This Startup Could Literally Change The Way The Entire App Industry Works

I have literally never seen a sensationalist headline like this come true.<p>But seriously, Parse looks like it could help some people out, and seems to be doing so already, but let's not be ridiculous. When people say that it decreased dev time by 10-100 times, what they really mean is that they added features that otherwise would never have seen the light of day, and they have no idea how long it would have taken had they tried.<p>There will always be things like this to help build apps, and they will always come with trade-offs. Things may be easier, but slight changes to those things become impossible. Not everyone will think that the trade-off is worth it, and the app industry will chug along as always, if a bit shinier.

Will it change how the entire app industry works? Not really. Will it make life easier for some developers? Probably. Having used Parse in the past and ultimately dropped it for a custom backend, let's take a look at where Parse fits really well:<p>1) You're a one-off or small dev shop with no web experience, and making a basic data store with a JSON API as a backend is beyond your technical means (this is by far the best use).<p>2) Your data isn't that complex (stuff like high scores and the like), so the fact that this is just a big Key/Value store won't harm your performance much.<p>3) You also don't need any server-side intelligence, just a data store an an API.<p>4) Your growth and revenue model is in line with the pricing model of the service you selected.<p>Now here's the things I struggle with, and why where I work when we develop mobile apps, we stay away from Parse/Stackmob/Kinvey/Appcelerator ACS/Whoever. These apply to our customers / projects, and may not be the same for you.<p>1) We almost always want our server to be intelligent, not just an API-wrapped database. When I want to trigger push notifications, I want to do it with server-side logic, not everything running in the app. Our big beefy AWS servers are way more capable than someone's 2-year-old free Smartphone.<p>2) It doesn't take long for monthly fees to outpace the cost of just having your own server, or eat into your profitability. Most of these services work out to about 3-5 cents per user per month. Depending on the size and complexity of the app, and what the revenue generated from it looks like, that can be vastly more expensive than a small AWS or Heroku deployment.<p>3) It's rare that we need a data store as simple as "users + key/value". It's one thing to build a basic chat app or worldwide high score in a system like that. It's another to try and build an inventory tool or CRM.<p>4) Mobile data connectivity is high-latency and unreliable. Making a dozen API calls to populate a single screen is not only inefficient, it can be very frustrating to your users. An API call for a screen/view/fragment should return exactly the data needed, no more, no less. Let the database do what databases do best: sort and collect data. Let the phone just display it.<p>So really, for small apps or apps with relatively simple data requirements, Parse does a fine job, especially if you don't have server people on your team (in which case, BaaS is your only real option). If the app's data is going to be complex, require server-side logic or have any kind of complexity that would involve optimized API calls? You're probably better building your own.

<i>" Using Parse can lower your development time by 10x to 100x. Developers go from taking weeks to build an app to being able to build one and push it out in a matter of hours. "</i><p>So here is an interesting question. If you can build an app in a matter of minutes, how much is it worth? I ask because there is often a strong correlation between economic value and the time it takes to produce something. For example, movies produced in a couple of days often have a lower economic return than movies that take months to produce. Even including pornography in that mix, sans outliers like Paris Hilton, there seems to be a strong relationship between time and value.<p>Presumably Parse makes the implementation stage easier, but is that for all types of App? Or is it a class of App? It would need to be the former to 'change the industry' but what does that mean about the economic value of the industry to begin with?<p>Clearly this is part of a much bigger question of the economic value of 'Apps' in general. We are evolving models based on various metrics of course, and I'm curious does this 'destroy' value or does it 'grow' the market, or something else entirely.

This is literally a horrible headline.

Anyone knows how Parse's server side is done ? By looking at their API i would say something like AWS + MongoDB, but they don't seem to have known the same kind of problems as Heroku when Amazon went down the other day. So maybe they're using else. Anyone ?

As a sometime developer myself and late-blooming CS student I see things like this and start to feel insecure about my place in the world... if the barrier to entry keeps getting lower so that anybody can build an app, what's the point?<p>Obviously, I need not feel this way. Why? b/c this trend where eventually 'civilians' w/ no training in info tech or knowledge of conventional programming languages will be in a position to build stuff on the fly implies that the state of the art of software engineering is going to be miles from where we are today, and to me this is a good thing: hardcore software engineers have always been focused on making tools.

How about lock-in? What's your (the users/owners) stance on that? It seems my app will be completely hanging on Parse.com; they can change the pricing, go bankrupt, get hacked, get bought, go down(AWS) or whatever scenario making me wish I didn't use them? This functionality seems a bit too crucial/low-level to be not in-house or open source.

Currently the usage of the Parse SDK for Android is marginal:<p><a href="http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/dev" rel="nofollow">http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/dev</a><p><a href="http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/details/parse/parse" rel="nofollow">http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/details/parse/parse</a>

I was hoping to find something more substantial and was disappointed to read what is essentially a piece of PR fluff.<p>One point got me curious though: what kind of apps are built in one day? Anyone in the app-space care to elaborate?

Is Parse a specialized hosting/API environment for mobile apps? Or is it more like a weebly for mobile apps?

just an article of "One Ring to rule them all" phenomenon. Entire app industry contains lots of different usage scenarios. It is literally impossible for a platform/library to fit all type of requirements.

Literally.

Hey, Tikhon, we know you're proud of Parse and you really should be because it's awesome but taking liberties with a headline like you did there might not be so cool. It can be taken one of two ways:<p>1. The founder of Parse is a total egomaniac.<p>2. The founder of Parse is really proud of his company and has a great sense of humor.<p>Parse is awesome though. I signed up back when you guys were first opening it up to people and I remember you sent out a lot of emails to get people to come back and keep using it and you have great documentation and tutorials. I see it "changing the way the app industry works" in the same way AWS, Heroku, and others changed how people thought about web app deployment. The big deal is in giving more people access to the tools they need to run a mobile app that they either couldn't build or afford before. That's awesome because lots of people will build some cool things with Parse... And amateurs like me will be able to churn out crap much quicker and cheaper. Awesome!

LITERALLY