Being a part of the Dark beta ( https://darklang.com ) has been incredible. It makes setting up a simple backend with persistent storage a breeze.
Really interested in what the cost is going to be out of beta.
Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer?
81–90 of 290 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer?
#82Although typically thought of as primarily a GIS/location data tool, ArcGIS is powerful for data management & app-building in general. The John Hopkins COVID-19 dashboard [1] you've almost certainly seen by now is built with ArcGIS feature services & Operations Dashboard.
All that follows is my personal opinion; I do work for Esri but I'm not speaking for them here.
A lot of the modern ArcGIS stack is based on feature services hosted on ArcGIS Online (Esri's cloud service). Feature Services combine a SQL database with a REST API and spatial analysis. They're particularly useful if you want to store spatial data and put it on a map, but it works with non-spatial data, including relational data, as well.
Once data is in a feature service, you can visualize it in 2D or 3D maps, add data to it with off-the-shelf apps (we have Survey123 for surveys, Collector for field data collection, and QuickCapture for rapid data entry). You can build stories around the data with StoryMaps, data-driven websites with Hub, and dashboards with Operations Dashboard.
If the field apps aren't enough, you can create custom web apps with web app builder, custom native apps (Qt) with AppStudio, or totally custom apps with the developer APIs.
We even have open source apps [2] that demonstrate how to use the platform for common scenarios, like indoor routing, data collection, and taking data offline.
Sorry if this comes off salesy, I just really like sharing this stuff since I think ArcGIS tends to go under-utilized outside of GIS circles. The developers site [3] has a lot of info about the platform and a link to sign up - there's a generous free tier if you want to try it.
[1] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer?
#83I'm going to take this opportunity to promote my current principal project, Datasette. https://datasette.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ Datasette aims to reduce the gap between "I have some data" and "I have a useful JSON API for it" as much as possible. I think it does this really well. A timely example: the first version of this API for interacting with data about the COVID-19 pandemic took me just a few minutes to buil…
If you want to try it out the fastest way is on Glitch: https://glitch.com/~datasette-csvs Click "remix" on that page, drag-and-drop in a CSV file and you get an instant API for it. You can try it out without even signing up for a Glitch account!
I didn't even see this comment when I wrote my earlier message. Glitch integration makes it even easier for us to work with in a hackathon environment. Awesome that you are thinking about accessibility in your promotion of Datasette.
You've definitely got some over-caffeinated hackathon people coming your way in the coming days as we begin the 8 week Covidathon with the Decentralized AI Alliance. I'll let you know what we come up with.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer?
#84I'm going to take this opportunity to promote my current principal project, Datasette. https://datasette.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ Datasette aims to reduce the gap between "I have some data" and "I have a useful JSON API for it" as much as possible. I think it does this really well. A timely example: the first version of this API for interacting with data about the COVID-19 pandemic took me just a few minutes to buil…
That is a powerful and concise outline of Datasette. I am working on an 8 week hackathon to build privacy first data solutions for the pandemic response. I am totally going to bring these examples to my session tonight for inspiration. Very cool stuff! Thanks for sharing. https://covidathon.devpost.com/ (Also love the Commodore reference)
Awesome! I'm definitely excited about hackathons as an opportunity to take advantage of Datasette.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to try it out the fastest way is on Glitch: https://glitch.com/~datasette-csvs Click "remix" on that page, drag-and-drop in a CSV file and you get an instant API for it. You can try it out without even signing up for a Glitch account!
I didn't even see this comment when I wrote my earlier message. Glitch integration makes it even easier for us to work with in a hackathon environment. Awesome that you are thinking about accessibility in your promotion of Datasette. You've definitely got some over-caffeinated hackathon people coming your way in the coming days as we begin the 8 week Covidathon with the Decentralized AI Alliance. I'll let you know wh…
Please do - I'm https://twitter.com/simonw on Twitter or you can reach me using swillison at Google's email service.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer?
#86It's quite niche, but I've been really enjoying Pico8 [0], a 'fantasy console' retro game creation system. It's got quite a few limitations, but I've found it quite fun to explore game dev concepts without being tempted by perfection.
It's got simplified editors for tiles, sprites, maps, music, sound and code, runs on desktops + raspberry pis, and can export to web. The code you write is lua, with builtins for all the editable resources, and paves over most, if not all, the technical rabbit holes you can get yourself into with game development.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer?
#87I've found that Azure's Logic App Service has been shockingly useful to me! The hard prerequisite is that you are within the Azure ecosystem, but using Logic Apps instead of defaulting to writing PowerShell for Function Apps significantly decreased development time, has increased the ease with which I can debug workflows, and when you're on the free tier (with both aforementioned flavors), then Logic Apps still reign…
We are in the middle of a year-long project to 'rewrite' all of our ESB glue/pipelines from MuleSoft to the Azure platform. We've been using Azure for a while now for almost all hosting. But our ESB had still been in Mule, because as sort of the vital arteries of our entire enterprise, it's hard to seriously consider completely reimplementing them -- especially since we're only about 3 years out from implementing Mul…
> how to integrate LAs with our source control
Can't you use ARM templates or Azure CLI for deploying them?
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer?
#88I'm building something for lazy React devs: https://divjoy.com On the no-code side I really like http://carrd.co
div joy seems an amazing sweet spot in between webflow/carrds and a template to mod by ide. Keep up with that layer !!
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer?
#89Google Sheets can be surprisingly handy as a UI for editing data. For example, I have a job on AWS that scrapes a handful of URLs and snapshots them. Instead of creating a database and hosting it somewhere, or hard-coding them, I put them in a spreadsheet that the AWS job reads at the beginning of every run.
Aren't you forced to use Google Apps Script to interact with Sheets? I remember being forced to use it for interacting with Google Forms API.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite low-coding apps / tools as a developer?
#90I'm building something for lazy React devs: https://divjoy.com On the no-code side I really like http://carrd.co
div joy seems an amazing sweet spot in between webflow/carrds and a template to mod by ide. Keep up with that layer !!
Thanks Lucas! The editor has been a fun project. Hoping to push it more in the carrd direction in the future so you can customize super quickly before moving to code.