{"id":19398,"date":"2020-06-25T07:17:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T07:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rbsitsoftwaresolution.com\/blog\/why-aws-built-a-no-code-tool.html"},"modified":"2020-06-25T07:17:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T07:17:00","slug":"why-aws-built-a-no-code-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/why-aws-built-a-no-code-tool.html","title":{"rendered":"Why AWS built a no-code tool"},"content":{"rendered":"

AWS today launched<\/a> Amazon Honeycode<\/a>, a no-code environment built around a spreadsheet-like interface that is a bit of a detour for Amazon\u2019s cloud service. Typically, after all, AWS is all about giving developers all of the tools to build their applications \u2014 but they then have to put all of the pieces together. Honeycode, on the other hand, is meant to appeal to non-coders who want to build basic line-of-business applications. If you know how to work a spreadsheet and want to turn that into an app, Honeycode is all you need.<\/p>\n

To understand AWS\u2019s motivation behind the service, I talked to AWS VP Larry Augustin and Meera Vaidyanathan, a general manager at AWS.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, it was about extending the power of AWS to more and more users across our customers,\u201d explained Augustin. \u201cWe consistently hear from customers that there are problems they want to solve, they would love to have their IT teams or other teams \u2014 even outsourced help \u2014 build applications to solve some of those problems. But there\u2019s just more demand for some kind of custom application than there are available developers to solve it.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Image Credits:<\/strong> Amazon<\/p>\n

In that respect then, the motivation behind Honeycode isn\u2019t all that different from what Microsoft is doing with its PowerApps low-code tool. That, too, after all, opens up the Azure platform to users who aren\u2019t necessarily full-time developers. AWS is taking a slightly different approach here, though, but emphasizing the no-code part of Honeycode.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal with honey code was to enable the people in the line of business, the business analysts, project managers, program managers who are right there in the midst, to easily create a custom application that can solve some of the problems for them without the need to write any code,\u201d said Augustin. \u201cAnd that was a key piece. There\u2019s no coding required. And we chose to do that by giving them a spreadsheet-like interface that we felt many people would be familiar with as a good starting point.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of low-code\/no-code tools also allow developers to then \u201cescape the code,\u201d as Augstin called it, but that\u2019s not the intent here and there\u2019s no real mechanism for exporting code from Honeycode and take it elsewhere, for example. \u201cOne of the tenets we thought about as we were building Honeycode was, gee, if there are things that people want to do and we would want to answer that by letting them escape the code \u2014 we kept coming back and trying to answer the question, \u2018Well, okay, how can we enable that without forcing them to escape the code?\u2019 So we really tried to force ourselves into the mindset of wanting to give people a great deal of power without escaping to code,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Image Credits:<\/strong> Amazon<\/p>\n

There are, however, APIs that would allow experienced developers to pull in data from elsewhere. Augustin and Vaidyanathan expect that companies may do this for their users on tthe platform or that AWS partners may create these integrations, too.<\/p>\n

Even with these limitations, though, the team argues that you can build some pretty complex applications.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been talking to lots of people internally at Amazon who have been building different apps and even within our team and I can honestly say that we haven\u2019t yet come across something that is impossible,\u201d Vaidyanathan said. \u201cI think the level of complexity really depends on how expert of a builder you are. You can get very complicated with the expressions [in the spreadsheet] that you write to display data in a specific way in the app. And I\u2019ve seen people write \u2014 and I\u2019m not making this up \u2014 30-line expressions that are just nested and nested and nested. So I really think that it depends on the skills of the builder and I\u2019ve also noticed that once people start building on Honeycode \u2014 myself included \u2014 I start with something simple and then I get ambitious and I want to add this layer to it \u2014 and I want to do this. That\u2019s really how I\u2019ve seen the journey of builders progress. You start with something that\u2019s maybe just one table and a couple of screens, and very quickly, before you know, it\u2019s a far more robust app that continues to evolve with your needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another feature that sets Honeycode apart is that a spreadsheet sits at the center of its user interface. In that respect, the service may seem a bit like Airtable<\/a>, but I don\u2019t think that comparison holds up, given that both then take these spreadsheets into very different directions. I\u2019ve also seen it compared to Retool<\/a>, which may be a better comparison, but Retool is going after a more advanced developer and doesn\u2019t hide the code. There is a reason, though, why these services were built around them and that is simply that everybody is familiar with how to use them.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have been using spreadsheets for decades,\u201d noted Augustin. \u201cThey\u2019re very familiar. And you can write some very complicated, deep, very powerful expressions and build some very powerful spreadsheets. You can do the same with Honeycode. We felt people were familiar enough with that metaphor that we could give them that full power along with the ability to turn that into an app.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team itself used the service to manage the launch of Honeycode, Vaidyanathan stressed \u2014 and to vote on the name for the product (though Vaidyanathan and Augustin wouldn\u2019t say which other names they considered.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we have really, in some ways, a revolutionary product in terms of bringing the power of AWS and putting it in the hands of people who are not coders,\u201d said Augustin.<\/p>\n

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AWS launches Amazon Honeycode, a no-code mobile and web app builder<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/U8_ww4FLxNM\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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