I have been using bubble on and off for about five years. As an experienced dev, but with zero frontend chops (and less than zero desire to develop them), I really liked bubble. I was finally make simple web interfaces for a pretty wide range of applications.
In my day job I have been quite immersed in Python-based AI dev, and of course aided by AI courtesy of Cursor.I had a new app idea which was a clean break from the past, and decided to try v0 from Vercel. Holy moly: they weren’t kidding. This was my prompt:
….and, it worked basically one shot. Made the databases, made a simple landing page design, incorporated tldraw (which was interesting as I don’t think it was in the ‘training set’). Synced with github, I can continue to develop locally, switch back to v0 if I need to, and of course deploy on Vercel. No lock in, I can do with it what I like. I also think it was free lol.
Admittedly, it is not apples-to-apples with Bubble, but if you are a developer and would rather not fumble through Bubble, this is a whole new world. App development will never be the same.
I’ll slowly migrate and turn off Bubble, as I just dont see the point. That said, in order for it to be useful, you do need to be a developer, so non-devs is clearly the lane Bubble should play in. Just wanted to share my experience and curious what others see.
Wishing you the best of luck! It would be great if you could come back again and share more of your experience building complexity with v0, like your aeon app.
And maybe give us another chance once we have conversational editing out
Thank you! But as I said, I am not sure having a dev-centric approach makes sense for Bubble. This path is quite divergent from how I see Bubble, and I know non-devs to be endlessly frustrated with things like Lovable and Replit. That frustration is what Bubble should solve for!
And we’re back to 0 days since the last “Vibes > Bubble” topic. I should start some sort of Bingo.
There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to talking about delivering a working piece of software. It’s not just about writing code…if you’re a dev you should know this…
You’ll have to answer questions like:
How much will it cost to maintain?
Is it easy to troubleshoot?
How fast can I fix issues?
How fast can I modify and add features?
Vibe coding works in one layer of software development, when it does work, and then really sucks when it comes to continuous delivery.
Bubble fills in the gap of many, many layers of software development. It’s still complex even after stripping away complexity (of coding), because programming is complex by nature.
Bubble does not get enough credit for the work they’ve done in regards to simplifying SD. Other tools tend to over simplify and strip away the flexibility of code.
I’ve been able to hustle the last 4 years thanks to Bubble. So it’s thanks to Bubble I’ve been able to pivot my career towards software development. Thanks to AI I can write and debug code fast for my own stacks to support my Bubble apps.
Yet the more I learn about software development, the more I appreciate the support Bubble offers for solo devs and small teams.
I agree with everything you are saying, and ironically the answers to the bullet points you listed are actually more vague with bubble than my current approach.
However, at what point did I say ‘vibe coded’? I think you are misconstruing something here.
