

Show HN: Parabola.io – Automate your work with visual programming - alexyaseen
https://parabola.io/
Hi HN!<p>I’m Alex from Parabola (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;parabola.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;parabola.io</a>). Parabola is a visual programming tool for creating functional data flows that everyone can use. It’s entirely drag-and-drop, handles data sizes much larger than a traditional spreadsheet, calculates everything live, and can run your flows on a schedule of your choosing.<p>I used to work in strategy consulting, doing data analytics for SMBs and Fortune 500 companies. The amount of time wasted on menial tasks was astounding. Things like cleaning data, generating custom reports, creating human workflows to solve shortcomings in third party tools, etc.<p>Non-technical people have to rely on doing things manually or using fragile spreadsheets that solve only part of their use cases. We don&#x27;t think everyone should have to learn to code in order to work productively (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;parabola-labs&#x2F;not-everyone-needs-to-learn-how-to-code-32f47ea7a171" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;parabola-labs&#x2F;not-everyone-needs-to-learn...</a>). That’s why we’re building the tools to help people stop wasting so much time on manual processes, and instead focus on their actual core competencies.<p>We’ve made some interesting decisions in the design of Parabola’s visual programming “language”. We’d love to hear what you think and are happy to discuss our thought process in the comments.
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alexyaseen
Hi HN!

I’m Alex from Parabola ([https://parabola.io](https://parabola.io)). Parabola
is a visual programming tool for creating functional data flows that everyone
can use. It’s entirely drag-and-drop, handles data sizes much larger than a
traditional spreadsheet, calculates everything live, and can run your flows on
a schedule of your choosing.

I used to work in strategy consulting, doing data analytics for SMBs and
Fortune 500 companies. The amount of time wasted on menial tasks was
astounding. Things like cleaning data, generating custom reports, creating
human workflows to solve shortcomings in third party tools, etc.

Non-technical people have to rely on doing things manually or using fragile
spreadsheets that solve only part of their use cases. We don't think everyone
should have to learn to code in order to work productively
([https://medium.com/parabola-labs/not-everyone-needs-to-
learn...](https://medium.com/parabola-labs/not-everyone-needs-to-learn-how-to-
code-32f47ea7a171)). That’s why we’re building the tools to help people stop
wasting so much time on manual processes, and instead focus on their actual
core competencies.

We’ve made some interesting decisions in the design of Parabola’s visual
programming “language”. We’d love to hear what you think and are happy to
discuss our thought process in the comments.

~~~
some_account
It's a very nice idea but these tools always have limitations that become
super annoying after a while.

Programming is total freedom to do what you want and these tools try to make
it look like you cab drag and drop data flows together and it will just work
in a optimal way. And it will at first, until your first special or odd
requirement needs to somehow be implemented in that tool.

~~~
murukesh_s
Why can't you use a coding widget(not sure if this tool supports it) in those
special cases? In that way common things are super easy and you can also
tackle those corner cases as well.

~~~
hacker_9
But who is writing the widget? If it's a programmer, then why is he using this
tool when most of this stuff is one liners in code anyway? And if it's a non-
programmer, he now can't do something that he may have still been able to do
in excel.

~~~
derrikcurran
A non-developer who has access to developers. A developer can be paid to write
the widget, which would likely be cheaper, easier, and faster than paying a
developer for every minor change. It really depends on context. In a larger
organization, for example, the user might have access to plenty of developers
but need to open a ticket and wait forever every time they need something.

------
chatmasta
I’ve seen a lot of attempts at this product, and none have really caught my
eye. Looks like you really nailed it. Btw, great marketing website. The use
cases section is critical and it’s amazing how many sites miss that.

As others have alluded to, the challenge will be when users need to do
something non-standard with the data. From your comments, it sounds like
everything is built in JS. Is your multitenancy isolated enough that you would
be able to build a JS scripting engine? That is, to enable power users to drop
in some custom logic when they need to, by writing JS against a simple API.

How long ago did you launch? How did you find your first customers, and are
they happy with the product?

Also would be keen to hear the story of your journey to product/market fit.
Did the product always look like this? Did you talk to users as you built it?
It’s such an ambitious project, I’d be scared I was building the wrong thing
for months while getting to launch. But it seems like you’ve already hit
product/market fit, so kudos for that.

------
adamfeldman
This feels like [https://ballerina.io/](https://ballerina.io/) but for non-
programmers, and with SaaS integrations built-in. I've spent so much time
moving CSV between systems at an ecommerce company.

Congrats on the launch, this looks awesome! Would love to learn more about how
it was built.

~~~
cbkirk
Thanks @adamfeldman. Parabola originally was pure JS: running the majority of
each step function of the language in the user’s browser, making use of some
python API endpoints and React and Immutable.js for some performance
enhancements to know when steps needed to be calculated and rendered.

Given there are definite limitations with browser based JS and user’s systems,
we’re now a fully cloud based compute environment. As users make changes in
our React UI, we send the work to a queue and then distribute it by parsing
the flow tree across various node worker servers so steps can run in parallel
(if your flow is built that way). Each step is self contained and we then use
sockets (powered by PubNub) to notify the UI of changes.

~~~
toomuchtodo
This is a great way to scale your system. Well done.

AWS Lambda is fairly reliable for running untrusted functions (as well as
trusted functions with carefully managed inputs) at scale for customers, but
any function provider should work well for this purpose (as long as their
container lifecycle meets your needs).

------
pier25
Obviously this is meant for companies or individuals without developers or
technical skills. If you have the technical knowledge a lock in service like
this doesn't make much sense.

The problem is that someone without a technical background won't initially see
the value in a tool like this and I doubt non technical companies/individuals
will need as much automation to justify it's price.

Edit: I think a much more sensible pricing would have been to offer a desktop
app and then charge users for the automations they want online on a
consumption basis.

~~~
sharmata
wouldn't it save programmers time? Instead of setting up a writing a program,
debugging it, maintaining it, etc?

------
dbranes
Had to scroll down the page for a while before understanding the point of
this: drag-and-drop data transformation pipelines that comes with app
integrations at both ends. It’s a great idea!

------
hoppelhase
Looks a bit like [http://luna-lang.org](http://luna-lang.org) to me. Are there
similarities?

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arosier
Love the UI. One bit of feedback: on
[https://parabola.io/](https://parabola.io/) under "Self Documenting and
Repeatable" I keep clicking the play buttons in the screenshot.

~~~
nickreese
Did the exact same thing.

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web007
This looks pretty good, like Yahoo Pipes or IFTTT with a decent flow editor.

------
ApolloRising
I understand your business pricing but your personal pricing is quite high at
600/yr for a regular simple user. You may want to consider testing it because
consumers are used to 10 per month for the entire adobe photography suite. I
know you are just starting up but I think you are going to get less traction
at that price point.

------
nathan_f77
This looks really awesome! I would love to build an integration for FormAPI
[1], which would allow people to fill in PDFs. We would save the PDFs to
Dropbox or send them as an email.

I'll send a message on the site chat!

[1] [https://formapi.io](https://formapi.io)

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pathartl
So, SSIS?

Where I work we're currently replacing everything that's SSIS with .NET
services. I get the idea that taking the code out of it seems easier, but I've
found it usually just leads to frustrating limitations. For our latest data
migration we're moving things out of some SQL-based ticketing system, online
accounting services, and FileMaker into Dynamics 365. Sure, it's not pretty to
look at, but we can do some deep manipulation and mapping to existing entities
in Dynamics that is frankly a chore in any sort of other migration tool.

Ninja Edit: To handle stuff like scheduling, endpoints, etc we use Azure
functions.

------
nickreese
Any plans for a “grab the latest file of this naming pattern from an SFTP”
workflow?

~~~
alexyaseen
We do indeed! We're adding name pattern matching to our file storage sources
(dropbox, box, etc.) and also adding an FTP source. If you send an email to hi
[at] parabola.io we can add you to the list to get notified. Also let us know
if there are any edge cases you'd need it to support so we can make sure
you'll be good to go.

------
sebringj
What features are better than Zapier? I am curious as I use Zapier for
automating stuff I don't want to program especially for marketing releated and
this does look like the flow can be more advanced?

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dickbasedregex
I've been brainstorming a shallow, poor-man's poor man version of this. I
couldn't hope to compete. This looks incredible. Kudos!

~~~
w_t_payne
I've been trying to write a python-based version for embedded applications...

~~~
dickbasedregex
I could see that. I've heard the tools in that space are terrible. That
related to your day job industry?

python-based version for tabular data processing & management, ecom oriented
mostly (so basically op's product), myself.

~~~
w_t_payne
My main motivation is to have a tool that I can use for both prototyping
algorithms and bringing those algorithms into production without having to
jump to an entirely different set of tools and techniques.

------
sireat
Looks great, reminds of Labview a bit. :)

Target market is something that UIPath currently addresses is it not?

How does Parabola handle authorization issues? Is it mostly through the right
API?

I am teaching Python to office personnel who balked at the high price of
UIPath but might find Parabola pricing easier to accept.

------
markatkinson
This is awesome. I am currently working with a team to develop a workflow tool
with an eventual designer. This is very inspiring.

Take a look at Microsoft's logic apps, it is slightly more generalist, and not
so focused on data processing but not nearly as polished as Parabola.

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antoineleclair
Congratulations for the launch. Definitely a good idea. I'm a developer and
personally won't need this, but I'll definitely suggest this when I think this
could replace some "real coding".

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BerislavLopac
This is pretty much exactly what was supposed to be the main product of a
startup I worked with some three years ago. Unfortunately the founders had
unrealistic ideas about funding and the work required.

------
tlavoie
Does this all run as some user's ID? Is it storing/managing credentials for
them?

RPA tools seem to be all the rage, but questions around accountability,
auditability and other security aspects still stand out.

------
asasidh
you should allow to quickly testrun the product without having to signup.

------
closetnerd
Is there any plans to offer Jira/Atlassian integration?

~~~
cbkirk
That's definitely on our roadmap, and we move things around based on
need/interest of users. Shoot us an email to hi [at] parabola.io with what
you're looking to do and we'd love to see how we can help.

------
snrji
This looks exactly like an online version of Talend.

------
everdev
How is this different from Zapier or IFTT?

~~~
chrisfrantz
More transformations it looks like. You could probably pipe things through
Google Sheets to replicate most of what this is doing but that’s an extra
step. The whole point is to eliminate those.

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omegote
Pentaho anyone?

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sharemywin
Nothing for windows? MS Office?

~~~
badtechstuff
Microsoft has "Flow" which is basically Parabola, but considerably more
confusing for end-users.

~~~
hug
This is about as true as it gets.

Also, the UI for flow is _absolutely atrocious_ once you start adding large
numbers of conditionals.

------
skanga
Great idea - especially for non-programmers.

The question I have is - can it outperform the command line? (see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135841](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135841)
for more)

I almost always use awk/mawk for such things.

