Ok, I used to code and I got caught up in the business activities of running startups for the last 5 years, hence I found people better than me to do the job, which has made Hi5 a successful business.
However I miss coding, just for the sake of building things and just getting my hands dirty.
However I don’t have capacity to troubleshoot and learn new languages.
I recently discovered No Code platforms (Aka Bubble) and OH my Gosh, it’s great just to build again.
Before I go down rabbit hole with Bubble, is there anything you don’t suggest building with Bubble?
Bubble can be good way to get into building things fast.
This is more problematic. Bubble certainly removes many layers of development complexity and is attractive for this reason. Like anything though, it requires time to learn. Maybe not the years to become proficient in a language and a framework, but still time. Honestly, I’d say 10-20 hours just to get your feet wet. Although you’ll swap away code for pointing and clicking, you’ll still need to know how you’ll get where you are going.
A crude analogy:
Imagine you want to build a house. You just found out that you no longer need skilled tradesman to build the various components of your house and so you attempt to do it yourself. You dive right into your house-building project, but realize quickly that you are in way over your head. This is a common scenario for new bubblers.
So much of what goes into a house is not about the construction skills. You don’t need to swing a hammer or tighten a bolt, but you still need to know about all this non-construction stuff like architecture, design, project management, engineering, permitting. Since working with bubble is more like working with premade blocks that only fit together in certain ways, many of these non-construction are used even more and this can often frustrate developers who are used to applying ‘simple and elegant’ solutions in code that may not be so simple in bubble.
If you’ve launched a successful business hiring other people, then you know the value of good information prior to investing time and money into a project. I don’t think you’ll get much response to this post given how little information there is to work with. IMO this may be too difficult to answer as a boiler-plate in a text post without some more information. Personally, I’d suggest hiring out one of the many consultants on the bubble forum for an hour of their time to discuss. It will be enlightening to you, I’m sure, and is money well spent if you are serious about if you want to continue down this road.
From my experience, getting started with Bubble is lightning fast. Way faster than learning code. You’ll be able to build a simple app in a few hours. However, actually getting good at Bubble has taken me 5 years and I’m still learning how to do things. In that regard it’s almost better to think of it as it’s own programming language that takes time to master - but it’s very worth it. Hopefully that helps your decision.
I wouldn’t build things that require a large amount of data processing in short periods of time. Building complex charting and data viz is also tricky. I wouldn’t look at Bubble for building mobile apps (maybe mobile backends, but use a native frontend solution, and Bubble doesn’t do that yet). Don’t do anything that needs HIPAA compliance. Don’t try to build something that customers will want to be able to self-host (primarily enterprise customers). It’s also super challenging to build an app that functions with customer-specific subdomains, such as acmecorp.yourapp.io
