> We understand people want to see the UI, but it's not the key selling point. Pretty apps isn't what you'd use Alan for (although you could).
In my humble opinion, I would suggest rethinking this.
I imagine you don't intend to sound that way, but a response like this might suggest to people that you don't value user experience or good design, which would rule a lot of otherwise-interested people right out. For any serious project, how it looks and how it feels is every bit as important as how it functions. (Even for B2B or internal-only needs, this regularly remains true).
If I can't build a gorgeous, industry-leading well designed app in Alan, then there needs to be clear information about how I would do that outside of Alan while using your platform. Otherwise, Alan is just for disposable apps / throw-away apps / Excel-replacement apps, and for any serious work, I'm eventually going to have to rewrite the whole app in something else anyway so I might as well start there first.
> Otherwise, Alan is just for disposable apps / throw-away apps / Excel-replacement apps, and for any serious work, I'm eventually going to have to rewrite the whole app in something else anyway so I might as well start there first.
There's no reason to be so elitist. Disposable applications can become important in business, they're often the duct tape that holds a small or medium sized company together. If they can be written more quickly and with more functionality than in MS Office apps, there's a very legitimate and actually very large use case for Alan.
Fair points. Honestly I think our default UI looks pretty rad and it’s super important to us.
I think we need to do a Show HN at a later date to showcase it. There is so much to say about the platform, we wanted to focus it on the modeling language right now. I totally understand people want to know more about the UI though.
Even if you don't think that users will pick your product because great UI is the top priority, it's likely that avoiding bad UI is still high on the priority list. Passing that hurdle means showing the UI.
I'm getting the feeling that this thing is for developing form-and-table based UI, which is pretty damned utilitarian and arguably hit its design peak in the 90s, with only slight spins from then onward.
In my humble opinion, I would suggest rethinking this.
I imagine you don't intend to sound that way, but a response like this might suggest to people that you don't value user experience or good design, which would rule a lot of otherwise-interested people right out. For any serious project, how it looks and how it feels is every bit as important as how it functions. (Even for B2B or internal-only needs, this regularly remains true).
If I can't build a gorgeous, industry-leading well designed app in Alan, then there needs to be clear information about how I would do that outside of Alan while using your platform. Otherwise, Alan is just for disposable apps / throw-away apps / Excel-replacement apps, and for any serious work, I'm eventually going to have to rewrite the whole app in something else anyway so I might as well start there first.