Devs of Indie Hackers, if you gave no-code a try, did you end up building with it or ditching it after a few weeks?
After seeing many impressive examples of the power of no-code, I decided to give it a try.
So I'm currently learning bubble.io and it's a love/hate relationship so far.
Some hard things become very easy (auth, for instance) but some easy things become surprisingly unintuitive/hard (Like making responsive layouts, maybe it's just that I'm still a newbie).
Also, I constantly have to reach for my mouse, annoying for able-bodied-me, disastrous for others.
Speaking of which, accessibility seems to be an afterthought in no-code.
I'm also not sure I'll ever reach great performance with a no-code product...
But back to you, you the developer who chose to give no-code a try, did you end up using it or ditching it?
Bubble is low-code, not no-code (which is a good thing): "The good news is that Bubble is fully extensible via Javascript plugins. You can create your own plugins to add connections to non-supported services, add elements written in Javascript or write server code (see Building Bubble Plugins)." (https://manual.bubble.io/the-bubble-fundamentals/what-is-bubble-for)
However, please be aware of: "Bubble apps can only be run on the Bubble platform; there's no way of exporting your application as code." (https://manual.bubble.io/the-bubble-fundamentals/application-ownership).
And "Once an application is built on Bubble, there is no need to deploy the application to a cloud solution. As soon as an app is built on Bubble, it is hosted on Bubble's cloud infrastructure." (https://manual.bubble.io/the-bubble-fundamentals/what-is-bubble-for)
As a CTO-founder, it's really important to be able to not have a single company be the bottleneck of your growing application, or potential executioner (if they fail, you fail, or if they choose to delete your app, you have no immediate recourse). While Bubble definitely makes it much easier to put together a quick MVP, (or enables you to build a pretty nice app if you're not a developer, which a developer can then use to build a custom app), it really shouldn't be used to build the next platform.
They mention: "...if for some reason we ever have to close down shop, we will release the Bubble source code under an open-source license so that you can set up your own Bubble server and keep your app running." (https://manual.bubble.io/the-bubble-fundamentals/application-ownership)
But will this be true if they are acquired? What if they just change their minds later, as Twitter did in shutting off the fire hose and killing tons of businesses built on their platform over night? What if your country (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Crimea – Region of Ukraine, or Syria) or business model (crypto) becomes embargoed by the U.S. (Bubble is in NYC)? Having vendor agnostic deployment is pretty crucial, as well as owning the code base.
Low-code / no-code tools can really only survive the current hype (or "bubble" haha) in the citizen development vertical by being open source. If a closed source solution is to succeed, it would have to be for enterprise, and will probably sell to a business for predominantly internal use.
That's a nice answer.
You seem to be well-versed on the subject of low-code platforms, @lowcodetv, is there one or two that stand out to you?
Thanks!
Unfortunately, I can't make specific product recommendations. But, for a quick MVP application, Bubble is perfectly acceptable, if that's what you've become comfortable with. To build a platform, I would look for an OSS solution.
Is there a good low code type of solution that I can use to just snap together a react application with components and everything that I could host myself or embed into a next JS application? I guess this is more like jetpack and those kind of web apps for building bootstrap applications back in the day
I'm a Python Developer and I went with No-code for my current site and has never been happier.
I uses pory.io to build www.growthunt.com, a curated directory of growth strategies.
I has so much time now to improve on my craft instead of fixing bugs all day.