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Comment by ultimatedelman | Hacker News Reader

i actually came here to say pretty much the same thing. as a front end dev, i thought the site looked and functioned pretty well. if you can get someone to build that complex of a site with some "non-coding" tools, well done. my concern is that you've taken the problem of coding and replaced it with a new one. people who don't understand how the web works won't be able to build amazing beautiful sites with this product (ok, maybe some will, my guess is a low percentage). what you've done is create a better WYSIWYG, and we all know what WYSIWYGs get you: Geocities.

again, no knock on the site, it looks like it's really well done, i'm just not sure that a series of complex controls solves the problem of web development any better than just learning how to code yourself.

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I'm one of the co-founders and designers at Webflow. I have never coded an entire site by hand, but I built this entire responsive site in Webflow. This WYSIWYG doesn't disregard how the web works - users actually have to know some CSS to build a responsive layout. This restriction limits a lot of Average Joe's (so no Geocities here). I actually learned all the intricacies of CSS by building sites in Webflow. Same goes for the designers out there using tool and building actual sites for the first time.

It boils down to investment and return. If designers can build responsive sites faster and easier with great code output (see source code) using a WYSIWYG, then it makes more sense to invest in that versus learning how to write the same code. Front end devs use frameworks like Bootstrap and Foundation to cut development time. Webflow serves the same purpose, but all the framework components are made visual.

This visual abstraction makes it more accessible for more people just like these frameworks made web dev easier. There is always the possibility of people using Webflow and creating poorly-coded websites, but anyone trying to code can do the same.

That's totally fine and understandable. However, what if I decide that I want to do something a bit more complex? Data-driven, even? What if I want more interactivity? Now I am limited by what your tool can do, and I've already taken the time to learn to use your tool and build a site in your ecosystem rather than learning how to code myself and be unrestricted in what I can do.

Again, I'm sure your intent with this product is not "build every website out there," but I am concerned by those with a little knowledge and ambition using your site as the easy way out for making a website rather than taking the time to actually learn how to do all those things for themselves.

I find I have the same problem when I enlist the use of any tool more complex than jQuery, haml, sass, coffeescript. Even if it is something like a jQuery plugin, bootstrap or foundation. Those addons are great as a way to impress your boss and get to a starting point quickly or early. As soon as something needs to become sufficiently complex that's when I really start to regret my decisions.

I imagine this tool is perfect for creating a beautiful landing page or similar. Obviously one isn't going to try and use it to build anything enterprise grade.

But there lots of jQuery plugins or css frameworks out there but they largely seem to have active user bases.

This is like saying that people shouldn't use Excel because they won't understand how the CPU works.

The audience here is people that feels comfortable doing stuff tweaking parameters on a dialog box, they don't care if the dialog box is actually a lazy evaluated reactive continuation or whatever as long as it does the job.

An abstraction layer for web technology is as relevant, revolutionary and useful as an abstraction layer for the CPU was on its time (in fact the most succesful companies did exactly this).

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