Fast forward to 2008 and the App Store is launched along with Super Monkey Ball – a day one app – the perfect game to demonstrate the power of a true native app that could _never_ be achieved on the web.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38537682

Points: 111

# Comments: 82

So instead of writing React code or using a drag-and-drop builder, you define everything ranging from simple forms to more complex views in Node.js or Python code using our SDK.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36033184

Points: 18

# Comments: 19

Something like Retool gives you a drag-and-drop UI builder, Interval is made for backend devs and lets you create UIs directly in your backend code. So you don’t need to learn another drag-and-drop tool or frontend framework.

Re: where the code actually runs… this is another really cool component of Interval. We host the UI for you on interval.com but the actual backend code (including everything sensitive like your environment variables, business logic, etc.) runs on your infra and Interval can’t see it by design.

My name is Alex and I founded Interval [0]. We let you build complete internal tools with just backend code. Today we’re excited to launch our 1.0 release.

We built Interval for engineers who love writing code but hate building UIs. Because you build tools with Interval using just backend code (TypeScript/Node or Python), you can focus on what you love – writing the code that makes your tools work – while Interval takes care of the UI, network communication, validation, etc.

Back in June, we shared an early preview of Interval on HN [1] and while our core approach hasn’t changed, we’ve learned a lot and expanded what Interval can do significantly.

A single line of Interval code can now (for example) render a table, prompt a user to verify their identity w/ 2FA, or ask them to upload a file.

Here’s an example of a line of Interval code that you might see in the wild: `const profilePicture = await io.input.file(‘Upload a new profile picture for the user’)`

When that line is reached inside of an Interval action, as your code awaits:

- A file upload dropzone component is rendered to the person using your tool

- The work of transferring the selected file over the network is handled for you

…and when `profilePicture` is returned, you have a soundly-typed object with everything you need including the file name, size in bytes, and its contents as a Buffer.

It’s a subtle unlock, but because all of the code you’re writing is backend code, it becomes much quicker to build tools with Interval vs. anything else we’ve seen before. You can do things like query your database on one line and then pass the results into a table for the user to view on the next.

And if you integrate Interval into your existing backend, you can take advantage of everything in your preferred stack. For example, we use Prisma as the ORM in our main app and reuse the same instance in our internal tools with no additional work.

All of this means you can build a lot with Interval with remarkably little effort. Over the past few months, it’s been common for us to see teams spin up complete admin dashboards or customer support tools in hours instead of days or weeks.

To give you a better idea of what Interval is capable of, we’ve pulled together some more examples on our site. [2] My favorite one so far is a _complete_ tool to ask questions about any Postgres database in plain English, implemented with Interval, the pg Node library, and OpenAI in <80 lines of code.

So that’s Interval. I’m excited to hear what you think + answer any questions. And if you want to start building, our SDKs are available now for JavaScript/TypeScript and Python.

[0] https://interval.com

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31656496

[2] https://interval.com/#examples

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35442355

Points: 12

# Comments: 2

I’m Alex, one of the creators of Interval. It’s the fastest way to build admin tools without writing any HTML, CSS or other frontend code.

We’re not a low-code/no-code tool though. The biggest unlock of our approach is that you build your tools by writing code with our SDK directly inside your existing backend codebase. This means you have access to your ORM, your existing backend functions, environment variables, infrastructure, and so on.

We launched back in June with our Node.js/TypeScript SDK and today we’re launching our second ever SDK, Interval for Python.

Excited to have you give it a shot + happy to answer any questions.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34710994

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

Like Windmill, Interval is heavily code-focused. Our model lets you define tools in your existing TypeScipt/JavaScript codebase.

Like Retool, you can use Interval to build complete internal dashboards that handle the "view stuff" side of things, not just the script/workflow "do stuff" pieces.