"To be a better programmer, you must fu***ng code! ;)"
Hey guys, if you either are wondering what to do next or if you like coding in your free time – Forget about writing a thousandth calculator or building a whole full-stack app just to show off your frontend skills. Your efforts can be much better appreciated, and I am sure, having something real and useful might make only good to your portfolio.
Background
Me and my teammates work on an incredibly unique IDE where you can install widgets with a single-click, no matter if it is a dummy content presenter or reservation wizard with loads of business logic. What matters to the end users is that after the installation, the user should be able to experience fully functional UI populated with test data.
Why?
There are many reasons, but the root cause is to change the course of frontend. We are sick of no-code builders which whilst delivering pure UX and SEO, advertise themselves as the future of website building. We believe we can do better and instead of going no-code (which we think is naive), automate and lower down the entry barrier for webdev newcomers.
The deal? – If you think we are alike, keep reading. We have prepared 6 open source repos of components. They are self-contained development environments where all you must think of is your idea and its implementation. There are already some components in them, but that is not enough. There is loads to code leaving you plenty of room for creativity. You can join our effort, contribute to open source, and make your side-projects installable by others across the world. And we are not talking compromises, sacrificing quality, page-load-time, SEO, or tech-stack. We want to outcompete no-code platforms by the quality and scalability.
What is on the other side?
Your component will be installable with a single-click in GlueCodes Platform. In short, it is an IDE + framework + widgets. It dramatically simplifies and speeds up coding by automation, simple to more complex code generation, notifying what actions need to be implemented for given HTML, single-click widget installation and many more. You can find more here: https://www.glue.codes. After first release we received amazing feedback and we are boosted to deliver more. On our roadmap we have features like user accounts, GitHub integration, desktop version or a way to develop and sell commercial widgets. You will be able to vote for new features here: https://www.patreon.com/GlueCodes
Here are the 6 open source repos you can have fun with:
https://github.com/gluecodes/gluecodes-animals
https://github.com/gluecodes/gluecodes-cities
https://github.com/gluecodes/gluecodes-dashboards
https://github.com/gluecodes/gluecodes-forms
https://github.com/gluecodes/gluecodes-fruits
https://github.com/gluecodes/gluecodes-vegetables
Let’s smash it!
no code isn't really meant for developers
low code - developers
no code - everyone (business users)
first thing i see when opening the pop up is a bunch of code, non-technical people will still be intimidated
However, from a developer perspective, anything where i have to think less and magic just appears, i'm all for it
Hi Chris,
I really like your idea and sincerely, there is potential. The repos are interesting, I'll go deeper this weekend.
However, if I quote your sentence here:
« We want to outcompete no-code platforms by the quality and scalability.«
Most no-code tools use selling words like "effortlessly", "in a few clicks" or "create your future in minutes".
The human brain, by design, seeks to optimize the allocation of energy resources and naturally takes what is easiest to achieve.
So, do you really want to compete with a solution that promises no effort vs. yours that asks, before to start, what a IDE or a repo is?
Or better asked, are really potential no-code « programmers » your futur users ?
I am just asking that because what I read in your post is a other way to do thing as a programmer, not as a no-code enthousiast.
Hi, thanks for your feedback. I get what you're saying. You made me realise that I didn't mean to "outcompeting" no-code platforms. As you said, it's a completely different target. What I really meant is a long term ambition to change people's minds and convince them that configuring an app via forms of settings isn't necessarily a trend we should follow. Because, there is more aspects to developing a web product than what you see after hitting "save". It might be naive, I know, but seeing people fooled with the fancy terms you mentioned, really annoys me.
Our IDE audience is developers, initially less experience who can take advantage of widgets built by developers like us. Then, as the product evolves, we'll be shifting towards more advanced developers to let them focus on coding features rather than reinventing dev processes, setting up dev environment etc.
Re the repos, feel free to either contact me or rise an issue in one of the repos, if README.md isn't clear enough.
You didn’t mean it, but you write it.
Readers : « Oh, come on, Johan ! »
I am picky here and could be seen as a jerk with this first sentence, but it deserve your idea.
I am also totally convince that’s a trend that hurts from one side :
Developer’s work - people think it takes 10 minutes to develope an app.
People dream : you can’t build an entire successful compagny on top of no-code tool.
BUT it helps too on the other side :
It can give the motivation to learn code as you reach limit of these tools.
And help people to be more aware with digital in general, which is good for us when they need a tailor-made solution.
I took time to read your readme, watch your video and website with a particular attention.
This idea comes into my mind :
Your are Lego technic experts who sell Lego because you think Lego Duplo are not a great enough solution for aspiring digital worker.
A bit fantasy (or weird), but it’s all I can give as I am working frameworkless on my own Lego technics and can’t use your product into my journey 😄🙌🏻
Thanks Johan. I really value a criticism as yours. Yeah, I wrote something that is a huge oversimplification of the original thought, given I’m not a pro writer nor English native speaker I’ve lost the message.
I agree no-code has its place and your points make sense. However, I believe we have a solution (it's still an alpha) which can replace the education via no-code platforms. To create a website using our IDE, the user needs to know basic HTML and CSS, then he/she can gradually keep improving it by adding more and more custom code and when ready, write components using JSX. Even without touching code (by installing widgets) the user is able to generate a static website which loads fast and it's maintainable. Anyway, it's a long-term goal and there obviously are no-code users who'll keep using their tools because they're good enough and don't plan to learn coding - fine, they're not our audience.
Yes, I guess we're Lego Technic but it's not only about components/widgets. We've automated much of a dev journey and there is no setup before you can put things together. We might be a Duplo replacement/alternative, but Duplo isn't no-code platforms. In our case Duplo is putting things together by hand including things like setting up your local dev environment, organising your app state, splitting UI, organising CSS etc. We just made it simpler.
No offence but I think you are pretty wrong, the future is probably not the NO code how it is currently but it more likely to be machine written code based on very few input parameters or a specification written in natural language.
If you really want to write an IDE now I would very strongly recommend to take advantage of neural language modeling as you don't want to be left behind.
I'm curious: do you have any solid evidences for that, like scientific papers which goes in this direction?
Sorry for the late response
There are a few but a lot more seem to be happen behind the doors
You can have a look at this earlier once:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.09769v1
https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07962v2
https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.02720v1
or more recent
https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.00577v4
https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.14075v1
https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.02609v1
Interesting. Thanks for that!
Thanks for your reply. It's not me believing in no-code as the future. I think you're making a good point. Our IDE it's at alpha and there is definitely still loads of room for automation and overall improvement. However, I believe we have a very solid foundation we can build on and who knows, we've might use things which now seem to be the future.