No-code for coders
A little background, I'm a web developer, building apps for a living, and I'm really curious to whether no-code tools will make me more efficient (and free up time).
I've tried a bunch (Bubble, Webflow, Editor X, AppGyver, UI Bakery), and non of them seem to be fit for developers wanting to write less code. They're either to abstract (Bubble), lack the logic layer (Webflow), have poor performance (also Bubble) or too time consuming in my taste.
How do you build apps and why this way?
Hi Yogev
I also tried a couple No code editors a while ago, I was looking to remove coding/devops load from me, but I gave up because of the lack of flexibility and poor performance.
But I think that I found the sweet spot of what I was looking for: Most of my backend services are managed, so I can focus on the frontend using React.
Yeah, maybe that's the way to go right now.
Currently I use Angular, but I'm testing out Svelte as my new go-to tool, with possibly Supabase/Appwrite.
Hi ,
I think this is list most things: it depends.
I wanted a quick and simple set of basic CRUD admin screens for an app recently, so I used JetAdmin. 30-40 minutes later I was done. I could have done the same using react-admin, but it would have taken 2-3 times as long to get everything written and deployed.
But like you, I've looked at AppGyver a few times, and just thought it would take me longer to work out how to do things in AppGyver than it would to do things in Vue/React like I normally do.
Not sure that answers your question :-)
Andy
Thanks for sharing! 😊
I usually have the need to find the one tool for everything (like a JS framework), but it probably doesn't work that way, but also
I just didn't find a good tool (in my opinion) to build web apps, and that's a bummer, because I notice that I spend to much time preparing and setting environments and not building.
The irony is that because of that, I think about building a web app builder, targeted for web d vs (I'm trying to decide between Angular and Svelte), in my dreams it's a perfect combination of Webflow and Bubble.
Bubble is one of those things that is so close, yet so far. First time I played with it, I wanted to do something that involved looping through some records programatically, and it wasn't possible. But it's a great, great tool for many quick-and-dirty apps.
Hi Yogev,
your question is very exciting and not that easy to answer. I am a web developer myself and switched to Bubble a little over a year ago.
Here are a few thoughts:
Let's take skiing as an example: If you are an excellent skier and have already skied the black slopes at high speeds, then no-code is probably a disadvantage for you. The abstraction level of visual programming is not to be equated with the new possibilities and efficiencies that open source software or cloud infrastructure have brought a few years ago.
It's more of a simplification of the whole thing. For example, if you want to take the ski example again, I was always on the blue slope somehow. I was very good at solving everything, especially with Google and StackOverflow. But I was never able to simply code something for 8 hours at a time. Get into a flow state. Build super fast.
Thanks to the visual abstraction, I am now able to build almost everything very quickly. And that fast is relative to my "relatively" slow speed with traditional code. As a result, I have more motivation and it's more fun. This is relatively personal, but for me the main reason I love Bubble.
In addition, many Bubble users are no programmers at all, but marketers or product managers. For them it is primarily about autonomy. It is very expensive and difficult to find a programmer. Bubble can get you started without asking for permission. This is really powerful.
I hope the opinion could help you a bit. And just let me know if you have any further questions.
Chris
Thanks for taking the time to share!
I tried Bubble a few times and it's probably the best option to build custom web apps, but it lacked some things that I couldn't give up (not necessarily needed).
One thing was the ability to use third party CSS frameworks (like Bootstrap for example), and the need to style everything yourself, plus Bubble itself and the apps it generates are slooow from what I saw (try running the Lighthouse performance test on the Bubble site).
How do you deal with these issues?
Yep, it‘s a bit confusing in the beginning.
On the one hand you can basically build a style guide in the styles tab. There are presets similar to Bootstrap and Material Design.
Moreover I‘m since a few weeks a big fan of the Canvas Framework by Airdev. It‘s a bit confusing in the beginning, but it‘s excellent to build out front-end with building blocks and you can totally customize everything
Hi Yogev,
Have a look at Fireapis(https://fireapis.com/). A platform where we can create flexible API endpoints with a different set of fields and can be consumed within few minutes. I hope that fireapis is a no-code tool that will be useful for your development process
Thanks
Take a look at wappler.io - it supercharges a typical web developer workflows while no compromise on flexibility to customise the code and host app and database. We're using it religiously for over 2 years now at our dev shop for all clients projects.
I'll try it, thanks!
Too bad it doesn't have a free plan, I can't see myself paying that much for personal projects...