
Show HN: Yazz Pilot – Self Service Apps Without the IT Department - zubairq
https://github.com/zubairq/pilot
======
zubairq
Hi Zubair here, I just posted a project called Pilot that I have been working
with on and off for many years now. The tool is supposed to be a Visual basic
style drag and drop GUI builder for enterprise apps. the interesting part of
the backstory is that this is my 7th attempt to build this!

So the back story is: I first thought about building a web based development
tool since I was at University where I built a Hypercard style development
tool called OpenPage (using C++ on Solaris) as my Computer Science project
which scored as one of the highest projects of the year at Machester
University, UK (1994). My beginners confidence didn't carry on into anything
concrete though, until 2000, when I wrote the second version in Java, but this
didn't go anywhere. For a third version I tried to develop this in Javascript,
Ruby and Sintra in 2007, but I didn't realise how difficult a problem this
was. Also, in 2008 a fourth attempt was made where I tried again in Erlang,
but it didn't go anywhere. So I hung up my boots and then in 2013 after
building a startup NemCV with Franco Soldera I tried a fifth time and built a
Clojure/Clojurescript based tool called Clojure on Coils, which was pretty
cool, but most people thought it was a joke. Eventually after a couple of
years I realised that I didn't understand the problem well enough, so for
attempt six decided to outsource the problem by investing in a project by
Chris Granger and Rob Attori, called LightTable/Eve. They tried to solve the
problem of building a usable development system, but by 2018, they too
realised that this was a huge task, and very hard to monetise.

So, I took a step back and realised that I now had a lot of knowledge about
the subject, but needed to find a way to build something that can be
commercially viable as an entry point, as this is a problem that 10,000s of
companies have tackled and failed at (since the 1980s - just pick up a 1980s
edition of Personal Computer to see many companies attempting the same thing).
So I am now taking baby steps with a seventh attempt, by building a tool for
enterprise users to build small webapps which can integrate with other
systems, based on the look and feel of one of my favorite products of all
time, Visual Basic 6. The product is called Pilot, and has a simple VB style
editor, and allows you to build GUI apps, and microservices. It uses a simple
component model based on 1 Javascript function per component, for both server
side and front end components. It uses NodeJS, SQLite, and VueJS. It used to
run as an Electron dekstop app but the I decided to dump Electron once I made
Pilot container native so that it can run on Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift,
and Ubuntu Snap, as Electron would make the container runtimes too large. So
the big focus now is to make alot of integrations so that people who work in
large enterprises and just want to build a GUI really fast can build an app on
top 3Scale, Mulesoft, Kong, Rest APIs, Postgres or other enterprise stuff.

There have been many people involved in this project and I give my thanks to
them, since they have written alot of the code. Unfortunately I am the only
person who is happy to put my name to the commits as I have a very forward
thinking employer, Red Hat, although there have been major contributors from
Google and Microsoft as well. Also, I must stress that this project and the
views of myself and other team members in no way represents the views of our
employers at Red Hat, Google, or Microsoft.

The project is still very rough around the edges, but please feel free to
reach out to me for any questions that you may have.

~~~
thinkingkong
I might be doing it wrong but it doesnt seem to take mobile into account at
all. The website is all rendered incorrectly. Its not really a good commentary
on what youve spent all your time on but first impressions are super
important, as you wont have a lot of time to communicate what youre trying to
accomplish.

~~~
zubairq
Yes, you are totally right, Yazz Pilot sucks on mobile right now. Our first
priority is to get it working well with Google Chrome on Desktop (most
Enterprise users still chained to Laptops). Second priority is to get it
working on Firefox well. Third is Tablets, and last is mobile.

------
dspillett
Imitating VB6 might be the wrong direction for a lot of people here. I can see
the point for devs, but not "Joe public" who has no desire to actually
program.

Most quick app needs for the common person trying to find better ways to do
their job, in my experience, tend to be of the "I want to collect or collate
some data and output some reports" and for that Access might be the better
starting model, maybe taking some UX inspiration from the way people use/abuse
Excel in similar contexts.

Cool project though, don't let my thoughts (which could easily be quite wrong)
stop you, especially if your target is people who do (or want to) dev a bit
rather than people who would prefer not.

------
ataxexe
I was present at two demos Zubair did and it really looks promising.

I've seen some tools like that and the big non-tech problem was always how to
sell. Indeed there are a lot of developers that wouldn't use such tool, but
there is a _huge_ market that can benefit from it and it's awesome to see
Zubair aiming on the right spot and with one of the best approaches: Open
Source!

I'm closely looking forward to see Pilot reaching the cloud :)

~~~
zubairq
Thanks, I know who you are dude. Actually the work you did of installing full
OpenShift 3.11 (Kubernetes distro from Red Hat) on a standalone cluster which
you carry in your backpack was a big inspiration to me to make Pilot portable
and to work on Kubernetes
([https://www.backpackcloud.com/episodes/episode-1-a-portable-...](https://www.backpackcloud.com/episodes/episode-1-a-portable-
cloud-provider))

------
magicmouse
I have been watching this project for a while, but now i can see the full
source code. A very ambitious project as so many of the "low code" products
today are basically fixed ecosystems where the components are sourced by the
company, and you basically mix and match pie chart drawing modules with line
graphs, etc., to make dashboards. This is more like VB6 which i understand was
the goal. Many people consider VB6 to be the peak of power * ease of use.

~~~
zubairq
The project has always been OpenSource, so full source code was always
available. Yes you are right, I would like Yazz Pilot to be a total VB6 clone,
but I still can't implement 90% of what VB6 did like Modules and inline
stepping through code

Aren't you the Beads guy ([http://beadslang.org/](http://beadslang.org/))? I
have seen it before and it looks pretty cool

------
rboyd
This looks pretty interesting! Is there any auth model today or would this be
best deployed behind the DMZ?

~~~
zubairq
At the moment you can only protect an app made in Pilot using Keycloak or
Redhat SSO. The option can be found in the top menu of the editor.

In the future we already have plans to support active directory and other
security models

~~~
rboyd
Perfect. I love Keycloak. Thanks!

------
Gys
What are comparable alternative products and why do your alpha version users
think this is better?

~~~
tyingq
I see some similarity to Google's Appmaker.

~~~
zubairq
Yeah, Google app maker is pretty cool, but I think only available as a cloud
option. Maybe in the future we could offer cloud hosting of Pilot like
Wordpress does as one possible revenue option

~~~
tyingq
Yes, and not only that, but apps you make in Appmaker are only visible to
those that have an account in your Gsuite domain. You can't expose the app to
customers or partners unless you add them as a Gsuite user. I think that was a
mistake on Google's part.

~~~
zubairq
Does that mean that you can’t share appmaker apps with people using their
internal company email address if their email is not hosted by google mail?

~~~
tyingq
You have to login with your Gsuite credentials. You don't have to use the
email.

The downside I'm thinking of is, for example:

You build an app for people to apply for jobs at your company.

AppMaker won't support that unless you pay for a Gsuite license for every job
applicant. Or do the external user facing stuff in something else and
integrate...but that kills the whole purpose of low code.

~~~
zubairq
Hmmm, interesting, thanks for this, I will have to think about this, how to do
login and security correctly. Any good web links you have on this please share
so that I can research it, thanks!

~~~
tyingq
Most similar tools like Knack, Quickbase, etc, have separate ideas and pricing
for "internal org users" and "external users" that register/log in, as well as
"app exposed to the internet with no login required".

~~~
zubairq
Ok, interesting. Our initial thoughts are to use Red Hat style pricing, so
that Yazz Pilot open source version is free for both external and internal
users to use the tool, and companies only pay if they want a support contract
for help or urgent bugs, pretty much the same model as Red Hat

