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Ask HN: Build a no code API creator?

4 points by londondev45 ↗ HN
Hey HN,

I'm a software engineer and seem to spend more and more time writing pretty much the same system. Read message from x, call api, call api... respond etc etc. It's is integration work largely but it seems to be becoming the norm. I've had an idea to essentially distill those patterns in a Saas system. Is this a stupid idea or not? Would any of the engineers/managers entertain using such a tool?

6 comments

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raidicy
I would use it only if I could be able to see/edit the source code. Sometimes it's vastly more simple to write 2 lines of code than construct a thought with drag and drop logic. For some Ux inspiration you might want to check out gdevelop. Its game creation software but uses drag and drop logic with slots for wiring things up. Kind of like a simpler scratch.

I'm an indie dev who doesn't make any money from my side projects so pricing is always a factor as well. Read: I always use a free tier.

londondev45
Interesting points raidicy, as an engineer I would have similar requirements and really don't like seeding control to third party products :) But then, a no-code almost non techie type, might just want to get something working
raidicy
The balance between ease-of-use and functionality is a difficult beam. In my naive opinion, if you can create a platform where a no-code techie could create something but also let someone look under the hood, you will have built the perfect API creator. Right now the only analogue I've used is Strapi. However, this still takes deployment experience and at least a basic understanding of constructing dbs.

It's also worth looking at https://supabase.io/. Imo their route generation and automatic documentation is great and could be an inspiration.

hackerpain
Most no-code solutions are proprietary and it would be hard to optimize and maintain them. But it may work for smaller applications and mobile apps where you want to define a small set of feature.