Retool was in my YC batch and the founders were very smart and driven - impressive product and insane growth. As a founder, very impressed.
On the other hand, as an engineer, Retool depresses me immensely. Tech debt accumulation is incredible with these tools - security is impossible - and performance is abysmal. Without exaggeration, I now ask in interviews if no-code tools are encouraged. If yes, I’m moving on. Software engineering cannot have failed so badly that we’re left dragging and dropping with no version control. It’s madness, and I’ll fight it until the end.
No code tools are cool - but they need to be quarantined. To quote the film “the departed”, “I treat them like mushrooms - keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit”.
Totally agree that developing in no-code tools is incredibly frustrating. This was one of the main reasons we built Workflows for developers. Code is and always has been a great way to automate. Too often we found the GUI getting in the way of what is simple to build and maintain using code.
By focusing on developers we were able to lean into supporting existing development workflows: versioning with Git, testing with staging environments, debugging with dev tools, monitoring with Datadog, etc.
Our goal is to remove all the boilerplate (spinning up a new box, managing access permissions, setting up staging data and environments, etc) that it takes to just get to writing the business logic unique to you. In my experience this causes as much debt as the logic itself!
I hope you can kick the tires on the new product — would love any feedback on how this could be even better for devs
One of the engineering leaders at my company was big on Retool and it was pushed out as a way for backend developers to write frontend code.
Now 6 months later that leader is gone, developers realized applications in Retool are harder to maintain because it’s just spaghetti code with no type safety or proper code review and teams are moving back to internal React applications.
You could build a much nicer user experience with react and make a maintainable codebase.
I think the promise of no-code making it easier for users to contribute is not reality.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 23.6 ms ] threadOn the other hand, as an engineer, Retool depresses me immensely. Tech debt accumulation is incredible with these tools - security is impossible - and performance is abysmal. Without exaggeration, I now ask in interviews if no-code tools are encouraged. If yes, I’m moving on. Software engineering cannot have failed so badly that we’re left dragging and dropping with no version control. It’s madness, and I’ll fight it until the end.
No code tools are cool - but they need to be quarantined. To quote the film “the departed”, “I treat them like mushrooms - keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit”.
By focusing on developers we were able to lean into supporting existing development workflows: versioning with Git, testing with staging environments, debugging with dev tools, monitoring with Datadog, etc.
Our goal is to remove all the boilerplate (spinning up a new box, managing access permissions, setting up staging data and environments, etc) that it takes to just get to writing the business logic unique to you. In my experience this causes as much debt as the logic itself!
I hope you can kick the tires on the new product — would love any feedback on how this could be even better for devs
Now 6 months later that leader is gone, developers realized applications in Retool are harder to maintain because it’s just spaghetti code with no type safety or proper code review and teams are moving back to internal React applications.
You could build a much nicer user experience with react and make a maintainable codebase.
I think the promise of no-code making it easier for users to contribute is not reality.