6 ms·

Show HN: Reddit clone built in no-code in two weeks

152 points by Shiku 5y ago

barkingcat 5y ago
No-code is just like serverless! It's made of other people's code!
- silon42 5y ago
  I hope it works when I disable javascript (it's no code after all).
the-dude 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Still pending for me too. I'm going to assume this is here because of a voting ring
  - contravariant 5y ago
    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.
    - capableweb 5y ago
      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 5y ago
      Maybe, although I loaded it less than 4 minutes after it was posted. HN Hug of death must come really quick
    - Shiku 5y ago
      That was an issue based on the plan I was using in Bubble. I upgraded to a production plan which should work better now.
- gccs 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  > Slow as hell, to the point it does not load. So it looks like they nailed it.
  - Macha 5y ago
    Yep, definitely the authentic new reddit experience. Could even do twitter too.
    - Shiku 5y ago
      Actually someone already built a twitter clone in Bubble. Worth checking that out too :) https://notrealtwitter.com/ 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 5y ago
        that twitter clone is down
  - Shiku 5y ago
    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 :)
- Shiku 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    > This was never meant to be anything serious. Remember the Linux kernel was introduced to the world with pretty much those exact words.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  That sounds like the real Reddit experience.
dd36 5y ago
Is there no content?
- Shiku 5y ago
  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.
krageon 5y ago
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 5y ago
  [deleted]
- capableweb 5y ago
  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?
  - shusson 5y ago
    > Isn't "glorified WYSIWYG editor" basically what nocode is? Does bubble also handle deployment/infra?
    - capableweb 5y ago
      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.
  - krageon 5y ago
    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.
throwawaybchr 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 5y ago
no code / low code booooo
altacc 5y ago
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.
- capableweb 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Just use old reddit. It's fast. On mobile https://www.reddit.com/.compact https://www.reddit.com/.compact (with a dot before compact) still works.
    - kibwen 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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
      - NineStarPoint 5y ago
ALittleLight 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Sorry for not clarifying earlier. This was built to be a web-first clone only. It does not work on mobile.
js4ever 5y ago
Error: OwnerError Message: Operation timed out -- app too busy Code: 1628248706218x559231799994115000
throw_m239339 5y ago
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...
- Perstone 5y ago
  There was quite a few. I remember building stuff in Microsoft Frontpage back in late 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage
- qalmakka 5y ago
  That was Microsoft Frontpage I think. Dreamweaver was very similar to Frontpage in the 00's, I'm surprised it still exists.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Coldfusion?
- 0des 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    This site is very strange.
- r6203 5y ago
  Microsoft Visual Fox Pro?
- 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
obiwanpallav1 5y ago
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 5y ago
  That seems in-line with providing a reddit-like experience.
SilurianWenlock 5y ago
Is there a github for this?
tyingq 5y ago
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 5y ago
  True, I've got some Bubble credits so I've upgraded the plan (for the short term only). Will see how that helps
mcintyre1994 5y ago
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.
StreamBright 5y ago
Content provider built in no-code in 2 weeks without content
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
Shiku 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - Shiku 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    Would they be programmers? Shouldn't we call them no-programmers?
    - RugnirViking 5y ago
      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
    - wmeredith 5y ago
      Nah, only people working with assembly code are programmers.
  - 5y ago
jefflombardjr 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Ever read this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
- reilly3000 5y ago
  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.
- zomglings 5y ago
  Just wanted to let you know that these are very good points and you've changed my mind about no code.
- devortel 5y ago
  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.
antihero 5y ago
Why is everywhere I move the mouse a pointer cursor?
- Shiku 5y ago
  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'
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Macdougall 5y ago
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
oauea 5y ago
Once it finally loaded all I saw was icons and no text. Bizarre and not very usable. Stick to code.
andi999 5y ago
What no code platform was used? Also clicking post on my android doesn't work.
- Shiku 5y ago
  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
foolinaround 5y ago
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 5y ago
  I suspect most no-code platforms are targeting users who have no idea that docker even exists let alone how to use it.
darepublic 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Inferior results to what exactly? Interested to know about alternatives you've used
  - darepublic 5y ago
    You are right, haven't tried many alternatives. I suppose I've built a site for someone in squarespace, also backseat helped someone out with their wix based site. I want something really intuitive which would take no learning curve which is perhaps unrealistic. One person I know has used bubble and was satisfied with it, but to me it seemed like a bespoke type of language / gui based framework that had to be managed with a lot of dials and knobs, not eliminating the complexity just reformatting it in what is to me a foreign language. Also, I was not impressed by the quality of the site that was created with bubble but maybe that varies per user.
_throwawayaway 5y ago
Nice! I'd really like to see what owning, maintaining, scaling, customizing etc would be like in no-code context.
KingOfCoders 5y ago
"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.
doodlebugging 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Thank you! I appreciate the positive feedback :)
  - doodlebugging 5y ago
    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.
Graffur 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
sideproject 5y ago
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 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 5y ago
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"?
- asddubs 5y ago
  it seems to be built using this, but that's all I can tell you: https://bubble.io/ https://bubble.io/
  - Graffur 5y ago
    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)
- rchaud 5y ago
  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.
gorwell 5y ago
"no code", "serverless" Is anyone else annoyed by these terms?
- aethertron 5y ago
  Just a little.
- rytill 5y ago
  What replacement terms would you recommend?
  - CivBase 5y ago
    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.
Shiku 5y ago
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.
replwoacause 5y ago
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 5y ago
  i guess these really are for a subset of apps, that you know wont grow a lot! Internal apps in companies around processes, etc.
ben-gy 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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!!
c7DJTLrn 5y ago
Still more usable and faster than actual Reddit.
machtesh 5y ago
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 https://tastejury.com
- tchock23 5y ago
  Can you share more about the SEO limitations of bubble you experienced? I wasn’t aware that is a limitation.
adamqureshi 5y ago
Anyone know where i could find an HN clone UI opensource to build a niche niche news site?
joejohnston 5y ago
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_25ce0de660954493a371399aad475187#/ https://budibase.app/app_dev_25ce0de660954493a371399aad47518...
Ocha 5y ago
FYI: certificate on https://bubbleapps.io https://bubbleapps.io is invalid and cases warnings before it redirects.
uncomputation 5y ago
This may have had the opposite effect on me. I am no longer worried about being replaced by “no code” Bubble apps now.
aparsons 5y ago
This is extremely slow and laggy on the Pixel 3
- Shiku 5y ago
  This site is not optimised for mobile. Updated the site to reflect this. I built it for desktop viewing only
indigodaddy 5y ago
Pretty slow to load for me on mobile.. perhaps just because of all the HN traffic?
- rchaud 5y ago
  Probably. It loaded fine for me just now.
devops000 5y ago
Really cool! Would be great a video showing how to do it
djanogo 5y ago
What happens when this org bans you or gets cancel requests from wing groups?, I assume you have to start over from scratch?
surajs 5y ago
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
elnygren 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
m3kw9 5y ago
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
one_off_comment 5y ago
But... reddit already exists??
- Shiku 5y ago
  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.
hamburgerwah 5y ago
They definitely captured the slow as molasses performance of reddit.
admangan 5y ago
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.).
Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
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)
readonthegoapp 5y ago
Looks like reddit, for sure. OP: why did you build it? practice? hn points? hate on the nocode haters? work for bubble? consulting sales? all the above? i think it's strange that folks are using the "but it's good for rapid/throwaway prototyping/design!" argument. is it? if rapid prototyping is the argument for no code, well i get it -- but it's not the marketing i've seen for at least 10 years. outside of that, the biggest drawback is the cost, with the ever-looming threat that you're going to get pandora'd by the rent-seeking no-code platform (anything you potentially make will just be siphoned off). i know there are successful no code businesses -- even ones that are not just landing pages for no-code lessons, or no-code consulting, or no-code marketing, or no-code no-coding -- no-code tools really are a blessing for helping to democratize technology a tiny bit. but if you want to do something that no code tools _should_ be designed for, imo -- namely, prototyping ideas very quickly with an actual fair shot of beating out the big boys -- you can't do it without tons of expertise and money and influence and connections and all the stuff you usually need. you can't do it, in part, because branding / functionality / performance / etc. is all severely limited. want to try a new idea? sure - please go ahead - learn our 'no code' stack, give us $50/mo for your 'hello, world', and if you want to try Idea II, that will be anotehr $50/mo, thanks. working moms? poor/working class teens? 99% of the population? getoutttaaheeeere.
anotheryou 5y ago
I tried to use the twitter api with bubble and failed (not just authentication). I'm sure I'd have figured it out with plain code. There was a badly documented plugin for twitter and it could do a subset of what the API was capable of, but I didn't see how I could extend it meaningfully. I really wished API usage and low-code would get a bit more love.

152 points by Shiku 5y ago

barkingcat 5y ago

No-code is just like serverless! It's made of other people's code!

silon42 5y ago
I hope it works when I disable javascript (it's no code after all).

the-dude 5y ago

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 5y ago
Still pending for me too. I'm going to assume this is here because of a voting ring
- contravariant 5y ago
  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.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    Maybe, although I loaded it less than 4 minutes after it was posted. HN Hug of death must come really quick
  - Shiku 5y ago
    That was an issue based on the plan I was using in Bubble. I upgraded to a production plan which should work better now.
gccs 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
> Slow as hell, to the point it does not load. So it looks like they nailed it.
- Macha 5y ago
  Yep, definitely the authentic new reddit experience. Could even do twitter too.
  - Shiku 5y ago
    Actually someone already built a twitter clone in Bubble. Worth checking that out too :) https://notrealtwitter.com/ 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 5y ago
      that twitter clone is down
- Shiku 5y ago
  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 :)
Shiku 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > This was never meant to be anything serious. Remember the Linux kernel was introduced to the world with pretty much those exact words.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
That sounds like the real Reddit experience.

dd36 5y ago

Is there no content?

Shiku 5y ago
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.

krageon 5y ago

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 5y ago
[deleted]
capableweb 5y ago
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?
- shusson 5y ago
  > Isn't "glorified WYSIWYG editor" basically what nocode is? Does bubble also handle deployment/infra?
  - capableweb 5y ago
    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.
- krageon 5y ago
  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.

throwawaybchr 5y ago

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 5y ago

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 5y ago

no code / low code booooo

altacc 5y ago

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.

capableweb 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Just use old reddit. It's fast. On mobile https://www.reddit.com/.compact https://www.reddit.com/.compact (with a dot before compact) still works.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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
    - NineStarPoint 5y ago

ALittleLight 5y ago

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 5y ago
Sorry for not clarifying earlier. This was built to be a web-first clone only. It does not work on mobile.

js4ever 5y ago

Error: OwnerError Message: Operation timed out -- app too busy Code: 1628248706218x559231799994115000

throw_m239339 5y ago

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...

Perstone 5y ago
There was quite a few. I remember building stuff in Microsoft Frontpage back in late 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage
qalmakka 5y ago
That was Microsoft Frontpage I think. Dreamweaver was very similar to Frontpage in the 00's, I'm surprised it still exists.
quickthrower2 5y ago
Coldfusion?
0des 5y ago
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 5y ago
  This site is very strange.
r6203 5y ago
Microsoft Visual Fox Pro?
5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

obiwanpallav1 5y ago

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 5y ago
That seems in-line with providing a reddit-like experience.

SilurianWenlock 5y ago

Is there a github for this?

tyingq 5y ago

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 5y ago
True, I've got some Bubble credits so I've upgraded the plan (for the short term only). Will see how that helps

mcintyre1994 5y ago

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.

StreamBright 5y ago

Content provider built in no-code in 2 weeks without content

sumtechguy 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.

Shiku 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.
- Shiku 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  Would they be programmers? Shouldn't we call them no-programmers?
  - RugnirViking 5y ago
    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
  - wmeredith 5y ago
    Nah, only people working with assembly code are programmers.
- 5y ago

jefflombardjr 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Ever read this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
reilly3000 5y ago
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.
zomglings 5y ago
Just wanted to let you know that these are very good points and you've changed my mind about no code.
devortel 5y ago
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.

antihero 5y ago

Why is everywhere I move the mouse a pointer cursor?

Shiku 5y ago
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'

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Macdougall 5y ago

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

oauea 5y ago

Once it finally loaded all I saw was icons and no text. Bizarre and not very usable. Stick to code.

andi999 5y ago

What no code platform was used? Also clicking post on my android doesn't work.

Shiku 5y ago
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

foolinaround 5y ago

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 5y ago
I suspect most no-code platforms are targeting users who have no idea that docker even exists let alone how to use it.

darepublic 5y ago

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 5y ago
Inferior results to what exactly? Interested to know about alternatives you've used
- darepublic 5y ago
  You are right, haven't tried many alternatives. I suppose I've built a site for someone in squarespace, also backseat helped someone out with their wix based site. I want something really intuitive which would take no learning curve which is perhaps unrealistic. One person I know has used bubble and was satisfied with it, but to me it seemed like a bespoke type of language / gui based framework that had to be managed with a lot of dials and knobs, not eliminating the complexity just reformatting it in what is to me a foreign language. Also, I was not impressed by the quality of the site that was created with bubble but maybe that varies per user.

_throwawayaway 5y ago

Nice! I'd really like to see what owning, maintaining, scaling, customizing etc would be like in no-code context.

KingOfCoders 5y ago

"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.

doodlebugging 5y ago

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 5y ago
Thank you! I appreciate the positive feedback :)
- doodlebugging 5y ago
  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.

Graffur 5y ago

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 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.

sideproject 5y ago

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 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 5y ago

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"?

asddubs 5y ago
it seems to be built using this, but that's all I can tell you: https://bubble.io/ https://bubble.io/
- Graffur 5y ago
  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)
rchaud 5y ago
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.

gorwell 5y ago

"no code", "serverless" Is anyone else annoyed by these terms?

aethertron 5y ago
Just a little.
rytill 5y ago
What replacement terms would you recommend?
- CivBase 5y ago
  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.

Shiku 5y ago

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.

replwoacause 5y ago

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 5y ago
i guess these really are for a subset of apps, that you know wont grow a lot! Internal apps in companies around processes, etc.

ben-gy 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
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!!

c7DJTLrn 5y ago

Still more usable and faster than actual Reddit.

machtesh 5y ago

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 https://tastejury.com

tchock23 5y ago
Can you share more about the SEO limitations of bubble you experienced? I wasn’t aware that is a limitation.

adamqureshi 5y ago

Anyone know where i could find an HN clone UI opensource to build a niche niche news site?

joejohnston 5y ago

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_25ce0de660954493a371399aad475187#/ https://budibase.app/app_dev_25ce0de660954493a371399aad47518...

Ocha 5y ago

FYI: certificate on https://bubbleapps.io https://bubbleapps.io is invalid and cases warnings before it redirects.

uncomputation 5y ago

This may have had the opposite effect on me. I am no longer worried about being replaced by “no code” Bubble apps now.

aparsons 5y ago

This is extremely slow and laggy on the Pixel 3

Shiku 5y ago
This site is not optimised for mobile. Updated the site to reflect this. I built it for desktop viewing only

indigodaddy 5y ago

Pretty slow to load for me on mobile.. perhaps just because of all the HN traffic?

rchaud 5y ago
Probably. It loaded fine for me just now.

devops000 5y ago

Really cool! Would be great a video showing how to do it

djanogo 5y ago

What happens when this org bans you or gets cancel requests from wing groups?, I assume you have to start over from scratch?

surajs 5y ago

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

elnygren 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.

m3kw9 5y ago

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

one_off_comment 5y ago

But... reddit already exists??

Shiku 5y ago
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.

hamburgerwah 5y ago

They definitely captured the slow as molasses performance of reddit.

admangan 5y ago

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.).

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago

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)

readonthegoapp 5y ago

Looks like reddit, for sure. OP: why did you build it? practice? hn points? hate on the nocode haters? work for bubble? consulting sales? all the above? i think it's strange that folks are using the "but it's good for rapid/throwaway prototyping/design!" argument. is it? if rapid prototyping is the argument for no code, well i get it -- but it's not the marketing i've seen for at least 10 years. outside of that, the biggest drawback is the cost, with the ever-looming threat that you're going to get pandora'd by the rent-seeking no-code platform (anything you potentially make will just be siphoned off). i know there are successful no code businesses -- even ones that are not just landing pages for no-code lessons, or no-code consulting, or no-code marketing, or no-code no-coding -- no-code tools really are a blessing for helping to democratize technology a tiny bit. but if you want to do something that no code tools _should_ be designed for, imo -- namely, prototyping ideas very quickly with an actual fair shot of beating out the big boys -- you can't do it without tons of expertise and money and influence and connections and all the stuff you usually need. you can't do it, in part, because branding / functionality / performance / etc. is all severely limited. want to try a new idea? sure - please go ahead - learn our 'no code' stack, give us $50/mo for your 'hello, world', and if you want to try Idea II, that will be anotehr $50/mo, thanks. working moms? poor/working class teens? 99% of the population? getoutttaaheeeere.

anotheryou 5y ago

I tried to use the twitter api with bubble and failed (not just authentication). I'm sure I'd have figured it out with plain code. There was a badly documented plugin for twitter and it could do a subset of what the API was capable of, but I didn't see how I could extend it meaningfully. I really wished API usage and low-code would get a bit more love.