I have allways wondered why there isn't a "headless" erp-system.
I have worked with cms-systems. And in this world it is accepted, you need different frontends for different tasks. Therefore a world of systems - calling themselve headless - support only the backend part of cms management. Worked with Strapi that support this kind of thinking.
How come something similar doesn't exist in the ERP world ?
One major reason is that both developers/customers who ask for it think in UI first, all the time.
Most developers I know are at the far-end of development practices (one of the ERPs I integrate has tables like `F0001, F0002, ...` and fields `F00001, F00002`), and this ERPs then uses old tools like Cobol, Fox, (Old) Delphi, (OLD) VB where it has a better UI history.
And it causes to be very hard to build an API (you can't image how much torture is when an ERP vendor says "we have an API!" instead of using plain text or direct SQL)
For this, you need people that know how to do good APIs. And the good API for an ERP is NOT Rest, GraphQL, JSON, ... (ideally, you need a DB!)
Well the UI-first thinking makes more sense, since in most cases you are solving process-problems, which involves "what does who do when?"
It's hard to communicate a process through a REST API. Sure you could document it incredibly well, maybe even have every part of your ui represented by an API endpoint, but ultimately, due to the number of customizations involved with each ERP view, you'd end up with some sort of bastard, which was never quite the same as the real deal.
So far it's an one person thing, I've been working on it on and off for 11 years. It has a this UI layer meaning that I so far has a text interface (that you can see a demo of here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3kpD7om_aQ ) and a webb interface. Planning on adding android, ios, windows and os x as well.
Right now I've:
Accounting, CRM, Email, Products, Invoices, Quotes, Password manager, Tickets/Todos, Projects and basic IoT device monitoring and a static webpage generator. Most modules let the user add their own fields to a module so you can make if fit your needs.
Apart from this there's also lua support for reacting to events. Upcoming is webshop capabilities and cronjobs.
Feature sets are hard. But I'm prioritizing things my customers wants and what I need.
My main issue is the amount of learning necessary for doing "simple" stuff - I think onboarding of new people will be a challenge.
But I guess time will tell :-)
That said i do enjoy the experience - and some of the "game" features do give an amazing opportunity to make a nice interface.
I you go this route, do prepare yourself to spend your hours very different - making an animation takes no time - making a simple tab sequence takes time :-)
Hey there, I set that up. The request early access link is a Google Form so it was an issue somewhere between you and Google. It works for me now, but if it still doesn't work for you, please email Carey personally (email is in his HN profile).
The quote that sticks with me is "New Blocks means new builders".
I'm pretty sure this new 'movement' will gain a lot of steam. Probally mostly because of the 'no developer'-dreams.
But the most value I find, is when working with very structured people - who understand data AND LOGIC - but doesn't know how to code. They do not have to write a spec, but can instead make a working prototype pretty quickly.
I actually think the biggest change from earlier on, is that the 'No-Code' doesn't seems to be a dead-end. As it has been earlier.
If you grow out of the No-Code tools, it possible to replace parts of the No-Code expirience using microservices and serverless.
Why not keep this information in code .. often the developers are ending up doing those task anyway. (not recommended .. but seen it so many times)
Link: Microsoft aspire (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/aspire/get-started/...)