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Comment by rchaud | Hacker News Reader

The closest thing we have to this currently is Excel.

I can't believe there's no browser-based point and click software that lets you build web apps in JS.

I'd have to say Access is the closest. MS Access is one of the easiest programs to use to make an app with a front end, dB, reporting, and SQL all in one package.

Prototyping for a dB backed app is extremely easy.

I'm fully aware of all it's drawbacks, but there's still nothing like it available today.

I remember using Access to make simple internal enterprise apps in 2017, is that no longer a thing?

FileMaker maybe.

But yeah, both tools are great for in-house applications in my experience. It’s quite easy to provide actually useful features very quickly. It might not win you design awards, but often that’s not a problem in reality.

I’d rather have an inventory that is correct but maybe looks a bit homegrown than one that looks like it has been designed by Jony Ive but is wrong for example.

I'm not a professional developer and have seen my share of badly designed Access applications created by people who don't understand normalisation, so get the bad rep Access gets in this respect. But I've created a couple of simple apps for specific tasks that work excellent for their usecase. I can't imagine there being a simpler way of doing them with other tech stacks.

Hey we’re in the age of document databases and NoSQL, normalization is for boomers anyway ;)

Because if sucked then, and it would suck now. You had Dreamweaver.

They call this low- and no code programming now. There is a market for it.

Yeah, but it's a modern software market - a toy market, not productivity software market.

I'm building that now!

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