4 ms·

It's a GUI around curl commands. Any enterprise company could trivially spin up a team to build an open source tool that does 80 percent of its use cases.

Ansil849 5y ago
> Any enterprise company could And yet...don't?
- throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
  Company i used to work for just hired a few part-time interns to build and maintain a custom version of Postman. Auto-generated web-forms based on the underlying service code. Then would offer those interns full time jobs on graduation and hire new interns to continue maintaining the project (with any ex-intern full-timers able to jump in and/or advice as needed).
tofuahdude 5y ago
"Its just X around Y" is actually a very common multi-billion dollar solution/business. > could trivially spin up a team Or they could trivially pay for a 100% solution w/o having to lose focus on what they actually do.
- ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
  Is there not already a 100% open source solution? This is one of those cases where a good dev could likely build a clone in a month. And it hardly needs constant updates.
  - tofuahdude 5y ago
    > where a good dev could likely build a clone in a month. And it hardly needs constant updates. I wish I had $5 / user / yr for every person who says this about products! Kidding aside, I think this dramatically underestimates what it takes to build a product that solves the problems that Postman solves. "Curl has no gui" isn't the problem they're solving.
    - joshmanders 5y ago
      > I wish I had $5 / user / yr for every person who says this about products! Yeah I'm getting Show HN: Dropbox thread vibes from this thread lol.
      - tofuahdude 5y ago
        We need a "common business misconceptions for HN engineers" sticky!
        ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
        Your posts are incredibly condescending. If you could at least make some effort to explain your thoughts, at least you'd be adding something to the conversation.
    - ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
      Maybe I'm using postman wrong? Besides saving data, what is there to scale? And even saving data is likely a minor point for many who use this, they could export their routes in some way. Obviously dropbox has a sharing problem to solve, but I honestly don't see what your post adds to the discussion. Perhaps you could enlighten me to the problem that Postman is solving?
      - tofuahdude 5y ago
        I mean, I have no idea how you use it, but I doubt you're "using it wrong". You're just not everyone or every use case. Expanding on that, just because you don't understand what problem it solves, why people would want to pay for it, or why VC's believe they can profitably invest at a given valuation, doesn't meant that any of them are wrong. It just means you don't understand from someone else's perspective. So when you say "This is one of those cases where a good dev could likely build a clone in a month. And it hardly needs constant updates." - it's coming from a place of ignorance to the other people's problems and their scope. > Perhaps you could enlighten me to the problem that Postman is solving? A quick glance at their homepage helps with this. "Build APIs together" and then the value props go on with "Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs—faster." So Postman is about the collaboration and process of building APIs. Not about a curl gui. That's an expensive, big, valuable problem space.
alangibson 5y ago
Obligatory response to "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially" comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
rektide 5y ago
It's a socially-networked gui around curl commands! I need to dig up the quotes, but in Bruce Sterling's sci fi book Heavy Weather, he says that no one pays for sotware, except groupwere, which everyone begrudgingly pays out for. I gotta say though I am super unimpressed by the Postman team's ability to prioritize / do the right things. Basic capabilities likes SOCKS proxies or proxies DNS are just totally awol, making this tool practically useless in a wide variety of everyday development circumstances. Ticket's been open 6 years now[1]. Really not that hard to add, would make such a powerful difference. [1] https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/1321 https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/13...

Ansil849 5y ago

> Any enterprise company could And yet...don't?

throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
Company i used to work for just hired a few part-time interns to build and maintain a custom version of Postman. Auto-generated web-forms based on the underlying service code. Then would offer those interns full time jobs on graduation and hire new interns to continue maintaining the project (with any ex-intern full-timers able to jump in and/or advice as needed).

tofuahdude 5y ago

"Its just X around Y" is actually a very common multi-billion dollar solution/business. > could trivially spin up a team Or they could trivially pay for a 100% solution w/o having to lose focus on what they actually do.

ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
Is there not already a 100% open source solution? This is one of those cases where a good dev could likely build a clone in a month. And it hardly needs constant updates.
- tofuahdude 5y ago
  > where a good dev could likely build a clone in a month. And it hardly needs constant updates. I wish I had $5 / user / yr for every person who says this about products! Kidding aside, I think this dramatically underestimates what it takes to build a product that solves the problems that Postman solves. "Curl has no gui" isn't the problem they're solving.
  - joshmanders 5y ago
    > I wish I had $5 / user / yr for every person who says this about products! Yeah I'm getting Show HN: Dropbox thread vibes from this thread lol.
    - tofuahdude 5y ago
      We need a "common business misconceptions for HN engineers" sticky!
      - ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
        Your posts are incredibly condescending. If you could at least make some effort to explain your thoughts, at least you'd be adding something to the conversation.
  - ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
    Maybe I'm using postman wrong? Besides saving data, what is there to scale? And even saving data is likely a minor point for many who use this, they could export their routes in some way. Obviously dropbox has a sharing problem to solve, but I honestly don't see what your post adds to the discussion. Perhaps you could enlighten me to the problem that Postman is solving?
    - tofuahdude 5y ago
      I mean, I have no idea how you use it, but I doubt you're "using it wrong". You're just not everyone or every use case. Expanding on that, just because you don't understand what problem it solves, why people would want to pay for it, or why VC's believe they can profitably invest at a given valuation, doesn't meant that any of them are wrong. It just means you don't understand from someone else's perspective. So when you say "This is one of those cases where a good dev could likely build a clone in a month. And it hardly needs constant updates." - it's coming from a place of ignorance to the other people's problems and their scope. > Perhaps you could enlighten me to the problem that Postman is solving? A quick glance at their homepage helps with this. "Build APIs together" and then the value props go on with "Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs—faster." So Postman is about the collaboration and process of building APIs. Not about a curl gui. That's an expensive, big, valuable problem space.

alangibson 5y ago

Obligatory response to "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially" comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

rektide 5y ago

It's a socially-networked gui around curl commands! I need to dig up the quotes, but in Bruce Sterling's sci fi book Heavy Weather, he says that no one pays for sotware, except groupwere, which everyone begrudgingly pays out for. I gotta say though I am super unimpressed by the Postman team's ability to prioritize / do the right things. Basic capabilities likes SOCKS proxies or proxies DNS are just totally awol, making this tool practically useless in a wide variety of everyday development circumstances. Ticket's been open 6 years now[1]. Really not that hard to add, would make such a powerful difference. [1] https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/1321 https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/13...