
Airtable Apps - the_watcher
https://blog.airtable.com/airtable-platform-launch-automations-sync-apps
======
fmakunbound
Goddamn it's hard to build stuff with Airtable. I tried building a spreadsheet
like thing with a couple of other web services for things like images and
locations along with user access controls and it was such a pain. Ended up
push it out to a custom service in a Droplet which did most of the work.

~~~
ubermonkey
I had a thing that was outgrowing Excel, and a bunch of people said "Airtable!
Airtable! Airtable!" and holy cow do I ever now downgrade any technical rec
those people give me.

Maybe I do not understand Airtable, but given its limitations I'm 100% not
sure why it exists in a world that includes Google Sheets.

~~~
kroltan
The good thing about Airtable for me is how it is very convenient to set up
connected data and navigate that.

At the company I work for we use it to encode the scripts (as in
screenwriting) of interactive fiction, which allows us to have a nice schema
to define information about characters, dialogues and other game elements.

I also use it as the backing database for my personal website, sort of as a
CMS. I'm also making an e-commerce site for my dad that will use it to store
product, client and order information.

Wintergatan (of Marble Machine fame) has a team of people collaborating on
making a digital CAD version of their physical machine, and they use Airtable
for task management and as a structured wiki.

I do wish that Airtable supported some other things, but it does fill a good
niche where you need a more organized and connected spreadsheet with a
convenient way of visualizing data beyond charting.

Google Sheets works fine, but there is no alternative for Airtable's record
links, which is how one expresses relations between tables. You can get data
from other tables, yes, but more often than not range syntax breaks, or
someone puts the wrong data type somewhere and it's tricky to debug. For me,
the main selling point of Airtable is record links and typed columns.

I don't think Airtable will be replacing general purpose spreadsheets anytime
soon, nor can it handle very math-y sheets well either.

~~~
faitswulff
> very convenient to set up connected data

Does this include random public JSON endpoints? I might have to take a look at
it for a project I just started.

~~~
kroltan
I meant data that has references to other parts of itself, not connection as
in internet.

------
core-questions
Most of these apps are useless garbage nobody wants and few people are proud
of working on. Even the biggest flagship apps are pretty thin - organized
hitchhiking, a replacement for television, a new modern version of the Sears
catalog.

This "article" is just an ad for Airtable which looks like a reasonably
competent low-code system. Commercial low-code systems (e.g. ServiceNow as a
more entrenched established comparison) exist so as to lock you into a
platform for which you'll pay exorbitant per-user pricing that really starts
to hurt as you scale up.

Maybe there's value to be realized by letting individual teams have influence
over their business processes while still using a centrally organized system;
but there are many significant costs to locking into something like this, and
when you hit its limits you're still going to need coders and custom
middleware, all of which will again be a sunk cost into a proprietary system
you can never have real control over.

~~~
reilly3000
Having built a lot of glue apps with Airtable it’s definitely the case that
coders and middleware get involved fairly quickly beyond spreadsheet use
cases. I’m quite certain that Airtable > Spreadsheets, if for nothing else
that field types, views, comments, and permissions are far more ergonomically
implemented. The 50K row limit is quickly met for some use cases. Airtable
proved out visual SQL and now is going full no-code with their Apps system. I
think this makes for a big opportunity for a novel no-code OSS tool. Node-Red
is fantastic, but having that central data layer at hand is a killer feature.

------
SrslyJosh
If your answer to a problem is "I'll just write the solution myself", this
isn't for you.

But if you don't have the time or programming skills to create something from
scratch, Airtable is a very compelling alternative to "I'll just throw it in a
spreadsheet."

~~~
haswell
I could not agree more. I fit very much in the "I'll just write the solution
myself" camp, but as a product manager at a company that sells enterprise low-
code software, you've hit the nail on the head for why people buy these
solutions.

Orgs don't buy these solutions because they believe the end result is somehow
better than a pro dev team and a proper software project. They buy these
solutions because they can't afford to put their pro devs on some use cases,
or just simply don't have that kind of staffing on hand.

As an organization grows, the more "spreadsheet apps" there are, the messier
things get. It's harder for teams to collaborate with each other. It's harder
to replicate success across teams. Pretty soon, everything is
SharePoint+Spreadsheet hell.

Even if these low code platforms only provide one thing: a central data store
- they've helped immensely. But interestingly (and again, I'm a bit biased due
to my role/employer), people can actually make some pretty useful/functional
apps.

Often these are apps that would have never been turned into an app otherwise.
But the underlying business process benefits greatly.

I've also seen (a small percentage) of these simple apps become full-blown
apps managed by dedicated dev teams over time. The problem was validated, and
the value realized was so great, that the problem finally got the time of day
and a "proper" solution was implemented.

These things can't/won't replace "real" developers any time soon. But they do
provide a path to a very under-served segment of knowledge workers.

Personally, I think Microsoft could KILL if they made Excel more robust. I'm
not talking MS Access here - I'm talking about a modern, cloud-native app dev
platform that is centered on Excel. They already enjoy ubiquity, and they
could change the game.

There's a reason that the onboarding experience for most low-code platforms is
"Choose a spreadsheet to get started".

~~~
chenster
The low code platforms give raise the so-called citizen developers for biz
analies, PM alike. There are so much value because they don't need to squat
additional IT resource for simple internal apps to boost dept productivities,
when they grow beyond Excel.

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d0gbread
There's a lot of negativity on HN for tools like AirTable, but as someone that
uses Coda regularly, I find it invaluable as a prototyping tool, if not a
"production" internal app. There's nothing quite like having modeled and
populated tables in such a flexible tool while everyone is trying to reach
consensus.

~~~
nullsense
Yeah it's a fantastic prototyping tool. Or if all you need is a basic database
a couple of people will use with quite light usage.

I built a CMS for my wife's business and she's used it to manage all her
clients accounts for the last 3 years.

Took me all of an afternoon to figure out. It's been pretty solid, and
incredibly low maintenance for me.

~~~
tinus_hn
It’s probably an enormous upgrade from the Excel ‘databases’ that plague
enterprise.

------
coldtea
> _A half billion apps will be created. We need more software builders_

If "a half billion apps will be created", isn't the conclusion that we need
fewer software builders? A half billion apps sound way more than needed....

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
Indeed. I mean, just look at product hunt. Nearly every failure is due to lack
of demand because there's already way too many competing products built. And
there are a lot of failures. What is the percentage of apps that end up
getting a sizeable userbase, less than 1%? There's already such a vast
oversupply of software products out there without any additional platforms.

It's far more accurate to say, we need fewer software builders.

~~~
rileymat2
An exceedingly high number of restaurants fail in the first year, an industry
that has existed for centuries. And we are still opening new ones.

This is normal, there will be more and new software products.

~~~
vkou
Software, unlike restaurants, has trivial economies of scale, and colossal
start-up costs.

It's much cheaper to open a restaurant, then build a word processor that
someone can get value out of. It's much harder to build your restaurant chain
to serve 100,000 people, then it is to scale your word processor, that can
serve 100 people, to serve 100,000 people.

~~~
thebean11
It's pretty easy to build a tool or game that a few hundred people can get
value out of though right?

~~~
vkou
No, because there's this weird thing about developing apps.

If you have too few users, this means that you can't afford to eat, while too
many users means that _other app developers_ can't afford to eat.

~~~
thebean11
The company where I work has about a hundred engineers, and a team who makes
tools for those engineers. There are uncountably many small niches of software
customers, whether they're external or not.

------
VincentOrback
We need less apps!

~~~
amelius
But more web-apps.

------
bobbydreamer
Pretty much fine with [https://datatables.net/](https://datatables.net/)

~~~
hbcondo714
Looks like they just introduced a competitor to Airtable:

[https://cloudtables.com/](https://cloudtables.com/)

~~~
chenster
Doesn't seem do much other than a database with role permissions. Am I missing
anything?

------
jrm4
Why, yes, I too wish the world saw the value in modularity and that the Unixes
and Hypercards took off in the way they were intended, but it's going to take
a heck of a lot more than one company.

------
chromedev
I can see in the future when hiring for a software developer position using an
actual programming language, someone putting "Airtable" on their resume like
it means something.

~~~
puranjay
Well people already put Word and PowerPoint on their resumes like it means
something.

~~~
bleepblorp
Given how many kids and youth are growing up with only cell phones and limited
(or no) experience with real computers, these days Word and Powerpoint
experience is a differentiating skill in certain circumstances. It's obviously
not relevant for IT workers but it's absolutely something for employers to pay
attention to if they're hiring young people for unskilled positions.

------
rilut
Are there any open source alternative for Airtable?

------
thysultan
I offer myself as tribute!

------
throwaway123x2
Who is this "we" people keep referring to. I find the blanket "we's" so
annoying.

~~~
rglover
Well it's referring to "us," of course.

~~~
neverartful
That's what "they" say!

~~~
ninju
So says Yu!

~~~
tkgally
One might think so, but....

