This morning I sat down for coffee with a lovely man called Mark who had been an ardent developer in Bubble. He’s honestly one of the nicest people I think I have ever met. Recently Mark has taken the decision to abandon Bubble and move forward with coding with Wappler and SQL. 

Mark’s frustrations with Bubble are shared by many in the community. Bubble isn’t as quick as it could be and that impacts on the applications end users. There are also a few things Bubble wasn’t capable of doing (like if/while loops) and Mark was tired of working around them. 

Bubble has also recently changed their pricing a little and that hacked off a few of the ‘old guard’.

Setting Sail for Wappler

Wappler is an interesting step on from Bubble. Unlike Bubble, Wappler is a downloaded CMS that allows its user to build highly interactive custom websites. It does not come packaged with hosting and requires the user to have a level of technical knowledge in managing their own hosting and database. 

Wappler allows its user to interact with the code that the create through the visual editor and so it is a nice ‘stepping stone’ between ZeroCode and learning to code. For Mark this is certainly something he has enjoyed. He is clearly thrilled by both the experience of learning and the improvement in speed and flexibility his new skills have bought to his applications. 

I think that a lot of ‘citizen coders’ will follow the same path as Mark. Wappler seem to agree. They have a special thread on their forum for ‘Ex-Bubblers’. For people like Mark Bubble has proven to be a gateway drug into the wider world of coding. For that reason I think that Wappler will also prove to be a stepping stone on to more ‘grown up’ programming tools.

On the Beach

While adventurers like Mark will sale off into the sunset others will be happy to stay on the islands called Bubble, Wappler and even Wordpress. These are people that understand the limitations of the software or language that the use a learn to work within them. When they reach the beaches, they turn back inland. 

Understanding the limitations of the tools you use is important before you start to develop in them. It saves re-work later. We use Bubble as a fast-prototyper. For some of our projects they may never move on from Bubble, in others we will hand the Bubble application to the development team as a ‘working spec’ allowing them to better understand what product/marketing teams were hoping to achieve.

Mark is now working on a guide for No-Coders that want to move on and become developers. He’s using the language of Bubble and Wappler to help him bridge the gaps in understanding that his readers might have. When he publishes I’ll let you know.