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Comment by mgaitan09 | Hacker News Reader

alteryx

to expand on my reply, I use to be a full on python / pandas advocate, but in comparison to alteryx it's slow and the best is that you can get business users to understand alteryx enough to provide value on the data cleansing / merging part

Problems with Alteryx come when you need to share a workflow with other people, or need any functionality outside of the basic tools, or need a loop, or need good documentation, or your internet is down which completely blocks this otherwise-desktop application, or need compatibility with an older version of Alteryx...

I could go on but my point is that beyond the most basic tasks the functionality of Alteryx is limited, the user experience is horrendous and the price isn't justified whatsoever.

The internet being down doesn't block Alteryx at all. I routinely use it without internet. Sharing of workflows hasn't been an issue either.

Understood on the loop part. You have to think on terms of vectorization for that, or use what they call batch macros.

The connection would prevent it from starting up for me because it verifies the license each time you start the program.

Neither vectorisation, nor batch macros (nor iterative macros) allow you to run the same set of commands until a condition is met in Alteryx.

It verifies the license against a local cache. The remote licensing check only occurs upon activating a license. Once activated, there is a local cached copy it uses that I happen to know about because I accidentally deleted it once. I start up Alteryx in an air-gapped environment on a routine basis. I wouldn't use the tool if it had to check a license server every time it started.

You're incorrect on your last statement. I'm a coder, and don't enjoy using Alteryx for more iterative/recursive operations, but I've built several macros that leverage loops and DO run the same set of commands until a condition is met. There are examples of this online.

Typically, when I run into more loop oriented operations, I use the python or R tool to write a snippet of code to perform the operation within the workflow.

> There are examples of this online.

Can you link to any of them? I wasn't able to find anything that actually works when I needed to do this a while ago. (I needed to repeatedly hit a REST API until it returned no results.)

Absolutely.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussion...

Let me know if that doesn't cover your use case.

BTW, if you're hitting a REST API, you might want to try using the Python tool (it's an embedded Jupyter interface that will default to just running the pure python code when the workflow is executed without a user configuring it), just because I prefer using requests library over using the Alteryx download/curl tool myself.

Yep, I've seen the link. Never managed to get it to run "until the iteration output stream does not receive any more records" though, nor did I see that documented anywhere.

> you might want to try using the Python tool

Yep, I just end up using Python outside of Alteryx altogether.

Yeah, it all comes down to your needs and the use case. If there is a lot of value in allowing non-coders to leverage your work, and more importantly, modify pieces of it, then a tool like Alteryx is worth it. However, if you can just write a Python script, and aren't constantly being hassled to update it for whatever data source or new need, then just go that route. Otherwise, if you don't empower the non-tech users, eventually you'll produce enough stuff that you'll end up spending an increasing percentage of your time maintaining and dealing with your own products. For me, that's been the biggest benefit. Nothing better than telling somebody to just switch the input on a workflow to a db now that the file isn't being sent directly, instead of having to do it for them.

Would you say that the main reason to use a software instead of code is to onboard non-coding business partners?

edit: After looking at the website, I can't help but feel that they are surfing on the Asteryx clothing brand to overprice their products...

I'm a user of Alteryx and had never heard of Asteryx. haha.

Alteryx is definitely high-priced. It's enterprise software and priced that way. Which sucks if you're on a budget.

> Would you say that the main reason to use a software instead of code is to onboard non-coding business partners

That is usually a key selling point of GUI based ETL solutions. Relatively non-technical users, that know little of coding but do understand their data and what they want out of it, can put together basic (and sometimes not so basic) data flows and debug them.

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