9 ms·

No Code

132 points by severine 6y ago

voltagex_ 6y ago
What do you do when Integromat shuts down?
- bszupnick 6y ago
  Same can be said about most cloud platforms that programmers would store their code. "What if Google Cloud shuts down", "What if service X changes their API", "What if your CI/CD provider makes a breaking change in their YAML syntax". This happens, it sucks, but it's not a reason to not host on cloud, use an API, or deploy with a CI/CD. Outsourcing is a calculated risk.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    The difference is that Integromat is less fungible than, say, GitHub. If GitHub were to shut down, I could move to GitLab or my own Gitea instance, and it would be a fairly easy adjustment (mostly just changing the domain name everywhere). If Integromat shuts down, you have to completely rebuild your workflow on a competitor's platform because they're not based on a common protocol.
ykevinator 6y ago
What does the auto segmentation and ocr?
- stuzenz 6y ago
  Scanner Pro does the OCR - and it was implied (due to the need for the correct name) that the categorisation is a mapping from the name used for the scanned OCRed file. That is my take from it. I could be wrong.
totetsu 6y ago
I am trying to read this article, but it has a lot of money bumps..
phnofive 6y ago
From Not Invented Here to Exclusively External Dependencies. Took me down a fun rabbit hole of German tax deductions for expenses - especially the fact that you can deduct a few thousand euros without evidence: https://www.thelocal.de/20180509/german-tax-return-know-your-tax-deductible-expenses-wundertax-tlccu https://www.thelocal.de/20180509/german-tax-return-know-your...
perl4ever 6y ago
I've gotten sucked into this in the form of MS Power Automate, and it just seems to make everything more complicated and confusing. I spend most of my time looking for workarounds to try to get back the ability to do stuff that any programming language allows. I only learned Access and VBA about a year ago, but I tend to agree with the people who say Microsoft has broken up parts of the functionality of this reasonably useful workhorse into various products, all with their own learning curve and without caring much about covering all that you could previously do. I'm beginning to think it's just a scam, where Microsoft and others sell a vision to people who can't judge it because they don't know what programming is...and the point is to have an incredibly convoluted and random licensing system where every little thing requires paying more money. It feels as calculated and predatory as a casino. What "no code" boils down to, it appears to me thus far, is you don't have the version control, the refactoring ability, the ability to reuse code, the ability to see a reasonable amount of logic at once, the ability to easily copy and paste, the security of an editor that won't randomly mangle your code (sorry, it isn't code, it's...uh...JSON) it's just on and on, things you can't do, and nothing added in exchange except the label of "no code". And I don't see how anything complex can be maintained; it merely has the political advantage that you don't have to designate a developer to maintain it...but in reality, it's if anything harder to understand.
- bokstavkjeks 6y ago
  From how I understand it, the idea behind Power Automate isn't to move programmers over to it. It's to allow other people in the business to automate their workflows without bringing in developers. No/low code systems are great for departments such as accounting and finance, they typically have some tasks that are great targets for automation, and the workers know more about the process than the developers. If the workers can create the automation without bringing in developers it can save quite a bit of resources over time. These people are also not all that keen on actually learning programming languages, source control, version control, and all of that. They just have a problem in their day-to-day work they'd like to solve. If you want the "developer experience" (source control, some code, etc.) while also having access to the flow-based editor you should look into Azure logic apps instead.
- rhlsthrm 6y ago
patchtopic 6y ago
"First, you work all month, and then you give half of the money to those who couldn't work." fixed the wording for you.
- seph-reed 6y ago
  It sounds like Taxes in Berlin are extremely effective. In the US my Taxes seem to just vanish.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    The biggest chunk of those taxes are mandatory government insurance programs. The government may or may not be running them poorly but you can definitively say that the money is being used for a specific purpose.
  - megla_ 6y ago
    your roads aren't fucked
- lukeholder 6y ago
  He said: > those who didn't work He didn't say "those who wouldn't work". People that receive money from government programs include the disabled, aged, carers, students, those seeking work who can work, and those not seeking work who can work.
p2t2p 6y ago
It is me or “no code” is just “Unix way” of cloud world?
- kennydale 6y ago
  if Unix utilities could do a thousand different things instead of just one - then yes :)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - p2t2p 6y ago
    Well, I mean there are cloud services that serve one function, like sending emails (MailChimp) or storing files (Dropbox) and then you glue them together with IFTTT. Analogy of Unix utilities and shell scripting comes into mind by itself.
s17n 6y ago
What "no code" is really about is "no figuring out the toolchain, deployment, integration with third parties, etc". For actually writing business logic, replacing code with drag and drop logic blocks is... not really helpful to anybody. But with all the crap that programmers actually spend our days dealing with removed from the picture, anybody can write their own business logic, even if they have to do it in gasp code.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > For actually writing business logic, replacing code with drag and drop logic blocks is... not really helpful to anybody It's not helpful for anybody to be able to write their own services, even if they cannot code? Everyone who can't code, would disagree with you. Sure, they can spend some free time to pickup programming, and maybe after a lot of reading and practicing, would be able to build the flow in a programming language, but why do that when you could just drag and drop logic blocks until it solves your particular problem, then move on to what you really care about?
  - UK-Al05 6y ago
    Because drag and dropping blocks is the same difficulty as writing it down just with more steps. The difficulty isn't in writing the code, but specifying exactly what you want to do.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      Yeah, I mean, you're right, it is difficult to specifically know what you want the computer/server to do. But, writing code (as text) is a lot harder for people to do, than to use graphical elements. Why I don't know, maybe it's just more daunting to get started. But people have an easier time pickup "programming" via blocks rather than text.
      - lmm 6y ago
        In my experience that's not actually true. People might be able to drop some graphical elements into place, but they can't fix bugs in their "programs".
jgarzon 6y ago
For me the worst part is that I can use a keyboard to write code but only use a single pointer from my mouse to move stuff. It’s so much slower
avmich 6y ago
vas3k is a wonderful blogger, glad his page made it to HN. He has technical stories on the site, but it's non-technical ones which I consider real gifts to his readers.
kleiba 6y ago
The second sentence ("First, you work all month, and then you give half of the money to those who didn't work.") is already so blatantly wrong and reactionary that I almost have to force myself to read on - after all, if the premise is already flawed what good can come of it?
- tluyben2 6y ago
  The entire article is full of this kind of humor; you like it or you do not.
- giantDinosaur 6y ago
  It's obviously supposed to be humorous. Whether you like the joke or think it's dumb, the article isn't premised on it being true.
  - thenoblesunfish 6y ago
    Jokes with false premises always struck me as bad humor. It's like Jerry Seinfeld getting up there and being like "the problem with coffee is that there's always just a litttttle hint of banana flavor. No matter what you do! Always the banana! I mean, is the guy making my coffee some sort of orangutan??"
    - giantDinosaur 6y ago
      Irreverent humour is often premised on not being literally true. You may not like that people find it amusing, but many certainly do. That Seinfeld example is a totally different type of humour.
- thenoblesunfish 6y ago
  Seriously.. it wouldn't be such an aggravating statement if people didn't actually believe it. (To state the obvious, the idea of the taxes is that the money is used to pay for the roads to get you to work, for the education that provides you and your employees the skills to work, and for all the other things that allow society to function so you can work. Yes, including helping people who are looking for work, so that the economy in which you work can function. It's not altruism - you're paying for the system which supports your job existing in the first place.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
reeeeee 6y ago
Soooooo, the author moved away from waveapps because the system did no allow him to link multiple pictures to 1 receipt. So he started implementing his own no-code solution which... also doesn't allow him to link multiple pictures to 1 receipt...
- reportgunner 6y ago
  So they at least wrote an article about it to salvage the time spent.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
It's not "no code" it's "code later". It doesn't prevent the effort of coding the solution, just moves it down the line and makes it harder. The good part is that (as the article) says, you only need to write the code when you know the code will be used. The bad part is that the no-code solution will break at some point. Usually because some part of the chain introduced a breaking change, or the process its modelling needs to change in a way that the solution can't handle. Then you need to replace the no-code with actual code, while under time pressure because the business is broken waiting for the new solution. He's right - this is a useful tool, and sitting in the middle is the best place. But there are lots of people who will read this and create something completely with no-code and with no intention of replacing it with code, until it breaks and then they're in a painful place.
- lloydatkinson 6y ago
  > It doesn't prevent the effort of coding the solution, just moves it down the line and makes it harder. What is harder about using a OCR app and calling the Airtable API to get the expenses compared to writing all the code to take photos, scan for text, and then upload to Airtable or even a SQL DB?
  - Fradow 6y ago
    Some workflow never get to the point you need to replace them, in which case using a no-code solution is a huge win. Often, it is good enough, when the no-code solution has some flaws, but not enough to justify a rewrite. And some workflows utterly needs to be rewritten, because of various reasons (change in pricing of the provider, new feature that's not possible in no-code, bug in the no-code solution, scaling issue).
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    The harder part is that when you have to write the code, it's because your existing business relies on it, and you have interfaces defined by other systems. So, to take the example: you set up the expenses handling with no code, it's easy, all good. Then halfway through next year, the OCR app starts charging $1 per scan (as a hypothetical). Now you have to write some code. But your accountant is waiting for your receipts, so you have a deadline for the coding. And your code has to use the Airtable API, because that's where the rest of your process takes off. That API might be a lot harder to use than, say, SQLite, which would be your choice if you were coding the system from scratch. So the code you have to write has constraints from the rest of the process that still works, and a deadline. So it's harder to write. That's what I meant by "makes it harder".
pjc50 6y ago
Is "Scanner Pro" good enough to be able to: - take a photo of a supermarket receipt and OCR all the items - get that at least 95% correct - output that in a document with correct horizontal grouping? If not, can someone recommend me an Android app for this?
klingonopera 6y ago
Wow. That seems like a lot of work. I just use GnuCash, a scanner, some good old Samba file-hosting on a local Debian server running 24/7, and WOL and VNC (or just SSH and SCP) if I need to access anything from not at home.
jamexcb 6y ago
In Portugal we just give our NIF (fiscal number - VAT Number) every time you buy something. All invoices will have your NIF. And all invoices are communicated to the government by the software that make your invoice. All invoicing software need to me certified by the government. This is mandatory. When you need to make your taxes they are already filled in. And business can't avoid taxes because they are communicated to the government.
teraku 6y ago
This reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/
jl2718 6y ago
I haven’t been following the no-code “movement”, but it seems to me that this is really a revolt against abusive software development practices justified by UI/UX and of course data lock-in. It seems that people really want editable, transparent, and composable pipelines for common tasks. This is the GNU philosophy for the command line. Little story: I did a lot of work with Army grunts trying to avoid getting blown up. The main tool was excel. Software shops kept delivering junk that nobody used. The acquisitions guys loved a slick demo and that’s pretty much all it did. They’d come in and install a new server cluster, which means a bigger server room, which means more cooling, which means a bigger generator, which means more diesel trucks, which means more convoys on the road, which means more getting blown up. New grunts would tool around on it for a month and then get a novel task they had to use excel for, and never go back. The acq guys had such disdain for the ‘users’ that they couldn’t imagine that they actually knew WTF they were doing. The slick demo went on to win the DCGS contract, and now they’re stuck with ‘easy’ where they need flexible, customizable, fast, simple (all the way down the stack). So yeah, now I get it. It’s more like, no-UI than no-code.
- locallost 6y ago
  I would say people want to get rid off developers. The way it usually works is that somebody has an idea useful for humans, but they don't speak code. They then need somebody who knows bits and bytes, but unfortunately probably does not understand the actual idea or its purpose. So what ensues is the developer trying to make a stupid machine do something that somebody else envisioned, as a sort of idea to code compiler. This is not always true -- especially for startups -- but it is I think for the no code part. Now if the developer could concentrate on giving the tools where his expertise is relevant to the people with ideas everything would be amazing. If it can work.
  - vangelis 6y ago
    Asking people what they want is an underrated skill.
peace2all 6y ago
TL;DR: He relies on 3 different online services to scan business receipts and track expenses. None are needed. He spends hours (days) trying to automate what he himself claims is only a few expenses per month (and shows a photo of a very thin folder of receipts). I can’t imagine his business will be ever very successful. He wastes too much time toying with simple things. But aside from that, if one wants a “no code” solution to tracking expenses, along with imaged receipts in case later proof is needed here you go: 1. Take pic of receipt. If you need multiple pics per image, you can combine images post de facto via something like Apple’s Preview app (save as PDF), or you can use Apple Notes to do for you. I assume other competing platforms have similar options. Worst case scenario: simply add “page-2”, “page-3”, in the file name. 2. Save image file in a directory called “business-receipts”. 3. Name file with receipt date, vendor, amount, and maybe description or anything else. Date comes first for easy finding later. “2020-06-15 ATT 63-00 USD Monthly business cell bill.pdf” 4. Enter transaction into appropriate tab of business finances spreadsheet (cash, bank, credit card, etc.) 5. Add a category for the expense, if you want. 6. Get back to work. Benefits? 1. No code necessary (unless you count your initial spreadsheet setup and the use of VLOOKUP for reporting). Call me crazy but if you’ve been going through all the gyrations outlined in the article, I assume you’ve mastered VLOOKUP or can do so in 10 minutes and that you’ve also graduated Junior High school. 2. No trusting OCR “auto-populate”. Most of us can type faster than these things can think. Also, if you trust those (without verifying each time), I have some perfectly safe driverless cars to sell you. 3. Almost no technical debt. No API depreciation. No risk of anyone being bought out. 4. Offline. Works without the internet. As did most all business processes 25 years ago on PCs. Amazing. No clunky browser needed either. 5. Secure. Your data is kept Local First. If you choose to backup online, so be it. Encrypt and Backup. But all your prior processing between multiple “services” (with your unencrypted data being manipulated on their ends) is no longer necessary. Counter-Arguments: 1. Excel is now also a “service”: True but it’s more popular and has more staying power than any of the ones you’re using. If you really think you don’t want to pay monthly for Excel (not sure what business can avoid this), there are plenty of free options. And for the purposes of this method, at least, you could do this on Excel 97 (buy once, use ‘forever’). 2. Still have to deal with online storage: Well, no you don’t, but let’s pretend that you only trust hard drives in the cloud and not the $100 4Tb one you can get at Walmart. So what? Encrypt and send it on up. If you use Macs or Office365, you likely have plenty of room already. Why involve another third-party? But anyway, this is a part of the “no code” process you added as if it was unique only to that process. It’s a bigger part of a different decision on how you store, encrypt, and/or backup your business data. A single line CRON job would take care of this, unless you count that as “code” since it involves typing a line of text instead of 47 mouse clicks. 3. This isn’t multi-user: True. Based on the 2 receipts per month statement, and the thin Lemonade Stand folder of receipts, it didn’t seem worthy of that functionality. If multi-user is needed, and the free WaveApp is costing you sleep, Quickbooks is your solution. Welcome to the world of Big Boy Businesses where the owners work hard and underlings do data entry into complex software.
0x01DEED 6y ago
I stopped reading at "half of the money to those who didn't work". Let me remind the author where taxes are spent on: Health Education Pensions Welfare Defence Policing Public infrastructure National debt interest Environmental protection Culture Government administration R&D (maybe I forget a few things...)
mikecoles 6y ago
I saw no-code and poor eyesight picked out what looked like an amateur 2x2 callsign so I thought this was about licensing and morse code. Cool workflow he has developed. It seems taxes are too crazy everywhere.

No Code

132 points by severine 6y ago

voltagex_ 6y ago

What do you do when Integromat shuts down?

bszupnick 6y ago
Same can be said about most cloud platforms that programmers would store their code. "What if Google Cloud shuts down", "What if service X changes their API", "What if your CI/CD provider makes a breaking change in their YAML syntax". This happens, it sucks, but it's not a reason to not host on cloud, use an API, or deploy with a CI/CD. Outsourcing is a calculated risk.
- majewsky 6y ago
  The difference is that Integromat is less fungible than, say, GitHub. If GitHub were to shut down, I could move to GitLab or my own Gitea instance, and it would be a fairly easy adjustment (mostly just changing the domain name everywhere). If Integromat shuts down, you have to completely rebuild your workflow on a competitor's platform because they're not based on a common protocol.

ykevinator 6y ago

What does the auto segmentation and ocr?

stuzenz 6y ago
Scanner Pro does the OCR - and it was implied (due to the need for the correct name) that the categorisation is a mapping from the name used for the scanned OCRed file. That is my take from it. I could be wrong.

totetsu 6y ago

I am trying to read this article, but it has a lot of money bumps..

phnofive 6y ago

From Not Invented Here to Exclusively External Dependencies. Took me down a fun rabbit hole of German tax deductions for expenses - especially the fact that you can deduct a few thousand euros without evidence: https://www.thelocal.de/20180509/german-tax-return-know-your-tax-deductible-expenses-wundertax-tlccu https://www.thelocal.de/20180509/german-tax-return-know-your...

perl4ever 6y ago

I've gotten sucked into this in the form of MS Power Automate, and it just seems to make everything more complicated and confusing. I spend most of my time looking for workarounds to try to get back the ability to do stuff that any programming language allows. I only learned Access and VBA about a year ago, but I tend to agree with the people who say Microsoft has broken up parts of the functionality of this reasonably useful workhorse into various products, all with their own learning curve and without caring much about covering all that you could previously do. I'm beginning to think it's just a scam, where Microsoft and others sell a vision to people who can't judge it because they don't know what programming is...and the point is to have an incredibly convoluted and random licensing system where every little thing requires paying more money. It feels as calculated and predatory as a casino. What "no code" boils down to, it appears to me thus far, is you don't have the version control, the refactoring ability, the ability to reuse code, the ability to see a reasonable amount of logic at once, the ability to easily copy and paste, the security of an editor that won't randomly mangle your code (sorry, it isn't code, it's...uh...JSON) it's just on and on, things you can't do, and nothing added in exchange except the label of "no code". And I don't see how anything complex can be maintained; it merely has the political advantage that you don't have to designate a developer to maintain it...but in reality, it's if anything harder to understand.

bokstavkjeks 6y ago
From how I understand it, the idea behind Power Automate isn't to move programmers over to it. It's to allow other people in the business to automate their workflows without bringing in developers. No/low code systems are great for departments such as accounting and finance, they typically have some tasks that are great targets for automation, and the workers know more about the process than the developers. If the workers can create the automation without bringing in developers it can save quite a bit of resources over time. These people are also not all that keen on actually learning programming languages, source control, version control, and all of that. They just have a problem in their day-to-day work they'd like to solve. If you want the "developer experience" (source control, some code, etc.) while also having access to the flow-based editor you should look into Azure logic apps instead.
rhlsthrm 6y ago

patchtopic 6y ago

"First, you work all month, and then you give half of the money to those who couldn't work." fixed the wording for you.

seph-reed 6y ago
It sounds like Taxes in Berlin are extremely effective. In the US my Taxes seem to just vanish.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The biggest chunk of those taxes are mandatory government insurance programs. The government may or may not be running them poorly but you can definitively say that the money is being used for a specific purpose.
- megla_ 6y ago
  your roads aren't fucked
lukeholder 6y ago
He said: > those who didn't work He didn't say "those who wouldn't work". People that receive money from government programs include the disabled, aged, carers, students, those seeking work who can work, and those not seeking work who can work.

p2t2p 6y ago

It is me or “no code” is just “Unix way” of cloud world?

kennydale 6y ago
if Unix utilities could do a thousand different things instead of just one - then yes :)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- p2t2p 6y ago
  Well, I mean there are cloud services that serve one function, like sending emails (MailChimp) or storing files (Dropbox) and then you glue them together with IFTTT. Analogy of Unix utilities and shell scripting comes into mind by itself.

s17n 6y ago

What "no code" is really about is "no figuring out the toolchain, deployment, integration with third parties, etc". For actually writing business logic, replacing code with drag and drop logic blocks is... not really helpful to anybody. But with all the crap that programmers actually spend our days dealing with removed from the picture, anybody can write their own business logic, even if they have to do it in gasp code.

capableweb 6y ago
> For actually writing business logic, replacing code with drag and drop logic blocks is... not really helpful to anybody It's not helpful for anybody to be able to write their own services, even if they cannot code? Everyone who can't code, would disagree with you. Sure, they can spend some free time to pickup programming, and maybe after a lot of reading and practicing, would be able to build the flow in a programming language, but why do that when you could just drag and drop logic blocks until it solves your particular problem, then move on to what you really care about?
- UK-Al05 6y ago
  Because drag and dropping blocks is the same difficulty as writing it down just with more steps. The difficulty isn't in writing the code, but specifying exactly what you want to do.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    Yeah, I mean, you're right, it is difficult to specifically know what you want the computer/server to do. But, writing code (as text) is a lot harder for people to do, than to use graphical elements. Why I don't know, maybe it's just more daunting to get started. But people have an easier time pickup "programming" via blocks rather than text.
    - lmm 6y ago
      In my experience that's not actually true. People might be able to drop some graphical elements into place, but they can't fix bugs in their "programs".

jgarzon 6y ago

For me the worst part is that I can use a keyboard to write code but only use a single pointer from my mouse to move stuff. It’s so much slower

avmich 6y ago

vas3k is a wonderful blogger, glad his page made it to HN. He has technical stories on the site, but it's non-technical ones which I consider real gifts to his readers.

kleiba 6y ago

The second sentence ("First, you work all month, and then you give half of the money to those who didn't work.") is already so blatantly wrong and reactionary that I almost have to force myself to read on - after all, if the premise is already flawed what good can come of it?

tluyben2 6y ago
The entire article is full of this kind of humor; you like it or you do not.
giantDinosaur 6y ago
It's obviously supposed to be humorous. Whether you like the joke or think it's dumb, the article isn't premised on it being true.
- thenoblesunfish 6y ago
  Jokes with false premises always struck me as bad humor. It's like Jerry Seinfeld getting up there and being like "the problem with coffee is that there's always just a litttttle hint of banana flavor. No matter what you do! Always the banana! I mean, is the guy making my coffee some sort of orangutan??"
  - giantDinosaur 6y ago
    Irreverent humour is often premised on not being literally true. You may not like that people find it amusing, but many certainly do. That Seinfeld example is a totally different type of humour.
thenoblesunfish 6y ago
Seriously.. it wouldn't be such an aggravating statement if people didn't actually believe it. (To state the obvious, the idea of the taxes is that the money is used to pay for the roads to get you to work, for the education that provides you and your employees the skills to work, and for all the other things that allow society to function so you can work. Yes, including helping people who are looking for work, so that the economy in which you work can function. It's not altruism - you're paying for the system which supports your job existing in the first place.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

reeeeee 6y ago

Soooooo, the author moved away from waveapps because the system did no allow him to link multiple pictures to 1 receipt. So he started implementing his own no-code solution which... also doesn't allow him to link multiple pictures to 1 receipt...

reportgunner 6y ago
So they at least wrote an article about it to salvage the time spent.

marcus_holmes 6y ago

It's not "no code" it's "code later". It doesn't prevent the effort of coding the solution, just moves it down the line and makes it harder. The good part is that (as the article) says, you only need to write the code when you know the code will be used. The bad part is that the no-code solution will break at some point. Usually because some part of the chain introduced a breaking change, or the process its modelling needs to change in a way that the solution can't handle. Then you need to replace the no-code with actual code, while under time pressure because the business is broken waiting for the new solution. He's right - this is a useful tool, and sitting in the middle is the best place. But there are lots of people who will read this and create something completely with no-code and with no intention of replacing it with code, until it breaks and then they're in a painful place.

lloydatkinson 6y ago
> It doesn't prevent the effort of coding the solution, just moves it down the line and makes it harder. What is harder about using a OCR app and calling the Airtable API to get the expenses compared to writing all the code to take photos, scan for text, and then upload to Airtable or even a SQL DB?
- Fradow 6y ago
  Some workflow never get to the point you need to replace them, in which case using a no-code solution is a huge win. Often, it is good enough, when the no-code solution has some flaws, but not enough to justify a rewrite. And some workflows utterly needs to be rewritten, because of various reasons (change in pricing of the provider, new feature that's not possible in no-code, bug in the no-code solution, scaling issue).
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  The harder part is that when you have to write the code, it's because your existing business relies on it, and you have interfaces defined by other systems. So, to take the example: you set up the expenses handling with no code, it's easy, all good. Then halfway through next year, the OCR app starts charging $1 per scan (as a hypothetical). Now you have to write some code. But your accountant is waiting for your receipts, so you have a deadline for the coding. And your code has to use the Airtable API, because that's where the rest of your process takes off. That API might be a lot harder to use than, say, SQLite, which would be your choice if you were coding the system from scratch. So the code you have to write has constraints from the rest of the process that still works, and a deadline. So it's harder to write. That's what I meant by "makes it harder".

pjc50 6y ago

Is "Scanner Pro" good enough to be able to: - take a photo of a supermarket receipt and OCR all the items - get that at least 95% correct - output that in a document with correct horizontal grouping? If not, can someone recommend me an Android app for this?

klingonopera 6y ago

Wow. That seems like a lot of work. I just use GnuCash, a scanner, some good old Samba file-hosting on a local Debian server running 24/7, and WOL and VNC (or just SSH and SCP) if I need to access anything from not at home.

jamexcb 6y ago

In Portugal we just give our NIF (fiscal number - VAT Number) every time you buy something. All invoices will have your NIF. And all invoices are communicated to the government by the software that make your invoice. All invoicing software need to me certified by the government. This is mandatory. When you need to make your taxes they are already filled in. And business can't avoid taxes because they are communicated to the government.

teraku 6y ago

This reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/

jl2718 6y ago

I haven’t been following the no-code “movement”, but it seems to me that this is really a revolt against abusive software development practices justified by UI/UX and of course data lock-in. It seems that people really want editable, transparent, and composable pipelines for common tasks. This is the GNU philosophy for the command line. Little story: I did a lot of work with Army grunts trying to avoid getting blown up. The main tool was excel. Software shops kept delivering junk that nobody used. The acquisitions guys loved a slick demo and that’s pretty much all it did. They’d come in and install a new server cluster, which means a bigger server room, which means more cooling, which means a bigger generator, which means more diesel trucks, which means more convoys on the road, which means more getting blown up. New grunts would tool around on it for a month and then get a novel task they had to use excel for, and never go back. The acq guys had such disdain for the ‘users’ that they couldn’t imagine that they actually knew WTF they were doing. The slick demo went on to win the DCGS contract, and now they’re stuck with ‘easy’ where they need flexible, customizable, fast, simple (all the way down the stack). So yeah, now I get it. It’s more like, no-UI than no-code.

locallost 6y ago
I would say people want to get rid off developers. The way it usually works is that somebody has an idea useful for humans, but they don't speak code. They then need somebody who knows bits and bytes, but unfortunately probably does not understand the actual idea or its purpose. So what ensues is the developer trying to make a stupid machine do something that somebody else envisioned, as a sort of idea to code compiler. This is not always true -- especially for startups -- but it is I think for the no code part. Now if the developer could concentrate on giving the tools where his expertise is relevant to the people with ideas everything would be amazing. If it can work.
- vangelis 6y ago
  Asking people what they want is an underrated skill.

peace2all 6y ago

TL;DR: He relies on 3 different online services to scan business receipts and track expenses. None are needed. He spends hours (days) trying to automate what he himself claims is only a few expenses per month (and shows a photo of a very thin folder of receipts). I can’t imagine his business will be ever very successful. He wastes too much time toying with simple things. But aside from that, if one wants a “no code” solution to tracking expenses, along with imaged receipts in case later proof is needed here you go: 1. Take pic of receipt. If you need multiple pics per image, you can combine images post de facto via something like Apple’s Preview app (save as PDF), or you can use Apple Notes to do for you. I assume other competing platforms have similar options. Worst case scenario: simply add “page-2”, “page-3”, in the file name. 2. Save image file in a directory called “business-receipts”. 3. Name file with receipt date, vendor, amount, and maybe description or anything else. Date comes first for easy finding later. “2020-06-15 ATT 63-00 USD Monthly business cell bill.pdf” 4. Enter transaction into appropriate tab of business finances spreadsheet (cash, bank, credit card, etc.) 5. Add a category for the expense, if you want. 6. Get back to work. Benefits? 1. No code necessary (unless you count your initial spreadsheet setup and the use of VLOOKUP for reporting). Call me crazy but if you’ve been going through all the gyrations outlined in the article, I assume you’ve mastered VLOOKUP or can do so in 10 minutes and that you’ve also graduated Junior High school. 2. No trusting OCR “auto-populate”. Most of us can type faster than these things can think. Also, if you trust those (without verifying each time), I have some perfectly safe driverless cars to sell you. 3. Almost no technical debt. No API depreciation. No risk of anyone being bought out. 4. Offline. Works without the internet. As did most all business processes 25 years ago on PCs. Amazing. No clunky browser needed either. 5. Secure. Your data is kept Local First. If you choose to backup online, so be it. Encrypt and Backup. But all your prior processing between multiple “services” (with your unencrypted data being manipulated on their ends) is no longer necessary. Counter-Arguments: 1. Excel is now also a “service”: True but it’s more popular and has more staying power than any of the ones you’re using. If you really think you don’t want to pay monthly for Excel (not sure what business can avoid this), there are plenty of free options. And for the purposes of this method, at least, you could do this on Excel 97 (buy once, use ‘forever’). 2. Still have to deal with online storage: Well, no you don’t, but let’s pretend that you only trust hard drives in the cloud and not the $100 4Tb one you can get at Walmart. So what? Encrypt and send it on up. If you use Macs or Office365, you likely have plenty of room already. Why involve another third-party? But anyway, this is a part of the “no code” process you added as if it was unique only to that process. It’s a bigger part of a different decision on how you store, encrypt, and/or backup your business data. A single line CRON job would take care of this, unless you count that as “code” since it involves typing a line of text instead of 47 mouse clicks. 3. This isn’t multi-user: True. Based on the 2 receipts per month statement, and the thin Lemonade Stand folder of receipts, it didn’t seem worthy of that functionality. If multi-user is needed, and the free WaveApp is costing you sleep, Quickbooks is your solution. Welcome to the world of Big Boy Businesses where the owners work hard and underlings do data entry into complex software.

0x01DEED 6y ago

I stopped reading at "half of the money to those who didn't work". Let me remind the author where taxes are spent on: Health Education Pensions Welfare Defence Policing Public infrastructure National debt interest Environmental protection Culture Government administration R&D (maybe I forget a few things...)

mikecoles 6y ago

I saw no-code and poor eyesight picked out what looked like an amateur 2x2 callsign so I thought this was about licensing and morse code. Cool workflow he has developed. It seems taxes are too crazy everywhere.