On this episode, we delve into the world of web app development and how you can create a successful platform without a background in tech.
Our guest, Pratham Agarwal, the co-founder of Canonic.dev explains how you can use low-code solutions, UI kits and boilerplates to speed up the process, We also discuss the choice of programming languages and how to avoid adding extra features that may distract from your core proposition. Tune in for practical tips on creating a successful web app without a tech background.
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00:00:32
Saikat Pyne: Today we have a very special guest joining us. We
00:00:35
Saikat Pyne: have Praha Mural, the co-founder of canonic dot dev. It's
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Saikat Pyne: an amazing low code full stack solution that simplifies the
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Saikat Pyne: process of building sass tools.
00:00:48
Saikat Pyne: Braham is here to shed light on the world of
00:00:51
Saikat Pyne: sass for the Nontender.
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Saikat Pyne: We'll break down complex topics like cloud hosting, front end
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Saikat Pyne: backend development and programming languages and try and make it
00:01:04
Saikat Pyne: as easy as possible for you to build S a products.
00:01:08
Saikat Pyne: So whether you're a solo or an aspiring founder, get
00:01:12
Saikat Pyne: ready to unlock the secrets of a success with and
00:01:16
Saikat Pyne: me and turn your idea into real. Let's dig right in.
00:01:27
Saikat Pyne: Hello. Hello. Welcome to the U Incorporated podcast with me Secret,
00:01:32
Saikat Pyne: your friendly Neighbourhood part-time creator and full time media nerd.
00:01:35
Saikat Pyne: On this show, I catch up with some of the
00:01:38
Saikat Pyne: most bad ass founders, media, Mavericks and indie hackers in
00:01:42
Saikat Pyne: the whole wide world. And we have some truly insightful
00:01:45
Saikat Pyne: chats on startups, media and influence. The stuff that gets
00:01:50
Saikat Pyne: left out of the media headlines.
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Saikat Pyne: Whether you're in a corporate, a startup, you own a
00:01:56
Saikat Pyne: legacy brand a scrappy side hustle or you're only a student.
00:02:00
Saikat Pyne: If you are keen to build your brand your voice
00:02:03
Saikat Pyne: your way. You're in the right place. Here we go.
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Saikat Pyne: Hey, welcome to the
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Pratham Agarwal: Hey, nice to be here,
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Saikat Pyne: Prat. Let's dig right in.
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Saikat Pyne: For somebody who has no clue about tech, what are
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Saikat Pyne: the couple of things that are like you can't build
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Saikat Pyne: anything in if you don't know these couple of things? Boss,
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Pratham Agarwal: I know tech is a bit daunting for non-technical founders,
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Pratham Agarwal: especially when they're building right. But there are only a
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Pratham Agarwal: few things that you really need to get going right
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Pratham Agarwal: when you're launching an MVP special, there are only a
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Pratham Agarwal: few things you really need in order to get going.
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Pratham Agarwal: So one of those is a website, right? Whenever you're
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Pratham Agarwal: launching a product, you need a place where you can
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Pratham Agarwal: present all of your information about your product you're offering
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Pratham Agarwal: and you're the deal that you're offering right to them
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Pratham Agarwal: and what the value proposition could be. So there I
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Pratham Agarwal: feel the website is the most important thing you really
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Pratham Agarwal: need to get going.
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Pratham Agarwal: And apart from that as you grow and as you launch,
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Pratham Agarwal: there are a couple of other things that get added
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Pratham Agarwal: on Let's say you want to collect payments from users, right?
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Pratham Agarwal: So you want to add like, stripe or recharge and
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Pratham Agarwal: a bunch of these payment providers in order to collect payments. Then,
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Pratham Agarwal: in order to raise funding, you need to be registered
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Pratham Agarwal: as a startup, right,
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Pratham Agarwal: and that requires a bunch of technical compliance as well.
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Pratham Agarwal: So those are a couple of things you need. But
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Pratham Agarwal: I would say the website is the main thing. You
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Pratham Agarwal: get that out, you start getting users on board, and
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Pratham Agarwal: that's enough to get you going. There are a lot
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Pratham Agarwal: of platforms and a lot of tools around where you
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Pratham Agarwal: don't need that technical knowledge in order to launch these products.
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Saikat Pyne: Got it. You need a landing page and let's say
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Saikat Pyne: you've integrated stripe or right.
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Saikat Pyne: What is a Web app? Web app is
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Pratham Agarwal: an application that's running inside your browser, right? So traditionally,
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Pratham Agarwal: you would go to the APP store and download an app,
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Pratham Agarwal: and that would run on your phone and you would
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Pratham Agarwal: use that,
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Pratham Agarwal: or if you were using a laptop, you would go
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Pratham Agarwal: and download like this EXC file right that you would
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Pratham Agarwal: then run on your computer. But now you can essentially
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Pratham Agarwal: have all of that functionality running inside a browser accessible
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Pratham Agarwal: through a simple UR. For example, if you want to
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Pratham Agarwal: use stripe, you go to dashboard dot stripe dot com,
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Pratham Agarwal: and you have this beautiful looking tool that you can
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Pratham Agarwal: use all within the browser.
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Pratham Agarwal: So that's what an Web app is. If you're a business,
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Pratham Agarwal: you'd want that to be provided to your users. You
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Pratham Agarwal: would want to build a dashboard or you'd want to
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Pratham Agarwal: build an admin tool. So that's where your Web app
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Saikat Pyne: essentially is. But what's stopping me from going to dashboard
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Saikat Pyne: dot stripe dot com? And if let's say stripe is
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Saikat Pyne: a product
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Saikat Pyne: to use it for
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Pratham Agarwal: free, you can copy the entire U I. But the
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Pratham Agarwal: Web app is essentially made up of two pieces, right?
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Pratham Agarwal: One is the U I that you see when you
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Pratham Agarwal: open that URL table or list some navigation. So that's
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Pratham Agarwal: the front end. And then there's been
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Pratham Agarwal: entire back end, which is like a computer running in
00:05:30
Pratham Agarwal: the cloud right, that's actually doing a lot of logical operations.
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Pratham Agarwal: It's doing a lot of additional stuff that you can't
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Pratham Agarwal: really see on the U. I itself So when you
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Pratham Agarwal: go to stripe and you make a payment right
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Pratham Agarwal: on behind the scenes there it's making and communicating with
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Pratham Agarwal: a bunch of different services. It's communicating with the payment gateway.
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Pratham Agarwal: It's communicating with the bank, and all of that is
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Pratham Agarwal: something you can't just go on the website and be
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Pratham Agarwal: able
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Saikat Pyne: to go. Got it so you can't just log into
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Saikat Pyne: dashboard dot
00:06:04
Saikat Pyne: G suite dot com and use G suite for free
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Saikat Pyne: because at the back end there are a lot of
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Saikat Pyne: other information that is being processed constantly and the information
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Saikat Pyne: you will not have access to as somebody who's just
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Saikat Pyne: off the web of it. What is the front end
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Saikat Pyne: and what is the back end?
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Pratham Agarwal: I get asked that a lot by everyone within the company.
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Pratham Agarwal: So front end and back end are two components of
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Pratham Agarwal: an application where the front end is the UY. So
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Pratham Agarwal: when you say you're a front end developer, they're primarily
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Pratham Agarwal: taking designs and converting that into code so that when
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Pratham Agarwal: you load it up on your browser or if you
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Pratham Agarwal: load it up on
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Pratham Agarwal: to your app, you're seeing the U I that the
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Pratham Agarwal: designers designed so that's all of that is actually code
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Pratham Agarwal: that's running within your browser itself, OK? And the back
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Pratham Agarwal: end is where all of your logic is. So, for example,
00:07:01
Pratham Agarwal: let's think Google, for example, right when you search for
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Pratham Agarwal: something right, you see the search results page,
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Pratham Agarwal: how the search results page looks and how it's designed.
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Pratham Agarwal: That's the front end of it. But the backend is
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Pratham Agarwal: in charge of taking what you've searched, crawling the Web,
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Pratham Agarwal: coming up with the right results and then passing that
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Pratham Agarwal: along to the front end so that they can be displayed.
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Saikat Pyne: So what is the relationship between the front encoder and
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Saikat Pyne: the UIUX designer? Because the UIUX designer doesn't know coding often.
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Saikat Pyne: So how does it work between these two people?
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Pratham Agarwal: Yeah, so the UIUX person, they're going to be making
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Pratham Agarwal: the designs. They'd be using a tool like fake Photoshop sketch. Right?
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Pratham Agarwal: And these are just designs on a particular view. So,
00:07:53
Pratham Agarwal: for example, you make
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Pratham Agarwal: a mobile design, so that will just be a design.
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Pratham Agarwal: It's not code yet, so this is the first point
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Pratham Agarwal: that comes up where the designer comes up with the
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Pratham Agarwal: actual design itself, and these are just pixels. There's no
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Pratham Agarwal: logic built in when you click on a button and
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Pratham Agarwal: what should happen. None of that's actually built out yet, right?
00:08:15
Pratham Agarwal: So we just create different screens, right? We'll show the
00:08:18
Pratham Agarwal: states of the APP. So when you're clicking on a button,
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Pratham Agarwal: this is how the app should look like when you
00:08:25
Pratham Agarwal: open up a model or if you open up another window,
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Pratham Agarwal: this is how it should look like got it. Now
00:08:31
Pratham Agarwal: the front end developer will take all of those designs,
00:08:35
Pratham Agarwal: and then he's going to convert it into code. So
00:08:38
Pratham Agarwal: if he's a Web developer, for example, he'll convert the
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Pratham Agarwal: design to work and look well inside a browser. If
00:08:45
Pratham Agarwal: it's an I OS developer, he'd be doing that for
00:08:48
Pratham Agarwal: an I OS device, and all of these require different
00:08:51
Pratham Agarwal: programming languages.
00:08:53
Pratham Agarwal: So that's why that specialty comes in. Why there's an
00:08:56
Pratham Agarwal: I US front end developer or there's a Web front
00:08:59
Pratham Agarwal: end developer because the language is needed are different. And
00:09:04
Pratham Agarwal: that's when you try and add interactivity as well.
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Saikat Pyne: Got it. So how many types of front end developers
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Saikat Pyne: are there?
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Pratham Agarwal: Very infinite. It's depending on a lot of different criteria,
00:09:19
Pratham Agarwal: right when you start off, you probably more constrained to
00:09:23
Pratham Agarwal: a technology, so you would see a lot of react. Developers.
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Pratham Agarwal: You see a lot of these buzzwords, right? Angular developers
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Pratham Agarwal: react developers,
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Pratham Agarwal: But then, as experience grows you as a developer, you're
00:09:36
Pratham Agarwal: forced to choose different languages based on needs. OK, so
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Pratham Agarwal: you might be putting on shoes as an IS developer
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Pratham Agarwal: one day, because that's the need of the And then
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Pratham Agarwal: you'll be building a tool on React, which is another
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Pratham Agarwal: Web programming language, right?
00:09:53
Pratham Agarwal: And you'll be building that out on the browser. Got it?
00:09:56
Pratham Agarwal: So you pick these up and eventually you just become
00:09:58
Pratham Agarwal: a developer.
00:10:00
Saikat Pyne: Got it. So over time, these experienced people would often
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Saikat Pyne: know multiple front end developing frameworks. And as my company grows,
00:10:09
Saikat Pyne: one front end person and he's going to be heading
00:10:12
Saikat Pyne: a unit or just him.
00:10:13
Saikat Pyne: Looking at multiple front end versions of my software through
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Saikat Pyne: multiple platforms would be I OS, app and all of
00:10:21
Saikat Pyne: that as long as it's front.
00:10:23
Pratham Agarwal: Yeah, yeah, and depending on how a company is structured
00:10:26
Pratham Agarwal: as a company grows, some of these roles become a
00:10:29
Pratham Agarwal: lot more specialised where you have an IO app and
00:10:33
Pratham Agarwal: you hire
00:10:34
Pratham Agarwal: I US engineer dedicated to that project so they might
00:10:38
Pratham Agarwal: know other languages but then specialise in one. So then
00:10:41
Pratham Agarwal: that becomes the main
00:10:42
Saikat Pyne: responsibility. Got let's speak about me as a first time
00:10:47
Saikat Pyne: founder hiring my first tech resource Right then I am
00:10:51
Saikat Pyne: likely to hire somebody called a full stack developer
00:10:54
Saikat Pyne: What is really the role of a full stack developer?
00:10:57
Saikat Pyne: And if a full start developer is the all rounder,
00:11:00
Saikat Pyne: then why don't we only have all all rounders in
00:11:03
Saikat Pyne: our
00:11:03
Pratham Agarwal: team? It's the classic jack of all trades and master
00:11:07
Pratham Agarwal: of one debate. Full stack engineers who you want on
00:11:11
Pratham Agarwal: the team already on because it depends on the needs.
00:11:14
Pratham Agarwal: They might be doing deployments or putting code out onto
00:11:18
Pratham Agarwal: the cloud, or they might be doing front and they
00:11:21
Pratham Agarwal: might be doing back end.
00:11:23
Pratham Agarwal: And since your budget's very limited, you can't have a
00:11:26
Pratham Agarwal: lot of different sorts of engineers with their own specialisations
00:11:30
Pratham Agarwal: on the right. So initially you want a full stack
00:11:33
Pratham Agarwal: developer who can just take a request in and get
00:11:36
Pratham Agarwal: it out, no matter what.
00:11:38
Pratham Agarwal: But then, as a company grows, you want people with
00:11:41
Pratham Agarwal: certain specialisations. You want someone who's really good at search
00:11:47
Pratham Agarwal: to be heading search at Google, right? Like how What
00:11:49
Pratham Agarwal: the algorithms are for the for the search and how
00:11:53
Pratham Agarwal: all of that works. They've got people with PhD S
00:11:56
Pratham Agarwal: on the top.
00:11:57
Pratham Agarwal: So those people go one step beyond where, like they're
00:12:01
Pratham Agarwal: actually at the bleeding edge of things. And that's when
00:12:03
Pratham Agarwal: you need those specialisations
00:12:05
Saikat Pyne: got. So the first developer I hire most likely is
00:12:09
Saikat Pyne: going to be a tech developer. But as my company
00:12:11
Saikat Pyne: grows as our techniques grow, I want more specialised talent
00:12:15
Saikat Pyne: in those areas. Got it?
00:12:17
Saikat Pyne: The two sort of buzzwords when it comes to full
00:12:21
Saikat Pyne: stack developers, one is and the second is mean. Could
00:12:25
Saikat Pyne: you break down? Who's a mon developer Who's a mean developer?
00:12:30
Saikat Pyne: And does it have to do anything with how they
00:12:32
Saikat Pyne: are to you As a founder, you are a mean person.
00:12:35
Saikat Pyne: You are a mean developer.
00:12:36
Pratham Agarwal: Yeah, so when we talk about full stack developers, where
00:12:39
Pratham Agarwal: that term stack full stack comes from is when you're
00:12:42
Pratham Agarwal: building an application, you have the front end, you have
00:12:45
Pratham Agarwal: the back end,
00:12:46
Pratham Agarwal: and these even these two areas are further broken down
00:12:50
Pratham Agarwal: into different players, and each layer has a specific technology
00:12:55
Pratham Agarwal: that's associated with, for example, on the front end, you
00:12:58
Pratham Agarwal: have choices between frameworks, right? You have react. You have angular.
00:13:03
Pratham Agarwal: And on the back end you have different programming languages.
00:13:07
Pratham Agarwal: Some people like to use classic C. Plus, these days
00:13:11
Pratham Agarwal: a lot of people are using more chairs,
00:13:14
Pratham Agarwal: et cetera. So you have a and then there's your database,
00:13:17
Pratham Agarwal: where you have B post MySQL. So all of these
00:13:22
Pratham Agarwal: combined to form a stack, and that's where mo and
00:13:26
Pratham Agarwal: mean come from where
00:13:28
Pratham Agarwal: M is for mongo DB, which is your database, right?
00:13:33
Pratham Agarwal: E is express, which is the neighbourhood that interacts with
00:13:38
Pratham Agarwal: the database, got it and communicates with the front end
00:13:41
Pratham Agarwal: using API S. Got it. So obviously, when you have
00:13:44
Pratham Agarwal: the front end and the back end, they need to
00:13:46
Pratham Agarwal: be able to communicate with each other.
00:13:48
Pratham Agarwal: So express handles that layer primarily, and then
00:13:54
Pratham Agarwal: modern art is react, which is your front end library
00:13:58
Pratham Agarwal: that you're using. Right? And N is not GS, which
00:14:02
Pratham Agarwal: is the programming language that you use on the back end. OK, similarly,
00:14:06
Pratham Agarwal: mean is the exact same thing, but with a being angular. OK,
00:14:11
Pratham Agarwal: and I'm a guy in and out. I love, react,
00:14:14
Pratham Agarwal: have love for a while as
00:14:16
Saikat Pyne: a non techie. How do I choose which stack I
00:14:19
Saikat Pyne: want to build your on top of
00:14:23
Pratham Agarwal: initially? Honestly, when you're starting out, it doesn't matter whether
00:14:26
Pratham Agarwal: you go with me or more. It depends on what
00:14:30
Pratham Agarwal: kind of skill sets are available. It's better to if
00:14:34
Pratham Agarwal: you have someone you're getting in. Who's a react developer, right?
00:14:38
Pratham Agarwal: He's great. There's no point forcing them to re write
00:14:42
Pratham Agarwal: Angulo or vice versa. Got it?
00:14:44
Pratham Agarwal: Because there are no real benefits, especially at that stage, right?
00:14:48
Pratham Agarwal: So then it's just whoever is available, you should go
00:14:51
Pratham Agarwal: for that.
00:14:51
Saikat Pyne: There's no real difference at that level. Is there any
00:14:55
Saikat Pyne: difference in terms of programming language? You'd see a lot
00:14:59
Saikat Pyne: of python coders. You'd see a lot of coders who
00:15:03
Saikat Pyne: are only working in. You'd see a lot of programmers
00:15:06
Saikat Pyne: who are only working with JavaScript. So how do I,
00:15:10
Saikat Pyne: as a non tech founder, know
00:15:13
Saikat Pyne: you know which programming language is right for my software solution?
00:15:19
Pratham Agarwal: There, I think again, it's very agnostic where it really
00:15:24
Pratham Agarwal: depends on that full stack engineer that you're getting on port, right?
00:15:28
Pratham Agarwal: As your application grows, you'll eventually use a bunch of
00:15:32
Pratham Agarwal: these languages. You'll have some services that are running on
00:15:36
Pratham Agarwal: no chairs. You have some services C plus and so on, right,
00:15:40
Pratham Agarwal: But initially you could use your default languages. There are
00:15:44
Pratham Agarwal: a lot of frameworks, but one thing to look at
00:15:47
Pratham Agarwal: is
00:15:47
Pratham Agarwal: depending on the market you're at right. For example, in India,
00:15:51
Pratham Agarwal: there's a lot of react development, so it's beneficial to
00:15:55
Pratham Agarwal: not use an obscure language in those cases. Because when
00:15:58
Pratham Agarwal: you are hiring more people, then it's a lot easier
00:16:01
Pratham Agarwal: to hire some of these popular framework engineers rather than,
00:16:07
Pratham Agarwal: let's say, a engineer where you're not gonna find them.
00:16:10
Pratham Agarwal: That so it's
00:16:10
Saikat Pyne: more of a convenience issue in the beginning than anything.
00:16:13
Saikat Pyne: And as your product sort of grows, you are more
00:16:17
Saikat Pyne: likely to integrate codes across multiple programming languages. Exactly. Got it,
00:16:22
Saikat Pyne: Got it. Now let's speak about about some of the
00:16:26
Saikat Pyne: ways in which I can save time. What are some
00:16:29
Saikat Pyne: of the ways in which I, as a non tech founder,
00:16:34
Saikat Pyne: can help an engineer with creating a tech product?
00:16:39
Pratham Agarwal: I feel one thing that really helps is generally just
00:16:43
Pratham Agarwal: scoping your MVP down as much as you can. So
00:16:47
Pratham Agarwal: your minimum viable product, right? The main thing that you're
00:16:51
Pratham Agarwal: building that you need absolutely before you can launch.
00:16:56
Pratham Agarwal: So there, when you're building something like that with engineers,
00:17:00
Pratham Agarwal: it's really hard to scope it down because they always
00:17:02
Pratham Agarwal: want to do more. They're like, Oh, I want I
00:17:06
Pratham Agarwal: It'd be cool if we could build this, too. It'd
00:17:08
Pratham Agarwal: be cool if you could do that as well.
00:17:10
Pratham Agarwal: So really scoping and locking it down to your core
00:17:14
Pratham Agarwal: value proposition, right? Your core offering that I feel is
00:17:18
Pratham Agarwal: the most helpful. The second thing would be to just
00:17:21
Pratham Agarwal: take off everything else off his his or her right,
00:17:25
Pratham Agarwal: like you have the product in front of you. Let
00:17:28
Pratham Agarwal: them just build that first
00:17:30
Pratham Agarwal: and everything else. There are a lot of tools and
00:17:33
Pratham Agarwal: technologies available today. You have that entire low code revolution
00:17:38
Pratham Agarwal: happening where people are building a lot of these complicated
00:17:42
Pratham Agarwal: things payment gateways, payment solutions, all without writing a single
00:17:46
Pratham Agarwal: line of code, right? So I feel there as a
00:17:50
Pratham Agarwal: non-technical founder, just using different tools and being a bit
00:17:54
Pratham Agarwal: thrifty about that
00:17:56
Pratham Agarwal: can go a long way in just allowing the engineer
00:17:59
Pratham Agarwal: to focus on just building the product.
00:18:02
Saikat Pyne: Love it. Let's dig that into that. What are the
00:18:05
Saikat Pyne: couple of things you think that I can take off
00:18:08
Saikat Pyne: of the engineer so that he or she can focus
00:18:11
Saikat Pyne: on the core
00:18:12
Pratham Agarwal: product? One thing that comes to my mind is just
00:18:16
Pratham Agarwal: ma managing a lot of the marketing and analytics stuff, right?
00:18:20
Pratham Agarwal: The tools such as segment and et cetera, that allow
00:18:25
Pratham Agarwal: you to integrate into the app. And if you combine
00:18:29
Pratham Agarwal: that with a service like Google tag manager, you can
00:18:32
Pratham Agarwal: set up analytics. You can set up product metrics. You
00:18:36
Pratham Agarwal: can set up dashboards all without really involving the engine.
00:18:40
Pratham Agarwal: All the engineer has to do is write this, copy
00:18:43
Pratham Agarwal: this code and paste it in this one place, and
00:18:46
Pratham Agarwal: you're good to go. And what that really helps with
00:18:49
Pratham Agarwal: is that if you
00:18:51
Pratham Agarwal: adding ads to your website or if you're adding metrics
00:18:56
Pratham Agarwal: or analytics, you usually always have to modify some code.
00:19:00
Pratham Agarwal: And with all these technologies, what you can do is
00:19:03
Pratham Agarwal: you have that under your control instead of the developer,
00:19:07
Pratham Agarwal: and then it's just easy to add all of that.
00:19:10
Saikat Pyne: Got it. So you're basically saying that anything that has
00:19:15
Saikat Pyne: got to do with marketing,
00:19:17
Saikat Pyne: uh, or some of these other platforms that you use,
00:19:21
Saikat Pyne: let's say, for feedback management or, like, product tour or,
00:19:24
Saikat Pyne: let's say, AC RM integration. All of those things can
00:19:27
Saikat Pyne: be done at your end so that he or she
00:19:30
Saikat Pyne: is not managing log ins and passwords of 10 platforms.
00:19:34
Saikat Pyne: They are just focusing on the coding exactly lovely. We're
00:19:38
Saikat Pyne: going to dig into the low code and the no
00:19:40
Saikat Pyne: code bit. But before that, let's just scope out just
00:19:43
Saikat Pyne: a bit and look at the costs
00:19:46
Saikat Pyne: that are involved in developing a right. And one of
00:19:49
Saikat Pyne: the biggest cost is could be server cost, right. The
00:19:53
Saikat Pyne: way our website works is they give hosting with the service.
00:19:58
Saikat Pyne: How do I host a Web app?
00:20:01
Pratham Agarwal: So when you whenever you're building a Web app as
00:20:04
Pratham Agarwal: we've spoken, it's a stack, right? Right. You have a database,
00:20:08
Pratham Agarwal: you have a back end, you have a front. Right now,
00:20:11
Pratham Agarwal: all of these three different things need
00:20:14
Pratham Agarwal: different hosting solutions in a way, right? So when you're
00:20:18
Pratham Agarwal: building a simple website, there's no back end or there's
00:20:21
Pratham Agarwal: no database. It's only the front. So that's when you
00:20:25
Pratham Agarwal: can just use a simple hosting provider. Put in your
00:20:29
Pratham Agarwal: HTML file, which is your main file that opens up
00:20:32
Pratham Agarwal: when you're loading where you are and you're good to go.
00:20:35
Pratham Agarwal: You can do that in our on a Google drive,
00:20:38
Pratham Agarwal: or you could put it anywhere you want.
00:20:41
Pratham Agarwal: But if you want the back end as well, when
00:20:43
Pratham Agarwal: you're building a Web app, you'd have a data base
00:20:45
Pratham Agarwal: and a back end. For that. You need that to
00:20:49
Pratham Agarwal: be running on a computer. Now that computer is essentially
00:20:53
Pratham Agarwal: running inside a data centre and that data centre might
00:20:58
Pratham Agarwal: be AWS, it might be Google firebase. It might be
00:21:02
Pratham Agarwal: digital ocean, and
00:21:04
Pratham Agarwal: that's where the costs mainly arise from, which is running
00:21:08
Pratham Agarwal: that pack and server and database. Right
00:21:12
Pratham Agarwal: now. Now, when you're choosing, you either have a choice
00:21:14
Pratham Agarwal: of going with one of the big ones. You have
00:21:18
Pratham Agarwal: Microsoft as you have switches, Amazon Web services, and you
00:21:22
Pratham Agarwal: have Google Cloud. Right now, all of them
00:21:25
Pratham Agarwal: need a lot of technical experience to be able to
00:21:29
Pratham Agarwal: reliably get up and running, but over time that it's
00:21:34
Pratham Agarwal: the most scalable option. One of the good things about
00:21:37
Pratham Agarwal: these services, though, is as a sass founder. When you're
00:21:41
Pratham Agarwal: probably in the game, you can easily apply for credits
00:21:45
Pratham Agarwal: for all of these services.
00:21:48
Pratham Agarwal: So that makes it essentially free like, for example, at
00:21:52
Pratham Agarwal: all of our infrastructure for the first year was completely free.
00:21:56
Pratham Agarwal: Oh wow.
00:21:57
Pratham Agarwal: And that's how deep these discounts go. They'll give you.
00:22:00
Pratham Agarwal: If you're associated with the venture capital, they'll give you
00:22:05
Pratham Agarwal: up to 100 K US D in credit.
00:22:09
Pratham Agarwal: And if you're not, then you can get up to
00:22:12
Pratham Agarwal: five K 10-K in credit, which makes it really like
00:22:16
Pratham Agarwal: free for a while,
00:22:17
Saikat Pyne: Which is going to give me these many credits for
00:22:21
Saikat Pyne: free
00:22:22
Pratham Agarwal: AWS Google Cloud is
00:22:26
Saikat Pyne: wow! Wow! OK, OK, so I can apply as a
00:22:30
Saikat Pyne: early stage founder and get a lot of free graduates.
00:22:34
Pratham Agarwal: Exactly. OK, and this applies to most other subscriptions you
00:22:38
Pratham Agarwal: might buy. So if you're using other services, always look
00:22:42
Pratham Agarwal: for that start up founder programme. Almost all of these
00:22:45
Pratham Agarwal: big companies have it right and then give you 90% 100%
00:22:49
Pratham Agarwal: discount in most of these big, uh services. Oh,
00:22:53
Saikat Pyne: Wow. Oh wow. Is that a verification process for these programmes?
00:22:57
Pratham Agarwal: So if you associate with the VC, then certain companies
00:23:02
Pratham Agarwal: ask you to put a certain referee report, OK?
00:23:06
Pratham Agarwal: But otherwise it's a very simple form where you just
00:23:09
Pratham Agarwal: talk about the company the size. When was it founded?
00:23:12
Pratham Agarwal: If it's had any funding
00:23:14
Pratham Agarwal: and it's relatively easy to get these credits AWS, at
00:23:18
Pratham Agarwal: least
00:23:19
Pratham Agarwal: we've gotten credit like two or three times around. Oh,
00:23:21
Saikat Pyne: lovely.
00:23:23
Saikat Pyne: But how do I pick which platform is right for me?
00:23:26
Saikat Pyne: Let's say I'm not expecting this to be a fund idea,
00:23:31
Saikat Pyne: so I'm not expecting VC money any time soon. So
00:23:34
Saikat Pyne: it's going to be money out of my own pocket, right?
00:23:37
Saikat Pyne: So in terms of a price conscious Microsoft founder, which
00:23:43
Saikat Pyne: is my best bet, really in terms of going for hosting,
00:23:48
Pratham Agarwal: if you disregard the credit, then you're better off going
00:23:52
Pratham Agarwal: with some of the smaller players. So it entirely depends
00:23:56
Pratham Agarwal: on your needs, where all of these services, rather than
00:23:59
Pratham Agarwal: just giving you a computer in the cloud, they also
00:24:03
Pratham Agarwal: give you a lot of other services that they've built
00:24:06
Pratham Agarwal: on top of this technology.
00:24:08
Pratham Agarwal: That's how you get tied into these companies as well.
00:24:12
Pratham Agarwal: And that's why it's also an important decision. Because once
00:24:15
Pratham Agarwal: you pick one of these providers and you start building
00:24:18
Pratham Agarwal: on top of before you know it, it's like a
00:24:21
Pratham Agarwal: one month long effort or more much more than that,
00:24:24
Pratham Agarwal: it just shift from let's say, AWS to it. So
00:24:28
Pratham Agarwal: that's why it's also always the best practise to just
00:24:31
Pratham Agarwal: go with one of these.
00:24:33
Pratham Agarwal: My personal preference is AWS. It works out the best
00:24:36
Pratham Agarwal: for me. Google Cloud is another really strong contender.
00:24:42
Pratham Agarwal: But being cloud diagnostic in today's day and age is
00:24:45
Pratham Agarwal: really hard where you can just take your service and
00:24:48
Pratham Agarwal: just jump ship from one place to another. It usually
00:24:51
Pratham Agarwal: requires a lot of effort.
00:24:53
Saikat Pyne: Is there a downside? Really, For me to go with
00:24:55
Saikat Pyne: the smaller providers versus the big boys, there's
00:24:58
Pratham Agarwal: no real downside. And unless you're using some of the
00:25:02
Pratham Agarwal: exclusive services where you absolutely need that,
00:25:06
Pratham Agarwal: if you just want your code to run on a
00:25:08
Pratham Agarwal: computer in the Cloud digital version would do equally well.
00:25:11
Pratham Agarwal: Got it like
00:25:13
Pratham Agarwal: when we were launching Canonic. It was
00:25:16
Pratham Agarwal: digital version that we used for most of our deployments
00:25:19
Pratham Agarwal: and it worked out great. The pricing was much cheaper
00:25:22
Pratham Agarwal: than AWS as well. Got it?
00:25:24
Saikat Pyne: Fair enough. Can a full stack developer handle all my
00:25:29
Saikat Pyne: server side management as well? Because as somebody who's again
00:25:34
Saikat Pyne: non tech,
00:25:35
Saikat Pyne: I really have no clue about the kind of resources
00:25:40
Saikat Pyne: or the kind of expertise it would require for me
00:25:44
Saikat Pyne: to be able to manage my code once it's posted
00:25:48
Saikat Pyne: and up and running.
00:25:49
Pratham Agarwal: So initially, it's definitely possible, right, because your servers and
00:25:54
Pratham Agarwal: your configurations aren't too complex.
00:25:58
Pratham Agarwal: But as the code base grows as you write and
00:26:01
Pratham Agarwal: build a lot more, deployment and scalability come into the
00:26:05
Pratham Agarwal: picture where it your code will work great when it's
00:26:09
Pratham Agarwal: just 10 people or 100 people using. But what happens
00:26:13
Pratham Agarwal: when there are 10 people using it every minute? So
00:26:17
Pratham Agarwal: then scalability becomes a huge challenge, right? And there's a
00:26:21
Pratham Agarwal: separate role called Devo, which is
00:26:25
Pratham Agarwal: the team that's responsible for maintaining your deployments, making sure
00:26:29
Pratham Agarwal: that when there are a lot of users coming in,
00:26:31
Pratham Agarwal: you
00:26:32
Pratham Agarwal: service doesn't go down or crashes. Got it? So that's
00:26:36
Pratham Agarwal: where a person will be useful. A full start developer
00:26:39
Pratham Agarwal: can usually take care of these things early on. So
00:26:43
Pratham Agarwal: that should also
00:26:44
Saikat Pyne: be Is it not the job of the the hosting
00:26:49
Saikat Pyne: company to ensure that my app doesn't crash? Because I'm
00:26:53
Saikat Pyne: paying them to ensure that I get uninterrupted service? So
00:26:56
Saikat Pyne: why do I have to hire somebody to ensure that
00:26:59
Saikat Pyne: my app doesn't crash? I
00:27:00
Pratham Agarwal: feel like the
00:27:02
Pratham Agarwal: there's a thin line there that exists where it's a
00:27:05
Pratham Agarwal: shared responsibility model where, what? The guarantee is up to
00:27:12
Pratham Agarwal: a certain point, they're going to be like, OK, the
00:27:14
Pratham Agarwal: computer that's running on the cloud is not going to crash.
00:27:19
Pratham Agarwal: You're always going to be able to access the computer. Everyone,
00:27:24
Pratham Agarwal: all your users can access the computer that's on them.
00:27:29
Pratham Agarwal: So whenever so services go down, whether computers themselves aren't
00:27:34
Pratham Agarwal: accessible or not running, that's on AWS that affects their
00:27:38
Pratham Agarwal: availability and their contracts. But when the code that you're
00:27:43
Pratham Agarwal: running on those computers go down, that's not their responsibility,
00:27:48
Pratham Agarwal: because they cannot guarantee whatever you write as code is
00:27:54
Pratham Agarwal: the right code right? That's where there are good developers
00:27:58
Pratham Agarwal: or not. So good developers, where it's the quality of
00:28:02
Pratham Agarwal: code that you write can lead to bug
00:28:04
Pratham Agarwal: lead to crashes and so on. So so
00:28:07
Saikat Pyne: it's about. And that's where the concept of clean code
00:28:10
Saikat Pyne: really comes in. Where is how have you written the code?
00:28:13
Saikat Pyne: Is it really completely bug free? And whether it's able
00:28:17
Saikat Pyne: to run seamlessly at scale or not, the expertise of
00:28:22
Saikat Pyne: the developer has a role to play That right now
00:28:25
Saikat Pyne: moving on to the new code and the low code
00:28:28
Saikat Pyne: aspect of the discussion, Really,
00:28:31
Saikat Pyne: when is it the right time for me, if at all,
00:28:34
Saikat Pyne: to build something on no code or low code versus me,
00:28:39
Saikat Pyne: hiring a developer and trying to custom code at all?
00:28:42
Pratham Agarwal: Yeah, I feel you should pick no code, especially during
00:28:46
Pratham Agarwal: the early stages. If you don't have a non if
00:28:49
Pratham Agarwal: you don't have a technical co-founder. OK, so rather than
00:28:53
Pratham Agarwal: hiring someone
00:28:55
Pratham Agarwal: to build out your entire platform, which is very tricky
00:28:58
Pratham Agarwal: because as a non-technical founder, you don't you're not able
00:29:02
Pratham Agarwal: to judge if it's going. If it's going wrong, where
00:29:05
Pratham Agarwal: are the resources going? If they're being allocated the way
00:29:08
Pratham Agarwal: they should, so you really need a person you can
00:29:11
Pratham Agarwal: trust in that position, and when you don't have that,
00:29:15
Pratham Agarwal: it's better to go towards local or new court right
00:29:19
Pratham Agarwal: where you can build out today
00:29:21
Pratham Agarwal: any sort of platform to subscription service, using just tools
00:29:26
Pratham Agarwal: that don't need a lot of coding. So they're not
00:29:29
Pratham Agarwal: going to be exactly how you imagine them. But they
00:29:33
Pratham Agarwal: they're certainly enough to validate your product or to validate
00:29:38
Pratham Agarwal: the MVP that you've been right. And once you do that,
00:29:41
Pratham Agarwal: once you get more resources after that, probably a round
00:29:44
Pratham Agarwal: of funding. That's when you then should go and look
00:29:47
Pratham Agarwal: for full stack. Engineers and other people
00:29:50
Saikat Pyne: got it as a non tech person. Do I need
00:29:54
Saikat Pyne: a developer for these? No code platforms, Or can I
00:29:59
Saikat Pyne: do it by myself?
00:30:02
Pratham Agarwal: If you have a bit of technical background like, it's
00:30:06
Pratham Agarwal: fine if you've never coded. But if you've worked at
00:30:09
Pratham Agarwal: a product based company long enough, interacted with engineers long enough,
00:30:14
Pratham Agarwal: know what an API is, or know what a front
00:30:17
Pratham Agarwal: end or back end is, then you can certainly do
00:30:20
Pratham Agarwal: it all by yourself. Got it. There are certain communities
00:30:23
Pratham Agarwal: you get help from, and a lot of these tools
00:30:25
Pratham Agarwal: just assume that base level knowledge.
00:30:28
Pratham Agarwal: But if you don't have that, then I would say
00:30:30
Pratham Agarwal: it's necessary to have someone with that sort of knowledge
00:30:34
Pratham Agarwal: to really help to make sure that you don't get blocked.
00:30:37
Saikat Pyne: Fair enough. And that sort of brings us to the
00:30:40
Saikat Pyne: Holy Grail of Web hooks and API S. So let's
00:30:44
Saikat Pyne: say all the technical expertise I really have is from
00:30:48
Saikat Pyne: the things that we have discussed on the episode, and
00:30:50
Saikat Pyne: I want to build this Microsoft tool
00:30:52
Saikat Pyne: and I want to integrate with a bunch of other platforms.
00:30:55
Saikat Pyne: Could you really break down Web hooks and API
00:30:58
Pratham Agarwal: S? Yeah, so when you're building a platform with this side,
00:31:02
Pratham Agarwal: you've got the back end and you've got the front.
00:31:04
Pratham Agarwal: Right now you've got this web app that you've built,
00:31:08
Pratham Agarwal: and now it needs to communicate with
00:31:11
Pratham Agarwal: other services and other applications. Right, So you've got your
00:31:15
Pratham Agarwal: application ready and you want to create a subscription on stripe,
00:31:20
Pratham Agarwal: right for a particular use. Right now, the way this
00:31:24
Pratham Agarwal: application communicates with stripe is through an API,
00:31:29
Pratham Agarwal: and the way stripe communicates back with the APP is
00:31:33
Pratham Agarwal: a webhook. OK,
00:31:36
Pratham Agarwal: so these two tools, a PS and Web books essentially
00:31:40
Pratham Agarwal: allow you to communicate with a bunch of different services
00:31:43
Pratham Agarwal: that you have. You might be maintaining a lot of
00:31:47
Pratham Agarwal: your data on Google sheets. Now, let's see. You want
00:31:50
Pratham Agarwal: to take all of that data, summarise it using T
00:31:53
Pratham Agarwal: GP P. OK, and get you a daily report on
00:31:56
Pratham Agarwal: email every day. Well, it sounds very technical. You taking
00:32:00
Pratham Agarwal: a bunch of these services, You communicating between them, summarising it.
00:32:05
Pratham Agarwal: But you honestly don't need an engineer today to do this,
00:32:08
Pratham Agarwal: you can use a lot of tools available. Just drag
00:32:12
Pratham Agarwal: and drop a bunch of different services. Connect all of
00:32:15
Pratham Agarwal: them together and you're good to
00:32:17
Saikat Pyne: go. What is the difference between an API and a
00:32:19
Saikat Pyne: Web hook? And how are these integrations helping me run
00:32:24
Saikat Pyne: my app?
00:32:26
Pratham Agarwal: Yep.
00:32:28
Pratham Agarwal: So let's say we're creating a social media app where
00:32:32
Pratham Agarwal: you're able to schedule all of your marketing posts to
00:32:36
Pratham Agarwal: be published on LinkedIn, Twitter et cetera. Right
00:32:40
Pratham Agarwal: now, whenever you create a post on the app,
00:32:44
Pratham Agarwal: a message is sent to one of the administrators or
00:32:47
Pratham Agarwal: 11 of the managers that this post is ready. Would
00:32:51
Pratham Agarwal: you approve it or would you reject?
00:32:54
Pratham Agarwal: Now let's say this is happening on slack, right? Slide
00:32:58
Pratham Agarwal: slack has those dynamic messages where those buttons appear right
00:33:01
Pratham Agarwal: below the map now to In order to send this
00:33:04
Pratham Agarwal: message to that manager, we'd use an E PR. OK,
00:33:07
Pratham Agarwal: so the app will make an API call from your
00:33:12
Pratham Agarwal: application to Slack saying that he sent this message to
00:33:15
Pratham Agarwal: the manager for approval show two buttons and dinner. OK,
00:33:20
Pratham Agarwal: Now
00:33:21
Pratham Agarwal: you want to carry out certain actions on approval. You
00:33:24
Pratham Agarwal: want to publish the post on rejection. You want to
00:33:28
Pratham Agarwal: inform the user that your post has been rejected with
00:33:32
Pratham Agarwal: some feedback.
00:33:34
Pratham Agarwal: So once you click the button on slack, slack needs
00:33:38
Pratham Agarwal: to let us know the answer, right? Slack needs to
00:33:41
Pratham Agarwal: let us know. OK, The manager has approved the request
00:33:46
Pratham Agarwal: or denied the request. Got it? So when slack tries
00:33:49
Pratham Agarwal: communicating back, they use Web books, got it, and Web
00:33:54
Pratham Agarwal: books are also just API S. But this is what
00:33:58
Pratham Agarwal: they signify when a service wants to communicate back on
00:34:01
Pratham Agarwal: certain events.
00:34:02
Saikat Pyne: OK, fair enough.
00:34:04
Saikat Pyne: Let's say I don't have the money to afford a
00:34:08
Saikat Pyne: Dev at this point, and I build it on a
00:34:10
Saikat Pyne: local platform. Is there any challenge for me when? Let's
00:34:15
Saikat Pyne: say suddenly the products. So I have. Let's say 1000 users.
00:34:19
Saikat Pyne: I suddenly have enough money to be able to afford
00:34:21
Saikat Pyne: a Dev, and I want to integrate more features and
00:34:24
Saikat Pyne: I want to move into a fully custom coded environment.
00:34:26
Saikat Pyne: What does that look like for me? Do I have
00:34:29
Saikat Pyne: to then build up everything from ground up?
00:34:32
Saikat Pyne: What does that shifting from low code to full custom
00:34:36
Saikat Pyne: code look like?
00:34:38
Pratham Agarwal: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that's one of
00:34:41
Pratham Agarwal: the biggest frustrations, in fact, with using some of these
00:34:44
Pratham Agarwal: local and local platforms right where you put in a
00:34:48
Pratham Agarwal: lot of effort to build something on the platform. But
00:34:50
Pratham Agarwal: when you actually are taking it to the next level,
00:34:54
Pratham Agarwal: you have to start from scratch because there's no way
00:34:57
Pratham Agarwal: to take what you've built and transfer it over to
00:35:00
Pratham Agarwal: a more, let's, say, a traditional, code based approach.
00:35:04
Pratham Agarwal: So there are a lot of innovations happening. There are
00:35:06
Pratham Agarwal: a lot of tools. Canonic allows you to do that.
00:35:09
Pratham Agarwal: There's a tool called flutter flow, where now
00:35:13
Pratham Agarwal: it exports all of that data and all of that
00:35:17
Pratham Agarwal: application that you've built as regular code. So what that
00:35:22
Pratham Agarwal: means is, let's say you hire a developer to build
00:35:25
Pratham Agarwal: an application. And then that developer left a new bringing
00:35:28
Pratham Agarwal: on another device. You'd give them this code base to
00:35:31
Pratham Agarwal: continue building right so code export works where that's the
00:35:35
Pratham Agarwal: code base that you get. So it's not gobbled text.
00:35:39
Pratham Agarwal: It's very clean code, just
00:35:42
Pratham Agarwal: in line with all the best practises. So any developer
00:35:46
Pratham Agarwal: can then take that project
00:35:47
Saikat Pyne: forward. Got it? So let's say I get on board
00:35:50
Saikat Pyne: with CANONIC and let's say, hired the intern and the
00:35:54
Saikat Pyne: internship got over and the intern left. And let's say
00:35:56
Saikat Pyne: another intern joins What is the version of the code
00:36:00
Saikat Pyne: that's going to be stored in Canonic because, uh, a
00:36:02
Saikat Pyne: code when it's running? There are multiple aspects in terms
00:36:06
Saikat Pyne: of integrations with it
00:36:07
Saikat Pyne: basis and integrations with other applications. So is it like
00:36:12
Saikat Pyne: a game where, like the last save version is there
00:36:16
Saikat Pyne: and is the code that's going to be on the
00:36:18
Saikat Pyne: server different from the code that's going to be stored
00:36:21
Saikat Pyne: on canonic? How are these two codes? Different.
00:36:24
Pratham Agarwal: Yeah, so whenever you're building a soft piece of software,
00:36:28
Pratham Agarwal: you have code that's being presented to all of your users.
00:36:33
Pratham Agarwal: We often call that your production environment. That's your live code.
00:36:38
Pratham Agarwal: That's running right now. When developers make changes to this code,
00:36:43
Pratham Agarwal: they can't make changes live right? What if there's a bug, right?
00:36:47
Pratham Agarwal: What if they haven't been able to test it? So then,
00:36:50
Pratham Agarwal: instead of actually taking the code and making it live immediately,
00:36:54
Pratham Agarwal: they have another environment that they have, which we usually
00:36:58
Pratham Agarwal: call a staging. Got it? So you make a lot
00:37:01
Pratham Agarwal: of your code changes. You push it on staging, which
00:37:04
Pratham Agarwal: is a mirror right of your production live environment.
00:37:08
Pratham Agarwal: And then the manager or the relevant stakeholders can test
00:37:13
Pratham Agarwal: out the new functionality of fixes. And once the sign
00:37:16
Pratham Agarwal: off is given, then this code goes from staging into production.
00:37:21
Pratham Agarwal: Got it? Got it. So with canonic as well. It's
00:37:25
Pratham Agarwal: a similar process where when you're making changes, all the
00:37:29
Pratham Agarwal: changes are being saved, but they're not yet published or
00:37:32
Pratham Agarwal: available to the user. Got it? Only once you deploy,
00:37:35
Pratham Agarwal: does that code go and become available and go
00:37:39
Saikat Pyne: live. Got it? I want my Web app to look
00:37:44
Saikat Pyne: and feel
00:37:46
Saikat Pyne: professional
00:37:47
Saikat Pyne: because a lot of the consumer perception of my service
00:37:51
Saikat Pyne: is going to be dependent on whether or not, they
00:37:53
Saikat Pyne: perceive me as trustworthy. And in a lot of these
00:37:56
Saikat Pyne: cases I might want to use time saving instruments like
00:37:59
Saikat Pyne: let's say, a UIK or let's say, a boiler plate
00:38:03
Saikat Pyne: to ensure that all the integrations that I would need
00:38:06
Saikat Pyne: are in place. But I still don't have to do
00:38:11
Saikat Pyne: a lot of the leg work in terms of ensuring
00:38:14
Saikat Pyne: that hiring an expensive U I designer or getting an
00:38:17
Saikat Pyne: agency on board those things. Does canonic allow or other
00:38:21
Saikat Pyne: platforms allow some of these things in terms of implementing
00:38:24
Saikat Pyne: a U I kit to ensure that the
00:38:27
Saikat Pyne: front and dignity Yeah,
00:38:29
Pratham Agarwal: yeah, I feel you. I no one today wants to
00:38:34
Pratham Agarwal: start from scratch, right? Right. Especially when you're moving at
00:38:38
Pratham Agarwal: that pace where you just want to get your product out,
00:38:40
Pratham Agarwal: start getting feedback. You want everything to
00:38:42
Pratham Agarwal: look amazing, right? But you also don't want to build
00:38:46
Pratham Agarwal: everything square and circle and triangles one by one. So
00:38:49
Pratham Agarwal: there are a lot of the boiler plates and these
00:38:52
Pratham Agarwal: U I kits really come in handy. A lot of
00:38:54
Pratham Agarwal: these platforms allow you to use these kits as well where,
00:38:58
Pratham Agarwal: for example, canonic integrates with material you are where material
00:39:03
Pratham Agarwal: U I. Is this design system already ready? Right?
00:39:08
Pratham Agarwal: And then you can take that. Take those components and
00:39:11
Pratham Agarwal: drag those in instead, where all of those components are
00:39:15
Pratham Agarwal: already well designed. They fit in perfectly. It's like taking
00:39:19
Pratham Agarwal: pieces of Lego and snapping them together.
00:39:22
Saikat Pyne: Lovely. The last couple of questions prat I'd want to
00:39:26
Saikat Pyne: really dig into the slightly more technical bits of it.
00:39:30
Saikat Pyne: You spoke about a database? Mango DB SQL. Could you
00:39:35
Saikat Pyne: really help me understand?
00:39:37
Saikat Pyne: What is the database? Why do we need databases when
00:39:41
Saikat Pyne: we use? And what is the difference between mango? Because
00:39:46
Saikat Pyne: in the Manta M stands for mango DV like you mentioned,
00:39:48
Saikat Pyne: Database quite clearly has an important role to play when
00:39:51
Saikat Pyne: you're building software. But what is that role? Why do
00:39:54
Saikat Pyne: we need databases?
00:39:57
Pratham Agarwal: Yeah, so databases are
00:40:01
Pratham Agarwal: absolutely essential to any application that you get. And what
00:40:07
Pratham Agarwal: is a database? It's a simple table or sets of tables.
00:40:11
Pratham Agarwal: If you imagine a Google spreadsheet that's a database, you've
00:40:15
Pratham Agarwal: got rows and you've got columns. And the reason why
00:40:19
Pratham Agarwal: we need to use databases is to store structured data, right?
00:40:24
Pratham Agarwal: So when you have a spreadsheet you have a column
00:40:27
Pratham Agarwal: called First Name? You have a column called Last Name.
00:40:30
Pratham Agarwal: You have email and so on. Now you might want
00:40:33
Pratham Agarwal: to use these pieces of data independently, right? You might
00:40:37
Pratham Agarwal: want to send an email to the email field whatever store, right.
00:40:43
Pratham Agarwal: And that's where databases really shine, right. They let you query.
00:40:47
Pratham Agarwal: You search these tables for that piece of data that
00:40:51
Pratham Agarwal: you're looking for in a very optimised way. So when
00:40:55
Pratham Agarwal: you have thousands of users trying to access data right,
00:40:59
Pratham Agarwal: the database isn't going through all of your text and
00:41:03
Pratham Agarwal: actually trying to look for it. It's already stored pieces everywhere,
00:41:07
Pratham Agarwal: links everywhere
00:41:09
Pratham Agarwal: to find that data in a matter of milliseconds and
00:41:12
Pratham Agarwal: get that data
00:41:13
Saikat Pyne: back. Got it? So in some way, it's about storing
00:41:17
Saikat Pyne: customer data and accessing it often in real time or
00:41:21
Saikat Pyne: the quickest way possible. That's the role of of a database.
00:41:24
Saikat Pyne: Got it? Are there anything else anything that we might
00:41:27
Saikat Pyne: have missed that you would want to tell non tech
00:41:30
Saikat Pyne: developers as they build their first ever on their own?
00:41:37
Pratham Agarwal: Yeah, from my learnings when we first started out, Canonic
00:41:41
Pratham Agarwal: rate
00:41:42
Pratham Agarwal: the most important thing in SARS is product validation for
00:41:46
Pratham Agarwal: us is when it's always been one of our key goals.
00:41:50
Pratham Agarwal: It's how do we find that magical product market fit right?
00:41:55
Pratham Agarwal: And since we're all a lot of times, first time founders,
00:42:00
Pratham Agarwal: we don't know the exact path towards it, right? It's
00:42:03
Pratham Agarwal: with a lot of mistakes that we make and a
00:42:06
Pratham Agarwal: lot of learnings and iterations, right? So the one thing
00:42:10
Pratham Agarwal: you really need is agility, right? That's where a startup
00:42:14
Pratham Agarwal: really does better than even a big enterprise, because they
00:42:17
Pratham Agarwal: can move really fast. And in order to do that,
00:42:22
Pratham Agarwal: just have an entire tool set ready where you want
00:42:26
Pratham Agarwal: a landing page. Do it in a day, using a
00:42:28
Pratham Agarwal: tool that you can
00:42:30
Pratham Agarwal: deploy with rather than finding an engineer, getting them to
00:42:34
Pratham Agarwal: build it out. So focus on validation and everything you
00:42:38
Pratham Agarwal: need from tech. Trust me, you can get without actually
00:42:42
Pratham Agarwal: need getting an engineer. One
00:42:45
Pratham Agarwal: most of it. You just have to be thrifty enough.
00:42:48
Pratham Agarwal: You just have to look around enough. But there's so
00:42:51
Pratham Agarwal: many tools in today's day and age, and you can
00:42:53
Pratham Agarwal: get those things done really quickly, and once you get validation,
00:42:57
Pratham Agarwal: then you can breathe a sigh of relief, but enjoy
00:43:01
Pratham Agarwal: the fact that here now customers you're delivering something of
00:43:04
Pratham Agarwal: immense value that people from all over around the world
00:43:07
Pratham Agarwal: are like interested in it. And that's when you go
00:43:11
Pratham Agarwal: further with scale. You try to see how technology
00:43:15
Pratham Agarwal: can, like, really grow over a long period of time.
00:43:18
Pratham Agarwal: But initially it's just about rushing, making sure that you're
00:43:23
Pratham Agarwal: trying to put everything out immediately as soon as possible.
00:43:26
Saikat Pyne: Lovely. So valid date is app and then scale after that. Lovely, lovely.
00:43:32
Saikat Pyne: And on that insightful note, guys, it's a wrap.
00:43:35
Saikat Pyne: Thank you so much for being on the show. Prat
00:43:38
Saikat Pyne: really appreciated you, taking time out and being so
00:43:40
Pratham Agarwal: patient. It was lovely being on the show, uh, great
00:43:44
Pratham Agarwal: topics to talk about. And I hope whatever I said
00:43:48
Pratham Agarwal: was helpful.
00:43:54
Saikat Pyne: Thank you for tuning into the U Incorporated podcast with me. Second,
00:43:58
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00:44:15
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00:44:18
Saikat Pyne: you on the next episode