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How Bubble bootstrapped a visual programming tool for non-coders to $100k/mo

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Re: How Bubble bootstrapped a visual programming tool for non-coders to $100k/mo

#41

Post by beachy »

swiley wrote: post #28

I've seen plenty of visual programming tools and lots of other things to help "non programmers." I've even helped build one. 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 progra…

I was working back when CASE was the next big thing. People have always loved the idea of programming with pictures. But after decades without success I think we have to acknowledge that paradigms like spreadsheets, Trello etc. are the real way that end users build computer systems.

Re: How Bubble bootstrapped a visual programming tool for non-coders to $100k/mo

#42

Post by mitchtbaum »

MechanicalTwerk wrote: post #35
swiley wrote: post #28

I've seen plenty of visual programming tools and lots of other things to help "non programmers." I've even helped build one. 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 progra…

I think the problem is once you get into coding it yourself, docs/tutorials/stackoverflow make you aware of all sorts of things like dev tools (IDEs, editors, package managers, VCS, VMs, containers, the list is goes on...) or security concepts (csrf tokens, ssl, secrets management, again the list goes on...) and as a non-tehnical person you start to get really uncomfortable and overwhelmed because you don't know what…

http://wiki.c2.com/?IntelligentDefaults

http://wiki.c2.com/?SecureByDefault

http://wiki.c2.com/?DefaultObject

http://wiki.c2.com/?DefaultValue

http://wiki.c2.com/?NullObject

http://wiki.c2.com/?NullValue

Re: How Bubble bootstrapped a visual programming tool for non-coders to $100k/mo

#43

Post by quickthrower2 »

swiley wrote: post #28

I've seen plenty of visual programming tools and lots of other things to help "non programmers." I've even helped build one. 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 progra…

People may be capable of programming, but are not programmers.

They do some other full time job and can't invest 2000 hours per year for 5 years to become efficient at all the detailed things the programmers have to deal with.

The use case is people who can excel at Excel, but don't want to learn about dependency injection, semantic versioning, exception handling etc.

Re: How Bubble bootstrapped a visual programming tool for non-coders to $100k/mo

#44

Post by mitchtbaum »

semperdark wrote: post #31
swiley wrote: post #28

I've seen plenty of visual programming tools and lots of other things to help "non programmers." I've even helped build one. 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 progra…

I agree. Typing is not the hard part of programming.

Still, a cross-platform GUI / VPE (visual programming environment) like this or https://glade.gnome.org/ might help for UIs.

Re: How Bubble bootstrapped a visual programming tool for non-coders to $100k/mo

#46

Post by rtpg »

shostack wrote: post #21

Has anyone had experience transitioning a Bubble app into an actual coded app/DB outside of Bubble? 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.

Based off the demos, it seems like you can integrate HTML directly, so it might be possible to move from Bubble to "external API + Bubble frontend" in a straightforward fashion.

You could also likely put a layer in front of Bubble to only serve some pages with Bubble, other with your replacement.

Also from the FAQ: > The good news is that Bubble is fully extensible via Javascript plugins. The Bubble model is to write the core website functionality using our super-simple language, and plug in Javascript to handle algorithms that are hard to build in Bubble.

So you could probably add shims and move around.

I think the most interesting way of doing this would be something like embracing Bubble for a lot of work and having the "serious" code relegated to places that are easier to manage, like complex API or some custom widgets

Re: How Bubble bootstrapped a visual programming tool for non-coders to $100k/mo

#47

Post by MechanicalTwerk »

mitchtbaum wrote: post #42
MechanicalTwerk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is once you get into coding it yourself, docs/tutorials/stackoverflow make you aware of all sorts of things like dev tools (IDEs, editors, package managers, VCS, VMs, containers, the list is goes on...) or security concepts (csrf tokens, ssl, secrets management, again the list goes on...) and as a non-tehnical person you start to get really uncomfortable and overwhelmed because you don't know what…

http://wiki.c2.com/?IntelligentDefaults http://wiki.c2.com/?SecureByDefault http://wiki.c2.com/?DefaultObject http://wiki.c2.com/?DefaultValue http://wiki.c2.com/?NullObject http://wiki.c2.com/?NullValue

Are you saying sane and secure defaults in Django or any other web framework should be enough for a beginner to not have to to worry about this stuff? See another issue for beginners trying to figure it out is they have to deal with people online who post 6 links with no explanation as if it's SOOOO obvious.

Re: How Bubble bootstrapped a visual programming tool for non-coders to $100k/mo

#48

Post by riquito »

MechanicalTwerk wrote: post #47
mitchtbaum wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://wiki.c2.com/?IntelligentDefaults http://wiki.c2.com/?SecureByDefault http://wiki.c2.com/?DefaultObject http://wiki.c2.com/?DefaultValue http://wiki.c2.com/?NullObject http://wiki.c2.com/?NullValue

Are you saying sane and secure defaults in Django or any other web framework should be enough for a beginner to not have to to worry about this stuff? See another issue for beginners trying to figure it out is they have to deal with people online who post 6 links with no explanation as if it's SOOOO obvious.

This is not a tutorial and he/she is not answering to a beginner. A description would have helped nonetheless

Re: How Bubble bootstrapped a visual programming tool for non-coders to $100k/mo

#49

Post by murukesh_s »

swiley wrote: post #28

I've seen plenty of visual programming tools and lots of other things to help "non programmers." I've even helped build one. 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 progra…

"fairly easily in a language like python or basic" - I don't know where to start but I can say it goes deeper than that. A language like python or basic might seem simple to programmers or computer science graduates who learned their way through C, C++ or Java, but for a non-programmer, who is still tech savvy (like designers/business analysts etc), it is a complete different experience. How did i know? I had friends who can hack in visual basic, but can't do the same thing in Visual C++ (both are different species despite the visual prefix), even if given 4-5 times more time, or sometimes they really can't do it. It could be the initial barrier of entry that turns them off due to the sheer amount of time required to be invested to get the "know-how" or the just the sheer complexity in getting basic things working.

There were lots of people who can build small to medium complexity apps in Visual basic in those days when VB5/VB6 was active (Pre C#/.net). Even as a developer I was happy to hack in VB any day than VC++. But any developer I knew back then wouldn't touch VB, claiming multiple reasons ranging from "not powerful", "no performance", "messy" (don't know what that means) etc. It was like developers wanted to be associated with complex languages in order to have a respect among the community. True, VB performed slower than VC and even lacked few capabilities (like you can't write a device driver or difficult to write a custom COM component etc), but it was perfect for writing business applications.

Not sure what destroyed VB, but I believe it was the web that changed everything. Java and .Net though are well designed and powerful, but they bring a lot of complexity, requiring new developers to spent considerable time to gain even a basic knowledge. With the advent of SPAs things went even worser, current SPA frameworks like React and Angular are adding layers upon layers of complexity to build some basic stuff.

IMO if you can hack a UI in a prototype tool like Balsamic, then you should be able to make it a working prototype within at least 2-3x the time you took to prototype it, including binding dynamic data from a web service. If in 2017 we are still taking 3-4 months to build a basic website (dynamic) or mobile app, we have failed somewhere.

Projects like Bubble are providing stepping stones towards a possible future where we can build UIs almost as fast as we can imagine/sketch them in a prototyping tool.

Re: How Bubble bootstrapped a visual programming tool for non-coders to $100k/mo

#50

Post by mitchtbaum »

riquito wrote: post #48
MechanicalTwerk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying sane and secure defaults in Django or any other web framework should be enough for a beginner to not have to to worry about this stuff? See another issue for beginners trying to figure it out is they have to deal with people online who post 6 links with no explanation as if it's SOOOO obvious.

This is not a tutorial and he/she is not answering to a beginner. A description would have helped nonetheless

Thanks. MechanicalTwerk, I meant this is how to make that slope less slippery and steep. They're software design patterns -- going with principles and paradigms, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_programming
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