[HN Gopher] Show HN: Reddit clone built in no-code in two weeks
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Reddit clone built in no-code in two weeks
Author : Shiku
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-08-06 11:05 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reggit.bubbleapps.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (reggit.bubbleapps.io)
| one_off_comment wrote:
| But... reddit already exists??
| Shiku wrote:
| Yep.
|
| The purpose of this post is more about the potential of no-
| code. Just trying to illustrate that it's possible to build a
| web app like Reddit using no-code.
|
| The goal really isn't to build a new Reddit.
| _throwawayaway wrote:
| Nice! I'd really like to see what owning, maintaining, scaling,
| customizing etc would be like in no-code context.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| "No code" here means they are "no-programming-language" not "no-
| coding". We've used several no code solutions years ago and
| business could not expand them so in the end developers sat with
| a complex application that would be maintainable in text code but
| not with a UI because a UI it's hard to understand what is going
| on.
| Graffur wrote:
| Reddit is not exactly a hard to build site. Any experienced React
| developer could do this in less than 2 weeks.
|
| I'm not sure how to draw comparisons between the two.
| TekMol wrote:
| Timeout.
|
| I think this shows one problem of no-code. The underlying code
| and data structures are probably horribly bad.
|
| Every $5/month box should handle HN traffic easily for a reddit
| style application.
|
| With the right indexes on the DB tables, an out of the box Debian
| LAMP stack is _insanely_ fast for this type of use case.
| jjice wrote:
| While I think a $5 VPS is under kill for something like HN due
| to the traffic, that actually sounds like a fun challenge.
| Especially if you don't show point values, you can cache the
| majority of the page (everything but the username and points)
| until a new comment is made. That would require only doing a
| query and template completion once per comment, which is
| probably tiny compared to the number of reads. I imagine that
| if you had an extra GB of ram for Redis, you'd be in a great
| spot.
|
| Sounds like a fun hackday to me.
| uncomputation wrote:
| This may have had the opposite effect on me. I am no longer
| worried about being replaced by "no code" Bubble apps now.
| adamqureshi wrote:
| Anyone know where i could find an HN clone UI opensource to build
| a niche niche news site?
| obiwanpallav1 wrote:
| I wanted to try it out but the page keeps on loading.
|
| Maybe that's the final stage because there is no-code, so nothing
| will be shown.
| Ballas wrote:
| That seems in-line with providing a reddit-like experience.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Nice! Pretty easy to compose a new post. Video, photos, text
| links just like Reddit.
|
| It was a bit slow but getting things loaded but choosing to log
| in as a test user I was able to load things to desktop and post a
| great video. Kinda took me back a few years. Very nostalgic.
|
| I like it. Reddit is like your sink drain sometimes, clogged with
| all the hairy goo that no one wants to see or deal with. This
| feels like a new lavatory just waiting for content to start
| flowing.
|
| Good job.
| Shiku wrote:
| Thank you! I appreciate the positive feedback :)
| doodlebugging wrote:
| You're welcome.
|
| I tried to view the video link but received an error. I
| posted the error contents in another post for you. I couldn't
| find a way to post a screenshot of the error bubble so I just
| posted all the text from the message.
|
| I also think that while logged in as testuser I was able to
| upvote my own post. Is that allowed? Perhaps there are a few
| others also logged in as testuser and one of them upvoted it.
|
| Anyway, I like this. With faster load times this could be as
| fun as Reddit used to be.
| gorwell wrote:
| "no code", "serverless"
|
| Is anyone else annoyed by these terms?
| rytill wrote:
| What replacement terms would you recommend?
| CivBase wrote:
| Perhaps "borrowed code" and "borrowed server"? That's what
| they really mean. You're just using someone else's
| preexisting code/server to solve your problem instead of
| writing/deploying your own.
| aethertron wrote:
| Just a little.
| the-dude wrote:
| Slow as hell, to the point it does not load.
|
| Isn't this the typical application you _don 't_ want to run as
| nocode? High loads, viral growth.
| dkarp wrote:
| Still pending for me too. I'm going to assume this is here
| because of a voting ring
| contravariant wrote:
| Either that or it was really impressive for the few minutes
| it did load. Kind of hard to figure out at this point.
|
| Though the fact that it grinds to a halt under high load is
| also interesting.
| Shiku wrote:
| That was an issue based on the plan I was using in Bubble.
| I upgraded to a production plan which should work better
| now.
| capableweb wrote:
| Looking at how the DOM is being dealt with and how poor the
| actual rendering is, I don't think network performance is
| the only problem here.
| dkarp wrote:
| Maybe, although I loaded it less than 4 minutes after it
| was posted. HN Hug of death must come really quick
| gccs wrote:
| Actually it is the exact application to develop with no code.
| It is a clone of an existing website, where there are already
| 100s other clones, so it will extremely likely amount to
| nothing and not surpass 10 users, meaning the performance
| impact will not impact anyone.
| discordance wrote:
| I feel like that's a bit harsh and you may be missing the
| point if all you see in this is another clone.
|
| There's obviously been a lot of effort put into this, and
| there's so much to be learned from what's being presented
| both from the perspective of a seasoned developer and those
| who aren't. The discussion above and below your comment is
| proof of that.
| jawngee wrote:
| > Slow as hell, to the point it does not load.
|
| So it looks like they nailed it.
| Shiku wrote:
| LOL
|
| It was completely my bad for not being prepared for a surge
| in traffic. Should be _less slow_ now since I added a boost
| to the site. But, yeah, it 's definitely not perfect I'll
| admit.
|
| If you do try again, check it out on desktop not mobile, and
| let me know.
|
| Maybe it could also be a result of a bunch of people using
| the test acct, so feel free to create your own test acct.
|
| Thanks for at least giving it a shot :)
| Macha wrote:
| Yep, definitely the authentic new reddit experience.
|
| Could even do twitter too.
| Shiku wrote:
| Actually someone already built a twitter clone in Bubble.
| Worth checking that out too :)
|
| https://notrealtwitter.com/
|
| But as for this site, I've added a boost to the site which
| should help somewhat with the surge in traffic. My bad for
| not being prepared for that
| cucumb3rrelish wrote:
| that twitter clone is down
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| That sounds like the real Reddit experience.
| Shiku wrote:
| It was working rather well until the traffic surge from HN.
| Added a capacity boost to the site so it loads now, but you're
| right it's rather slow. So you may have a point.
|
| As far as an experiment though, it's good to know what the
| current limitations of no-code are. This was never meant to be
| anything serious. Just a learning opportunity.
| darnir wrote:
| > This was never meant to be anything serious.
|
| Remember the Linux kernel was introduced to the world with
| pretty much those exact words.
| surajs wrote:
| The problems with code are only compounded manyfold with no code,
| no code as a concept is still not as superfluous as something
| like gpt3 for ex, but beyond solving simple problems, I have
| little confidence in anything built with no-code YMMV
| dd36 wrote:
| Is there no content?
| Shiku wrote:
| There is content, and a few people have added some since. It
| just loaded slow earlier because of the surge in traffic that I
| was ill prepared for. I've upgraded the site and it should work
| better now.
| SilurianWenlock wrote:
| Is there a github for this?
| sideproject wrote:
| It's not really an exact Reddit-looking clone, but we built a
| tool called Newsy, which builds content aggregator like Reddit
| without code.
|
| https://www.newsy.co
|
| We focus on users with un-used domain names and try to spin up a
| news site like Reddit quickly with various features built in.
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| To use a Reddit term, ELI5 what "no code" actually means. As
| someone who's only ever seen the term in passing on HN, I don't
| understand if there's a distinction from coding in a very high
| level and/or visual environment. To try and make it concrete by
| comparing with things I've personally seen: Is LabVIEW "no code"?
| Is Max/MSP "no code"? Was Dreamweaver "no code"? Is building an
| FX pipeline in Houdini "no code"?
| rchaud wrote:
| Dreamweaver is no-code, but you can't build a web application
| with it. Just a static website. Maybe there's some
| interactivity like being able to submit a "Contact Us" form.
| But that's it.
|
| A web application has application logic of some kind, maybe
| like a retirement calculator. That kind of application will
| accept user input (e.g. "age", "monthly savings amount", "exp.
| rate of return"), and apply that data to a model of some kind.
| That results in an output "You need to save $X to retire at age
| Y, assuming ROR is Z%"
|
| Bubble is a full no-code app-builder. There are other no-code
| tools like Zapier, but they're not used to build full apps, but
| rather to connect two different apps without writing API
| queries yourself. For example, let's say you're running a
| virtual conference. Your tickets are sold on Platform X, and
| your videoconferencing solution happens on Platform Y.
|
| When someone buys a ticket using X, you want to auto-send an
| email from Y with their videoconference link. You do that by
| connecting the two services visually via Zapier.
| asddubs wrote:
| it seems to be built using this, but that's all I can tell you:
|
| https://bubble.io/
| Graffur wrote:
| I feel once you introduce conditional logic, loops and
| retrieving/processing/storing data you are in a code mindset
| regardless of how you construct that logic (e.g. through drag
| and drop icons, pictures or typed words)
| krageon wrote:
| I was gearing up to be irritated at seeing "no-code", but this
| was apparently built using a glorified WYSIWYG editor. That's
| really impressive, especially given how close it looks to what
| you set out to imitate. Nice work!
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| Isn't "glorified WYSIWYG editor" basically what nocode is? Why
| would the terminology decide your mood when the two are
| basically synonymous in this context? Bubble (which been used
| for building this) describes themselves as a nocode tool quite
| literally ("The best way to build web apps without code") but
| because you see it as a WYSIWYG your irritation disappeared?
| krageon wrote:
| Most terms don't have any meaning. As far as I can tell, no-
| code and serverless (no-ops is a close one too) fall under
| that category.
| shusson wrote:
| > Isn't "glorified WYSIWYG editor" basically what nocode is?
|
| Does bubble also handle deployment/infra?
| capableweb wrote:
| I haven't deployed anything myself on Bubble (only tried
| their editor briefly) but since this submissions URL is
| reggit.bubbleapps.io I'd wager that yes, Bubble does handle
| everything for you once you've actually built your app in
| their editor.
| throwawaybchr wrote:
| These tools seem pretty decent for non technical people to build
| and test out ideas.
|
| If anything it forces them to think about their problems and
| recognise where complexity exists.
| capableweb wrote:
| Not sure if it's my computer (Arch Linux, 5.13, i7-7700K, RTX
| 2080 Ti) but the page behaves the same in both Firefox and Chrome
| where it basically slows down the browser to a halt, seemingly
| contiuing doing HTTP requests forever (loaded the page once 3
| minutes ago and it's still doing more requests to some
| ElasticSearch instance).
|
| It is pretty amazing what you can accomplish with nocode tooling
| (like Bubble, that is being used here), but I think this
| demonstrates that we have a long way to go before production
| applications can be built with it. It is a pretty good starting
| point though, and with a little optimizations to Bubbles backends
| (and probably the way they render stuff/deal with the DOM) we can
| be pretty close to shipping nocode apps for average users.
|
| None the less, nice work! The UI itself is pretty close which is
| inspiring to see, although the new reddit UX leaves plenty to ask
| for.
| majortennis wrote:
| no code / low code booooo
| joejohnston wrote:
| This is pretty awesome, and I am huge fan of no-code / low-code;
| especially for CRUD apps.
|
| I managed to create this in about 30 mins using Budibase:
|
| https://budibase.app/app_dev_25ce0de660954493a371399aad47518...
| aparsons wrote:
| This is extremely slow and laggy on the Pixel 3
| Shiku wrote:
| This site is not optimised for mobile. Updated the site to
| reflect this. I built it for desktop viewing only
| Shiku wrote:
| The Reggit site plan has been upgraded and should load a little
| faster now.
|
| Also, I'm not technical so I am probably not the best equipped to
| answer technical comments.
|
| Thanks for all the feedback, both positive and negative. This has
| been quite the experience.
| altacc wrote:
| One of the problems with examples like this is that it gives an
| unrealistic expectation to non-technical people that large &
| complex sites are actually quite basic. There is a lot of
| functionality that a typical user never sees and is often where
| the complexity lies.
|
| And as the "app too busy" error message proves, there is a lot
| more to a site than it's front end alone and cloning a front end
| does not clone performance. Good for proof of concepts or low
| use, non-critical apps but I would hesitate to build a business
| on one.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Of course, the only reason Reddit has value at all is also its
| user community providing and ranking curated information. It's
| not the frontend, but it's also not the reliability or
| scalability or whatever else they have going on in the backend.
| Just as no one ever bought Encyclopedia Britannica back in the
| day because of the technical quality of the binding, though I'm
| sure it was top notch.
| hexa22 wrote:
| Reddit's reliability is a major point and it's something that
| has actually gone better. As horrible as the new UI is, back
| when the old ui was the main one, the site would go down
| almost daily and often for hours at a time.
| Graffur wrote:
| And yet Reddit is a success
| capableweb wrote:
| Ironically, it seems this clone does a great job of cloning the
| performance of reddit, at least when I tried it (bunch of
| unnecessary requests that takes multiple seconds each,
| sometimes just returning errors)
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Just use old reddit. It's fast. On mobile
| https://www.reddit.com/.compact (with a dot before compact)
| still works.
| HomeDeLaPot wrote:
| Shorter: https://i.reddit.com/
| kibwen wrote:
| On mobile web, you can also select an option from the
| hamburger menu to tell it to give you the desktop interface
| (which persists until you clear your cookies), and in your
| user settings you can set your default desktop interface as
| old reddit. Call me crazy for using the desktop site on
| mobile, but I find it far more usable to pinch and zoom
| than to navigate the redesign.
| sincerely wrote:
| Have you tried the /.compact mode? It's not the same as
| the redesign, it's essentially old.reddit.com resized for
| a mobile interfact
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Hard to meet a person that doesn't at least dislike reddit,
| but at least old.reddit.com is quite an efficient page.
|
| I had an internet outage that left me with a few kilobytes/s
| upstream/downstream. Most of the modern web was plainly
| unusable, often requests got terminated before all data was
| transmitted.
|
| But reddit among few other sites did work quite well. Of
| course not for pictures and media, but the text and comments
| were quickly displayed. In hindsight I am not sure if that
| was better than a complete outage, but that is a content
| problem.
| samstave wrote:
| I will only ever use old.reddit.
|
| If they take that away, I will kill my account. My account
| is 15 years old on Reddit, with near daily use.
| Shiku wrote:
| Great point. There's certainly much more that goes into
| building a site like Reddit than what goes into building a
| clone in two weeks. The purpose of this is to show the
| potential of what can be done in no-code.
|
| No-code is still in it's very early days, and I think that a
| lot of its capabilities will improve over time. Also, it's very
| possible that a lot of the inefficiencies in no-code apps are a
| result of the builder not the platform (i.e. me in this case).
| I've been building with Bubble only for a few months, and this
| is only the second app I've built. I'm sure there are a number
| of inefficiencies in my workflows, but I'll also improve on
| that over time as well.
| hexa22 wrote:
| Isn't no code and GUI software builders an idea that has been
| tried for decades? Wasn't Adobe dream weaver one of the early
| tools?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Dream weaver was a WYSIWYG website builder that offered the
| ability to edit the "raw" HTML. If you want
| mockups/wireframes/etc., there's Adobe XD.
|
| Tangent: who names these things? XD? Where did that come
| from? It looks like a laughing emoticon...
| lyaa wrote:
| XD stands for eXperience Design but I like the emoticon
| interpretation.
| kodah wrote:
| > No-code is still in it's very early days
|
| This is simply not true. WYSIWYG is no code and has been
| around since long before people had catchy names for it.
| Dreamweaver and FrontPage were early examples of it, the
| benefit they provided was they attempted to let you design by
| a GUI first, then they'd let you peak the code underneath.
| Usually, no-code or low-code these days does not come with
| the source, which makes it especially useless to anyone who
| wants to do anything meaningful with it.
| altacc wrote:
| I would define no code & WYSIWYG as different things. No
| code includes deeper, server side functionality; whereas
| WYSIWYG for HTML is simple page editing. Even the
| Javascript based actions an editor provides are only client
| side.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > And as the "app too busy" error message proves, there is a
| lot more to a site than it's front end alone
|
| I get at least monthly "our servers are busy" messages when
| accessing Reddit, and their (redesigned) website is so bloated
| that it takes great effort to replicate such bad performance in
| a simple clone.
|
| Reddit is the one site where you really can't make this
| argument, it's bloat incarnate.
| arghwhat wrote:
| It does handle many orders of magnitude more users than this
| thing does though. As a site that is the source of many hugs
| of death, it's serving a hell of a lot of traffic, mostly
| successfully.
|
| It could serve even more traffic if it was less bloated of
| course.
|
| EDIT: Some random stats from 2019 suggest that they're
| handling ~1000 pageviews a second on average over a month,
| and a view can take >100 requests to load. Combine with surge
| load and you're dealing with some serious requests per
| second.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Over 100 requests per load? That has to be static files
| like images, right? Do they not have a cache system for
| that (like what Cloudflare provides)?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| A friend worked on a project that reached several hundred
| requests at one point.
|
| Basically they had a 10 request component. Only one on
| the page so even though it wasn't that efficient, they
| didn't care.
|
| But then their PM wanted 20 of them on a page. It was a
| Scrum team so velocity mattered, so they just had a for
| loop generate 20 of them.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I wasn't able to get it working. I'm on mobile. Page load very
| slow at first and resolved to an error (didn't copy it, sorry).
|
| Second attempt loaded a header and some elements but no content.
| I tried to click every element that looked interactable but
| nothing responded.
| Shiku wrote:
| Sorry for not clarifying earlier. This was built to be a web-
| first clone only. It does not work on mobile.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| This is probably a 50% clone at most that's how far it will get
| you. It's not even 80% feature wise. So the title is a bit of a
| click bait
| andi999 wrote:
| What no code platform was used? Also clicking post on my android
| doesn't work.
| Shiku wrote:
| I didn't specify on the original post, so sorry about that.
| It's a web-first platform. It does not work on mobile. Try
| viewing from desktop.
|
| And the platform I used to build it is bubble.io
| tyingq wrote:
| Worth pointing out that bubble.io has different tiers. So, while
| this app is obviously overloaded, you have the (somewhat
| expensive) option of adding dedicated hardware to your server
| pool.
| Shiku wrote:
| True, I've got some Bubble credits so I've upgraded the plan
| (for the short term only). Will see how that helps
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I'm quite surprised that Bubble doesn't handle high traffic for
| you (no posts are loading for me and the site took ages to render
| anything), because I can't imagine that's something you can sort
| of plug in yourself somehow. Fair enough if they didn't actually
| intend for you to deploy or market your app and it was just an
| excellent prototyping tool, but their website does say
| "empowering entrepreneurs to build production-ready web apps."
| Surely you have to do something to help people's production ready
| apps serve production traffic if you're in this space.
|
| I guess it's to do with their pricing tier. At $115/mo you get "3
| units of server capacity", I assume you get 1 below that since
| they don't say. So the free tier has Bubble branding and
| insufficient hardware for the apps you can build, which seems a
| bit of an awkward marketing situation I guess.
|
| To be fair their "Production" tier at $475/mo has "10 units of
| server capacity". So maybe they do empower entrepeneurs who want
| to spend $475/mo on hosting to build production-ready web apps.
| Which is certainly cheaper than a dev team if their code and 10x
| server capacity works for most apps.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Well, to be fair, a very big chunk of reddit is dealing with the
| scale of users. In and of itself, it's not a new software (forums
| have existed for ages)
| js4ever wrote:
| Error: OwnerError
|
| Message: Operation timed out -- app too busy Code:
| 1628248706218x559231799994115000
| StreamBright wrote:
| Content provider built in no-code in 2 weeks without content
| sumtechguy wrote:
| While amusing... the value of most of those sites is not the
| site themselves. But the people network that is there. Why is
| everyone using it? Because everyone is using it. Then suddenly
| the 'crowd' will move to the next one. There will be a few
| holdouts that stick but it will be a zombie site that lumbers
| on. For example myspace, digg, and fark are still around.
| sjg007 wrote:
| I think you will always find a core that stays and a core
| that leaves.. the reason is that people don't feel heard so
| they look for other places to voice themselves. I went from
| slashdot to reddit to HN. Even now HN doesn't feel
| satisfactory.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Dreamweaver 3.0?
|
| Wasn't there some IDE like that in the past where non technical
| people could build data driven apps visually? I don't remember
| then name of that application. Wasn't it related to Microsoft
| Access or something? Hmm, the name eludes me...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Coldfusion?
| r6203 wrote:
| Microsoft Visual Fox Pro?
| 0des wrote:
| Why is there an otherwise helpful response to this that is
| already downvoted to [dead]?
|
| edit: It's back now, but I notice this happening a lot more
| than it used to. folks, for pete's sake if you find something
| inaccurate or unsupported in a post that causes you to want it
| gone, at least support your point with a comment for folks like
| me. Clueless people like myself end up wondering what the hell
| I just walked in on when it's dead comment after dead comment
| that otherwise seem like rational points in an interesting
| discussion.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| This site is very strange.
| Perstone wrote:
| There was quite a few. I remember building stuff in Microsoft
| Frontpage back in late 90s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage
| qalmakka wrote:
| That was Microsoft Frontpage I think. Dreamweaver was very
| similar to Frontpage in the 00's, I'm surprised it still
| exists.
| rchaud wrote:
| A doctor I know set up an appointment scheduling workflow using
| FileMaker on MacOS.
| Ocha wrote:
| FYI: certificate on https://bubbleapps.io is invalid and cases
| warnings before it redirects.
| Shiku wrote:
| Hey HN:
|
| Thanks for everyone who has tried to visit the site. The surge in
| traffic was unexpected, and I realize that it slowed down the
| load time, so I've added a 'boost' to the site.
|
| Besides that, I should also clarify that this site was built to
| be 'web first'. It currently does not work on mobile (I didn't
| design it to work on mobile since I was only working on it for 2
| weeks).
|
| Hope the site loads better now. Will try to respond to other
| comments below
| tbran wrote:
| Very cool that you built this in such a short time!
|
| It makes me wonder if there will be a new segment of
| programmers that specialize in superfast no-code app creation.
| lyaa wrote:
| We still have many programmers whose entire programming work
| is customizing WordPress/Drupal themes so I don't doubt it.
| rchaud wrote:
| Webflow is trying to build such a community, but it's a
| website builder only, it's not for CRUD apps. Their blog
| posts usually have interviews with "Webflow-only" agencies.
| The work seems kinda amateurish though.
| wmeredith wrote:
| > specialize in superfast no-code app creation
|
| Rapid prototyping has been a valuable skill forever and I
| think this falls squarely under that.
| Shiku wrote:
| I really hope so.
|
| Also, I think there are a lot of opportunities for
| coders/programmer to to improve the space and come up with
| ways to support non-technical folks like myself.
|
| I think those folks will do pretty well.
| skywal_l wrote:
| Would they be programmers? Shouldn't we call them no-
| programmers?
| wmeredith wrote:
| Nah, only people working with assembly code are
| programmers.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| the thing with most no-code is that ultimately its exactly
| the same thing as coding only not typing letters into an
| ide and instead dragging around logical blocks that have
| the same functionality as keywords or libraries in a given
| language. It's removing the most surface-level features of
| programming but not the actual work or skill that goes into
| it
| pp19dd wrote:
| That's a subtle throwback to visual basic, I think, but not
| in a negative way.
| [deleted]
| foolinaround wrote:
| This looks awesome..
|
| I would ideally like a solution that builds it all out, and then
| allows me to download a docker container etc to deploy on my
| own...
|
| Essentially a builder that i can then deploy on my own (cloud or
| local) infrastructure.
|
| If I need to make code changes, I would come back to the website,
| make changes (version them with git) and build an updated docker
| container to roll out...
| elliekelly wrote:
| I suspect most no-code platforms are targeting users who have
| no idea that docker even exists let alone how to use it.
| darepublic wrote:
| Tried out bubble recently, and I am more pro nocode than most I
| would say, but it wasn't for me. Learning curve too high for
| inferior results imo
| glenvdb wrote:
| Inferior results to what exactly? Interested to know about
| alternatives you've used
| djanogo wrote:
| What happens when this org bans you or gets cancel requests from
| wing groups?, I assume you have to start over from scratch?
| admangan wrote:
| Love it! we built on bubble too initially for our MVP and then
| kept using it (we moved our LP to full stack for speed). We were
| a little nervous that this would dissuade investors but just
| found out a competitor raised 5 million and they are also built
| on bubble.
|
| These tools in my opinion aren't less devveloping it's just less
| syntacially knowledge. Often I have found using bubble is much
| harder than just writing a function to do the same thing. But on
| the aggregate I think that it allows for blazing fast ideation
| and experimentation.
|
| Definitely harder to stick to traditional design (material UI
| bootstrap etc.).
| devops000 wrote:
| Really cool! Would be great a video showing how to do it
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Still more usable and faster than actual Reddit.
| barkingcat wrote:
| No-code is just like serverless!
|
| It's made of other people's code!
| silon42 wrote:
| I hope it works when I disable javascript (it's no code after
| all).
| elnygren wrote:
| Nocode/lowcode is excellent for company internal apps & GUIs.
| Imagine things like barcode/QRcode scanner app for warehouse that
| just needs to send an HTTP call somewhere. Stakeholders/business
| people might be able to complete some smaller apps & views & GUIs
| themselves an no need to wait for engineering support.
|
| It's likely never going to produce production quality web UIs for
| sites that have millions of consumer users where everything has
| to be optimised by hand but that's not really most use cases or
| the case for NoCode/LowCode.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Sure, it won't be used for millions of users, but I am already
| seeing plenty of startup MVPs built entirely from no code.
|
| I can see a near future where no code offers the ability to
| take the model as built and start hand optimizing the code once
| things start to get off the ground.
| jefflombardjr wrote:
| I love no code! Wait. Wait. Hear me out... Building software is
| easy. _Changing people 's minds is damned near impossible._
|
| As an engineer:
|
| - I'm constantly handed shitty (or a complete lack thereof)
| requirements from non-technical people. No code lets people
| figure out that they haven't thought something out nearly as much
| as they think they have. I no longer am the bearer of bad news.
|
| - I constantly see business people undervalue the design process
| or skip it all together. No code is making non-technical people
| realize that they have to plan out before they just throw
| engineers at a problem.
|
| No code is changing the dialog around this. I see that as a net
| positive. Of course us software engineers know the problems
| around no-code - we'll deal with them as we deal with all
| problems.
| vsareto wrote:
| It's great if it stops at dialogue and they don't force you to
| stay on the no-code platform.
|
| It kinda sucks we need to develop products to convince people
| that hired us that we might know a thing or two about building
| software
| jefflombardjr wrote:
| Ever read this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
| ramblerman wrote:
| Great point! It's scary how little thought people give to this.
|
| My all time favourite was when I made a news portal for a
| trader who wanted to create a hub around the commodity he was
| trading.
|
| It was mostly customized drupal with a few tweaks he desired,
| and roles for writing/reviewing/members.
|
| Come demo time he was upset there were no news articles in his
| "news portal". At first I thought he wanted more lorem ipsum
| content to see what it would look like. But no, he really
| expected that I would also have written the initial news
| articles for his website.
| fakedang wrote:
| What if he meant having the news related to his commodity
| delivered via some news API?
| zomglings wrote:
| Just wanted to let you know that these are very good points and
| you've changed my mind about no code.
| austincheney wrote:
| > I'm constantly handed shitty (or a complete lack thereof)
| requirements from non-technical people.
|
| My solution to that is that for every missing requirement I
| will make own personal decision and fill the gaps as I see fit.
| If that's not what they want then the development window is
| extended to incorporate changes and refactoring. I am not going
| to work late or stress over deadlines because that isn't my
| failed delivery and it is working as designed.
| devortel wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the list of problems with no-code? Of
| course I'm not denying there are problems with no-code, I'd
| like to learn about other developers' issues, particularly with
| larger, longer-term projects.
| [deleted]
| ren_engineer wrote:
| most obvious would be you are building your business on
| rented land and could be deplatformed at any time plus strong
| armed into extreme markup prices with no leverage against the
| platform.
|
| The other issue is that it seems doubtful the product could
| scale beyond a certain level in terms of traffic and also
| employees collaborating to add features
| foxbee wrote:
| The primary problems with some no-code platforms are:
|
| Access to the code base - it's hard to build on top of, or
| around the platform
|
| Long-term viability - if i build my company on top of your
| product, how can I be sure you'll always be around?
|
| For transparency, I am the cofounder of Budibase:
| https://github.com/Budibase/budibase
| codegeek wrote:
| Ultimately no code will require "code" for a real robust
| production app.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| And at that point all of that no-code turns from an
| accelerator into a giant pile of legacy crap outside of
| your control which will cause you to hit a wall of ability
| to evolve the software far sooner than later.
| [deleted]
| jerf wrote:
| I think there's an interesting analogy to be drawn with Lego.
| You can build interesting and useful things out of Lego, more
| than you may even realize. It can be fast & effective, it's
| certainly easy, especially if you imagine we've abstracted
| away the question of what bricks you have so you have as many
| as you need of any kind & color.
|
| However, you end up with two sorts of problems if you start
| letting people just build solutions to whatever they like
| with Lego:
|
| 1. The solutions may work, but they aren't really _that_
| good. You can only do what there 's Lego bricks for. When it
| comes time to solve the problem at the next level, the Lego
| stuff can be less helpful than it looks even as a prototype,
| as even at small scales a lot of the engineering in the Lego
| was solving around the limitations of Lego in the first
| place, rather than solving the problem per se.
|
| 2. Eventually you get people trying to build sheds and houses
| out of legos, struggling to put up shelves, all kinds of
| silly things that the solution isn't really suitable for. And
| there's a variety of pathologies here, too, like how they
| don't understand why their Lego solution isn't good enough,
| and why you can't just buff up their shelf since it's just
| that the shelf is falling over, and explaining to them that
| they basically just built a shed that is _made_ out of code
| violations may not be very easy, etc.
|
| There are advantages, too, like letting them get their hands
| on some engineering and stuff, and there are a lot of
| problems in the world where a Lego solution is no big deal. I
| don't know if I've got anything right now, but I've done it
| before; I had a lego setup for holding tablets & phones for
| charging that was better than anything I've bought, because
| it actually had the correct sizes for things, for instance.
| But there's limits.
| a_humean wrote:
| No-code eventually becomes so complex that it becomes a bad
| programming language eventually, or lacks the expressiveness
| of a programming language to do what the business wants.
|
| The imagined problem no-code addresses is business people
| thinking that their requirements are simple, and the source
| of their problems are expensive software developers and
| programming languages. Just get a junior business analyst to
| drag some boxes around, and job done. They are wrong.
|
| This pattern has been repeated for decades now.
| effingwewt wrote:
| You made me laugh so hard as just yesterday I was re-watching
| 'The Expert' on youtube[1],just always hit close to home.
| Mylanta, try designing a Logo for a business, or website, or
| front/back-end, or apps... I think it's the customer never
| knowing what they really want that's the common denominator.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
| rchaud wrote:
| Thank you. HN is one of the few places where no-code is
| discussed at length, and it's frustrating how many programmers
| default to replying with "I would never use this in
| production."
|
| You don't have to. The no-coder is building a prototype, safely
| sandboxed away from your precious CI/CD pipeline. The benefit
| of building a robust prototype is that the idea-haver person
| doesn't bother developers with unfinished requirements, and the
| developers don't have to write a damn thing until they look
| through the prototype and start mapping out some changes.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| No-code is going to be used in production for sure. It's not
| something only for sandboxing and prototypes.
| rchaud wrote:
| My point is that the conversation about such tools is
| derailed by HN programmers who automatically jump to the
| conclusion that these products are the wet dreams of non-
| technical CEOs, who will force their org to go no-code
| exclusively.
|
| If no-code tools are used in production, that implies that
| it will have to pass QA and code review, just like anything
| else.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| > I'm constantly handed shitty (or a complete lack thereof)
| requirements from non-technical people. No code lets people
| figure out that they haven't thought something out nearly as
| much as they think they have. I no longer am the bearer of bad
| news.
|
| Personally I find this to be part of the Job. The way I look at
| it i'm the one looking at sites all day, I'm the one caught up
| on all the latest trends, I'm the one who knows what looks good
| and what doesn't. My client on the other hand, they will likely
| know what they want, but when it comes to describing it, they
| may offer a nebulous response.
|
| My job here is to take that nebulous response and form it into
| requirements. One thing I do all the time is if a client asks
| me to do something on the site and I can't discern what they
| want me to do, I will usually ask them where they go the idea.
| They will say something like "Oh pinterest, instagram,
| facebook, etc have something like this", we pull up that site
| and they show me, and from there I adjust requirement
| accordingly.
|
| I don't hold this against any of my clients, it's ok if they
| don't quite know what they want, I'm the professional and it's
| my job to figure that out.
| [deleted]
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| I agree entirely with you, except.. i don't mind the design
| process (or lack there of) you describe. I feel i get paid for
| it.
|
| I'm in a smaller org and yea, the product team definitely
| skimps on plenty of details. When i have to point out drastic
| UX flaws or impossibilities it is definitely frustrating.
| However i legitimately think that is what they hired for. They
| wanted someone (well, a team of devs) to deal with this stuff.
| To be the architect of their general direction.
|
| The bigger question to me is if the positions we have that more
| traditionally handle a more complete design.. are they being
| overpaid in our org? I don't think i'm being _underpaid_ for my
| architect + dev hat, but i do wonder if someone else is also
| being paid for architect but i'm cleaning up for them lol.
|
| I've also found that the designers seem to.. for better or
| worse, take what you give. I notice they give me a far more
| loose definition than they give less experienced devs. I
| suspect this is because they expect/trust me to follow through,
| and i do - but this also effectively takes "advantage" of what
| i offer. I use quotes because i also get paid much more than
| the other devs i speak of, so i go back to what i said earlier,
| i think i get paid for this.
|
| It's frustrating. But i also enjoy it a bit. If they laid
| everything out perfectly i'd be left with just writing the
| correct design patterns in code, using the right data
| structures, etc. Worse yet i wouldn't have the ability to shape
| the UX for better performance. I dunno, all the companies i've
| been at have been like this. I don't feel it's unique, but
| maybe it's just how i put myself out there.
| rrdharan wrote:
| > the positions we have that more traditionally handle a more
| complete design.. are they being overpaid in our org?
|
| Probably, depending on the size of the org. There are lots of
| places for semi technical people who sort of know what
| they're doing, but don't really provide value, to hang out in
| a large and growing enterprise sales org. They can collect
| what I believe are reasonable salaries and just route between
| the engineers on the customer side who actually know what
| they want, and engineers on the provider side who can
| actually provide it.
|
| Any giant coupling between an application and platform ends
| up looking like this, I.e. pick your favorite Fortune 500
| company and their cloud provider, security engagements,
| hardware vendors etc.
|
| > I don't think i'm being _underpaid_ for my architect + dev
| hat, but i do wonder if someone else is also being paid for
| architect but i'm cleaning up for them lol.
|
| Yep. I made a joke recently that in companies that have a
| formalized promotion process, if you apply for promotion and
| are denied, one of the consolation prizes should be that you
| get to apply for someone else to be demoted. I jest, but
| sometimes it feels like that would be just as helpful and
| fulfilling.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| I had a tech-savvy friend want to build an app but the project
| wasn't very well defined. After a short period of angst I
| suggested that he build an MVP in Bubble and that I could step
| in to work on any integrations that needed code support. It
| worked exactly as you said.
| replwoacause wrote:
| I gave bubble a serious look and quickly discovered its
| performance was abysmal. I suppose it is OK if you want to
| prototype or create an MVP, but if you think you are going to
| create something that can scale you are sorely mistaken.
| Considering this, I found it to not be worth the learning curve
| since the time I would spend would be a sunk cost if the app were
| to actually take off because it would need to be completely
| rewritten in actual code.
| foolinaround wrote:
| i guess these really are for a subset of apps, that you know
| wont grow a lot!
|
| Internal apps in companies around processes, etc.
| antihero wrote:
| Why is everywhere I move the mouse a pointer cursor?
| Shiku wrote:
| You probably need to log in. The landing screen is only a
| preview of what's in the app. You can interact with the app
| when you log in, and you can even log in as a test user.
|
| Click login, go to the bottom of the login page, and click 'log
| in as test user'
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Pretty slow to load for me on mobile.. perhaps just because of
| all the HN traffic?
| rchaud wrote:
| Probably. It loaded fine for me just now.
| machtesh wrote:
| I made a reddit-like app/website on Bubble about 1.5 years ago
| and overall I was very happy with the speed I was able to get it
| out there. I built it in a few days which I personally never
| would have been able to do in code.
|
| But since it relies on SEO to succeed, I'm now considering coding
| it from scratch because it's a huge limitation in Bubble.
|
| https://tastejury.com
| tchock23 wrote:
| Can you share more about the SEO limitations of bubble you
| experienced? I wasn't aware that is a limitation.
| [deleted]
| Macdougall wrote:
| We should surreptitiously push no-code as much as possible on the
| internet because in 2-4 years we'll be the ones that will get the
| contracts to port this hunk of shit to django
| ben-gy wrote:
| This is impressive for sure. It really makes me think how
| hackathons must be evolving with this type of tech available
| (last hackathon I participated in was ~8 years ago).
|
| That said, and I feel a bit old for saying this, but I still
| prefer to write the code myself.
|
| In every instance (so far) I've found I can produce the exact
| outcomes required faster by writing code (Rails is still crazy
| fast to scaffold solutions and install libraries) than trying to
| force a no-code/low-code platform to produce an equivalent
| outcome in a similar time frame.
|
| Anyone else feel this way?
| jarpschop wrote:
| I prefer code in the end because the flexibility is provides.
| At the end, a bunch of edge cases and weird situations that
| can't be handled by the simplified solution will arise, and in
| those situations having a complete programming language is the
| only way to get above them.I find the simplifying assumptions
| that low-code frameworks rely on sooner or later end up
| braking.
| ramoz wrote:
| So... I wish I could share how my company/team-within has been
| approaching federal procurement tech challenges. We've built
| automation from a design-first perspective, to combine what
| generation tools like Create React App, Ruby On Rails, .NET
| Entity, JHipster, openapi, etc all do. But with further
| abstraction through templating and initial app overhead
| buildout.
|
| We'd have an mvp reddit in a day, scalable as needed (right now
| on K8s in any cloud).
|
| Working on open source!!
| hamburgerwah wrote:
| They definitely captured the slow as molasses performance of
| reddit.
| oauea wrote:
| Once it finally loaded all I saw was icons and no text. Bizarre
| and not very usable. Stick to code.
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