[solias99]

Retool is a great solution if you like low-code, so I think it mostly depends on what you like.

For us it's 2 reasons: 1. I had trouble with low-code builders when building more complex apps, so I had to fall back to code. In that sense, we aim to be a thin wrapper around code (by making sure you don't write things like authentication, RBAC etc.)

2. We have an AI offering that allows you to create your tool with just a prompt, and iterate on it. It works more often than not because we're heavily opinionated on what components to use and how our app should be setup. The feedback loop is also faster than low-code because you're just iterating with prompts, so there's lesser cognitive effort.

[badrequest]

> 2. We have an AI offering that allows you to create your tool with just a prompt and iterate on it

IIRC Retool also offers this functionality: https://retool.com/products/ai

[codegladiator]

> I had trouble with low-code builders when building more complex apps

Can you elaborate on this ? Which trouble you came across while using which low-code builder to build what kind of complex app ?

[aurareturn]

I couldn’t imagine building our internal tool with retool.

For example, complicated business logic form validation that requires calls to the database or external api.

We tried it. Retool ended being much more complicated and restrictive than our Next.js internal tool app. We went back.

I even remember reading on the official retool documentation website saying you should probably not use it if your internal tool is fairly complex. It was honest.

[solias99]

Sure, bear with me for this might be a long answer. I'll start with some of my own use cases I tried and then expand into where I think this space is going.

With Retool, I tried building a form where if I change one input, the other input needs to conditionally change. I struggled a little with figuring this out, more than I should have. I also find it unwieldy to do any complex state management with a low-code builder (as in the case above), so it was a no-no for me.

At the same time, I understand that this feels like "writing code all over again".

The reason we don't believe so is because there's a hidden cost (cognitive effort) associated with picking the right component library, the right framework, etc.

Eventually, you won't be writing too much code either way for CRUD because of AI.

Let's say you want to edit some of the styling. Instead of writing some TailwindCSS, you will just ask our AI to say "move this graph to the right of the table" and it will just do it. We're opinionated to the point of having our own CSS rule engine, to make sure that the padding is always the same when adding new elements on to the screen, so the goal is for you to not write code as far as possible.

Have a look at https://v0.dev, it paints a good picture of what we're trying to do with this.

[artathred]

I second this, the whole point of Retool is that you can build complex apps that you couldn’t with pure no code solutions (i.e Airtable/Notion).

Retool replaced a pain point (devs don’t want to code internal apps) that is now being brought back with a solution like this.