Hi there - founder here! Happy to answer questions.

By building "imaginary prototypes" of these YC companies in an hour or two, we're not trying to minimise how hard it is to start a business like this. But the hard part of starting (eg) Meter Feeder should be selling the service to local governments, not wrangling the ~5 programming languages and 3-4 frameworks you need for the modern Web. We eventually got fed up of ranting online about it, and decided to do something about the problem. Anvil was the result :)

(Edited to add: We're hiring! If you're in the UK and this floats your boat, check out https://anvil.works/jobs)

I have a feeling that the trend you're tapping into here is going to accelerate, but I'm not positive.

I see a trend forming where the stacks are getting too brittle, complex and overweight at all levels. I think it might be a result of trying to keep pace with constant change. There has been very little period of exnovation but huge amounts of innovation... perhaps at a cost.

A certain category of developer is suffering fatigue. People want to focus on their business more than the technology. They want to spend more resources on advanced technology like machine learning and analytics than the transactional CRUD/user interfaces. They want to apply technology holistically and stop worrying about the details (e.g. moving to cloud platforms).

For that matter, I see a lot of people trying to apply advanced tech thinking it will alleviate or continue to greatly reduce the need for human input and interaction. Most of the energy I see being expended out there is being spent on advancing tech at a blistering pace more than streamling/simplifying/solidifying ergonomics of development. There isn't a huge focus on ease of long term support.

If the trend continues and tech continues to advance at a mad pace, I think more and more people are going to want to outsource the problem of keeping up so they can just easily build what they need and hopefully this time it will scale further than previous attempts at things like 4GL.

Very interesting approach you're taking here, it will be interesting to see where it goes, and wish you great success!

I always follow the rule - get it delivered fast, with the technology you know.

For me that:

* Web: Ruby (Rails), Python (Django), Golang (Revel)

* Desktop GUI: C++ (Qt)

* Embedded: C, C++

* Data Science(ish) Problems: Python

That probably covers 95% of my day job, consulting, and my startup - I deliver a ton of work. Rails my 90% go to for web, python is data science, C is performance. A notable mention is coffeescript/js and CSS for design, but with partials / templates in the web frameworks I don't really need things like React.

I think the problem you describe is a self created one. You don't need to use the latest tech, build micro services, upgrade them independently, and use frameworks that are well supported in what you know. Hasn't failed me yet.

Take your "90% go to for web" stack. You'll need to know:

    * HTML
    * CSS
    * JS
    * Ruby
    * SQL (maybe)

    * Rails
    * Bootstrap (or equivalent)
    * Vue (or equivalent)
    * Webpack (or equivalent)

    * Web server of choice
    * Database setup
    * Linux sysadmin
    * AWS

And sure, by now, you have all that knowledge in your head, same as I do. (Probably better; I always hated web programming.) But asking somebody new to scale that wall just to join in with the supposedly open web? Seems a little much.

And I'm still pretty confident that I (with Anvil) would deploy a simple application faster than you (with Rails). Not because you're a bad developer, but because even with all your knowledge you're still navigating that stack - and deploying it, and debugging it, and editing it without autocomplete because no IDE can sensibly autocomplete a system with that many independent layers, and so on.