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Comment by ryanhuff | Hacker News Reader

The technology provides an impressive first impression. With that said, I would appreciate it if somebody can help me understand how this doesn't lead to "two-dimensional" vendor lock-in (hosting and proprietary framework). From my first glance, this appears to be a combination of hosted service and web framework all rolled into one, where code portability is not possible. Am I missing something?

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From where I sit you are correct - which makes it a non-starter.

They'll have to bite and open source their backend (ala OpenStack) or this is going nowhere beyond toy apps.

Otherwise, if their platform is viable, a third-party OSS clone will pop up and eat their lunch.

I'm not sure if it's a non-starter. As a total code newb, I would find it very enticing to have to learn fewer things--like just their front end--rather than server-side too. If they are truly awesome, I'd probably be willing to pay through the nose to have that simplicity. If they can effectively reduce complexity so that all you really need to learn is JavaScript, it's going to make it easier for non-software engineers to build services. Of course most of the market isn't new to programming, but flattening the learning curve of would-be programmers is a pretty important comparative advantage.

If you're just learning how to code then what could you possibly build yourself that you'd be willing to pay through the nose for?

My point here is that the only consumers that will pay are ones who have an actual business (model) in place and those people are rarely going to be total code newbs.

I can see this as an interesting playground but it also seems overkill to me for a playground.

I agree that in order for this to take off the data needs to be made portable which means they need to opensource all or part of it and rely on their expertise for the business model. That, I could get behind.

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