clear and captures our intent while also fitting into a single sentence. We'll take any help on that we can get.

This is less about the title/headline and more about the overall approach. I think to gain any attention in today’s environment, you’re going to have to do more “showing” and less “telling”. Remember how Ruby On Rails got its amazing dev mindshare? I’d encourage you to hit archive.org and go back to like 2006 at rubyonrails.org. They had a compelling demo that was just a simple screen share, but it blew people’s mind…

Here's a link to the original screencast, if you can get it to load: http://media.rubyonrails.org/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mo...

If that doesn't work, perhaps you can find a mirror somewhere with that link.

EDIT: Found a copy on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/41708568

Re: Dry.io wants to democratize software development using AI

#78

Post by nickcassimatis »

bitL wrote: post #64
nickcassimatis wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello. I am the founder of this company. I understand your skepticism. It's true that it is very difficult to build a fully general dev tool that's 1000x faster and lets you control everything entirely down the pixel level. We're not claiming that. We're claiming that for a broad range of software (esp., social, messaging, and collaborative software), we can make the development process orders of magnitude faster. Yo…

Great! It's precisely how trivial stuff will be handled in the future, whether we like it or not and I am glad something like your company popped up. Could you please recommend any papers your approach is based on? Thank you! Future extension you are likely considering could be voice/gesture driven development, or "natural language" programming, where one can use this combination naturally like talking to another per…

We'll probably be posting a technical whitepaper and/or more technically-oriented video to the website soon.

I was the founder of SkyPhrase, a natural language processing startup that Yahoo acquired in 2013. Natural language was also a focus of my AI research. We have some ideas on how to apply that to this project, but they will probably have to wait at least a few months.

Re: Dry.io wants to democratize software development using AI

#79

Post by nickcassimatis »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #66
mountainofdeath wrote: post #65

Where is the AI here? This is yet another line-of-business app generator. Others include Microsoft PowerApps, Microsoft Access back in the day, etc.

My point exactly, and furthermore, the whole UI looks very cumbersome. You still have to understand the software underneath in order to actually build the application itself.

You actually do not have to understand the software underneath. The point is for that to be invisible to the developer.

Re: Dry.io wants to democratize software development using AI

#80

Post by nickcassimatis »

JamesAdir wrote: post #59

I understand the use of AI is mandatory this days for any startups, but basically this is Microsoft Access 2019 if it was online. Access once solved the problem of creating small inhouse applications for departmental use. Since then a magnitude of online services offered the same solutions, so you don't need to create anything from scratch now. I'm sure there is a market for Dry.io solution, just can't estimate how b…

Like Access, we do aim to make development much easier, and in-house tools are an obvious first market. However, there are a lot of aspects of Dry (involving access permission, data tagging, moderation, and more) that aren't all together in any other platform. These make it easier to build social, collaborative, and messaging apps much more easily than other approaches.
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