Going No Code as an Engineer
I have a background in engineering and when I started my latest project the first question in my head was: what framework am I going to use? It has been a while since I actively coded so I started googling for what the kids use these days.
At about the same a little voice in my head started telling me I should and go with no code tools. It came from a bunch of podcasts, books, articles that highlighted the value of validating the idea for a product. And yep, I totally see the possibility that nobody will be interested in my great idea. So for now I wanted focus on finding out if people will like what I want to offer.
I am the only person working on this thing there is so much more stuff to do than building the product technically. Not actually coding has saved me a lot of time. A lot of decisions were made for and a lot of problems were solved for me. I can invest that saved time into telling people the product (prototype) exists, get their opinion, talk to potential partners, compose tweets, look for images to decorate tweets with etc. There's quite a bunch of rabbit holes...
So for now I have launched just a prototype. And I am making tweaks and changes here and there to evolve it into an actual MVP. And if people do like it, I will happily build the thing again for real. š¤
Going no code was not an easy decision. But I am super happy with it.
My stack is Bubble, Airtable, Sheets, Mailchimp
What is a real winner in your no code stack?
I am unfortunately total code. I would like to move to more no-code. What was the research that led you to choose Bubble?
Just out of curiosity I had done some Bubble tutorials a couple of months back. Everything seemed pretty straightforward and it didnāt take much to understand the underlying concepts.
So when I started building now I skipped research and just went with Bubble. Simply because I was confident enough it would get the job done.
I see. And what have been the pros/cons you've experienced so far with Bubble?
Struggles: Validating forms, layouting, conditional expression editor, defining workflows (see below)
Smooth Rides: DNS/domain setup, Airtable connector
Defining workflows is what I struggle most with. Suppose you have a button that does different things depending on some conditions. This is easy sometimes (Button is clicked and user is logged in/not logged in) but gets complicated with more complex conditionals. Since there is no conditional inside an action, you will need to define separate actions for each condition you want to cover - gets pretty complex for nested and/or conditionals. Note: There might be something I am missing as I have just started out.
So how are you working around those moments right now?
So far I have always found a way to make things work. My mantra: done is better than perfect.