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Show HN: Napkin – Build back-end functions in the browser

by nsypteras on 7/2/21, 1:02 PM with 70 comments

• by pyankoff on 7/2/21, 1:30 PM

  Writing simple cloud functions right in the browser makes so much sense to me. I've used webtask.io before it was acquired and shut down. I had to switch to GCP cloud functions and it's lots of pain. Every time I want to run the function I need to deploy it first and it takes like a minute.

  Playing with Napkin, it looks very promising. Just the things I need: write random code, test it right there, press deploy and get the endpoint right away.

  Love that it's free for personal use. Just make sure you make enough money on paid plans and don't shut down like Webtask!

• by dec0dedab0de on 7/2/21, 3:42 PM

  Is it possible to store the code in git or fossil or any vcs? Is there room for code review before deploying? I'm all for whatever editor people find useful, and for easier deployment, but at a glance this feels very similar to editing your cgi directly on the server.

  Maybe all the devs that shot themselves in the foot editing php over sftp are getting old, and it's time for a new generation to learn that fear?

• by imehra on 7/2/21, 5:37 PM

  Just used this to make a quick slackbot for my team each time our hasura database is updated with a new user. I’m so impressed since I don’t think I could have ever learned or implemented anything in the backend as quickly as I just did with this. Do you guys plan to add team collaboration features soon?

• by crowdhailer on 7/2/21, 8:53 PM

  I recently hacked together something like this, it's good to see someone else has had a similar idea

  https://spotless.run/

• by petercooper on 7/2/21, 1:47 PM

  https://autocode.com/ is another player in this space.

• by srekhi on 7/2/21, 6:21 PM

  This is awesome - using this in production for vdiff right now.

  Two things I'd love: 1) code review (just like GitHub) 2) team collaboration

  Awesome job y'all.

• by dnisttahuz on 7/2/21, 1:17 PM

  I think this is the missing piece that will complete the workflow of developing and designing on the web! Great work guys.

• by pickledish on 7/2/21, 1:35 PM

  Ah, this is a nice idea, and it seems well executed, so nice work!

  My first reaction was "well, of course stuff like 'configuring servers' and 'CI/CD' (from the philosophy page [0]) isn't just overhead, it's beneficial and indeed necessary complexity once you need certain guarantees from your software's behavior and the way you deploy it"

  But, I'm sure you're already well aware! That probably isn't the point of what you've built, it seems like it has a lot more value in lowering the barrier to entry for writing backend code (perhaps for people who otherwise wouldn't have bothered), which can still be a lot of friction even using something like Heroku, for instance.

  [0] https://www.napkin.io/philosophy

• by rrosen326 on 7/2/21, 2:14 PM

  Sorry I’m dense, but what is this? Is this like an Amazon lambda function tied to an API Gateway?

• by omegant on 7/2/21, 8:26 PM

  I’m learning to code and want to deploy a static site server. I feel this could help me, but I’m not sure.

  I guess it is self evident for experienced programmers but from the site I can’t tell exactly what it does.

• by tlarkworthy on 7/2/21, 2:29 PM

  I made one for Observable runtime https://observablehq.com/@endpointservices/serverless-cells

  it's amazing having seamless code sharing between front end and backend, with inline code documentation.

  I made a whole oauth server like this! https://observablehq.com/@endpointservices/auth

• by helb on 7/2/21, 4:02 PM

  My head automatically added "what could possibly go wrong" to the submission title, but this actually looks pretty neat. Gonna give it a try.

• by sanmak on 7/4/21, 12:36 AM

  App looks great! great work guys! Few questions:

  - Are you guys deploying a separate project in vercel for every user or using shared project among all?

  - What's the security mechanism for storing environment variables? is it in vercel itself?

  - Any plans for typescript support?

  - Intellisense was not working for an installed package. It'll be great if it can!

• by loopyz on 7/2/21, 1:28 PM

  Can't wait to build all my bots off this

• by forkLding on 7/2/21, 2:59 PM

  Seems like a good way to test and play around with APIs before coding it all out

• by guillegette on 7/2/21, 8:10 PM

  I have been looking for something like this for a long time! Well done guys.

• by stamourd on 7/2/21, 2:57 PM

  Nice work Nick!

  This is the first time I've come across this https://magic.link/ service. Logging in via email like this is a fascinating idea.

• by easrng on 7/2/21, 8:18 PM

  Looks similar to Vercel's functions and Cloudflare's Workers.

• by zolland on 7/2/21, 1:41 PM

  What options do developers have for things like unit testing and organization as code bases scale? Are we restricted to a single “file” per endpoint? Is local development an option at all?

• by graylien on 7/2/21, 1:18 PM

  Looks useful, can it handle image and video manipulation npm packages? So I could crop and resize images on this service?

• by vira28 on 7/2/21, 7:15 PM

  I don’t see a link to their Github page (did see one for Instagram !). Am I missing it ? Thanks

• by crsr on 7/2/21, 6:26 PM

  Cool idea, well executed. How do you compare with repl.it?

• by mritchie712 on 7/2/21, 4:10 PM

  Looks cool.

  Your demo on the homepage breaks if you try to `import pandas`

• by debarshri on 7/2/21, 2:53 PM

  Is it similar to cloud9 ide?

• by AB_ on 7/2/21, 3:12 PM

  Can't wait to have it support team collaborations!!

• by gailees on 7/2/21, 1:30 PM

  Wow is this just going to replace basic backend engineers forever? Just think how many people y’all are putting out of a job with this.