21–30 of 117 posts
I could see it as an interesting solution for rapid prototyping of ideas, but I'd be concerned about lock-in and extra expense later when migrating to something more robust.
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We have had MS Access for years. It still requires a bit of knowledge about database design to use it properly. I don't know Bubble but I am skeptical about visual programming, as syntax is one of the easier parts to learn when coding, and isn't in my opinion what makes our profession difficult.
IMHO visual programming should really aim more to be a scaffolding tool - so instead of replacing the syntax to focus more on speeding up the structuring of the code, helping you to easier manage and understand the blocks and the flow. Ideally it can then auto-generate the most of it and leave you to fine-tune the details of logic directly in the code (where it's faster and more expressive to be able to type the code…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comment sounds like something straight out of a Show HN, not a thread about a 5 year old service with 100,000 users and $100k in monthly revenues. There's obviously a big demand for this so either you're wrong or people using it are actually programmers.
At what point do you call someone a programmer? They seem to be using "knowing how to code in a traditional programming language". However, I would not use that definition. Most of what we do though is thinking about a problem and how that relates to what computers do. My take would be that everyone actually using this tool either is a programmer or by the nature of what they're doing soon will be.
Ah... now, in my mind, you're getting into Software Engineer territory. Programmer, to me, simply means you know how to make a computer do what you want. That can be "knowing how to search for someone else's code that makes the computer do what you want" at times. Once you get into thinking about the problem and how that related to what computers do, you're getting out of that generic "programmer" term and into engineering.
I watched the demo video. It looks like what the Visual Basic form builder was for Windows programming in the 90s. However it will be difficult for non programmers. The very first dialog about Google Maps has menus "API provider" and "Query". I wonder how many non programmers know what they are. They can take a guess and learn but maybe this is still too low level. The second example is about building a login form by…
I agree. But while not "F U money" $100k p/m is enough to say: Well someone must be using it then. Perhaps, in the Hooked sense, the somewhat diffcult learning curve helps to increase long term retention?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comment sounds like something straight out of a Show HN, not a thread about a 5 year old service with 100,000 users and $100k in monthly revenues. There's obviously a big demand for this so either you're wrong or people using it are actually programmers.
I just took a quick look at it and GP has a simple misunderstanding here. When they say you don't have to be a coder that doesn't mean the target market is my girlfriend who has no interest in this whatsoever(she's a doctor). The target market is those people that sit in places like the AWS loft or places like that, listen to tech talks and wish they had a coder to build their ideas for free. Most of them already kno…
I can definitely see it as a great and useful tool for non-programmers, but having to go throw your entire skill-set and decades of knowledge out the window to use a tool like this was just a horrible experience.
Again, I don't mean to disparage it, as I can see the benefits, but for programmers, you're better off building an app with the skills and knowledge you already possess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have had MS Access for years. It still requires a bit of knowledge about database design to use it properly. I don't know Bubble but I am skeptical about visual programming, as syntax is one of the easier parts to learn when coding, and isn't in my opinion what makes our profession difficult.
IMHO visual programming should really aim more to be a scaffolding tool - so instead of replacing the syntax to focus more on speeding up the structuring of the code, helping you to easier manage and understand the blocks and the flow. Ideally it can then auto-generate the most of it and leave you to fine-tune the details of logic directly in the code (where it's faster and more expressive to be able to type the code…
The fact is that if you can think and communicate precisely enough to describe your ideas then you can enter them into a computer fairly easily in a language like python or basic. If you can't then no matter how fancy your tools are you still need something intelligent (currently a human programmer) to pull the idea out of you and encode it.
Stuff like this isn't useful to people who are incapable of programming and is just a highly coupled mess that can't be easily automated and version controlled.
Mostly because there have been ideas to do this for around 40 years.
In the end any non-trivial business logic is too cumbersome to make in a GUI and is build much faster in text form ( programming language) or just can't be made with your platform. At that point it requires specialization and your need for a programmer is born.
1. Write code
2. Run code
3. See error
4. Google error
5. Write code to fix error
6. Repeat
I'd like a compiler that helps speed up steps 3-5. I know IDEs do some of this, but I'd like a compiler that automatically fixes errors instead of just telling me what went wrong. One that fixes parentheses that I left off or automatically fixes typos in variable names or function calls. One that knows to keep things DRY and creates a function for me when it sees the same similar code written twice. One that knows when I wrote an inefficient bubble sort and swaps it out with a faster sorting algorithm etc. One that can make my code run faster. I think this is a long way off, and I know it's really hard to write a program that writes code, but it's always seemed that programming simple things is way harder and takes longer than it should to me.