Notes and links about no code

#nocode #productivity #bookmarks

No code is a new trend. It’s not the most optimized way to build a dev project, but it’s a very nice way to make a POC, test some ideas or even making an app that doesn’t require a high level of customization (it’s often pre-build blocks of logic) and doesn’t need a particulary low time/response ratio (compared to custom apps).

I’m really concerned about not spending (and losing) time on tiny technical details that nobody cares. It’s important to think about giving a solution, not building your geeky ego (just kidding).

No code can provide an efficient way for it, if you have to provide something in no time, with a low risk of something buggy.

With the revolution of ‘all sass’, there is plenty ready to use platforms that give you the tools to create an app/API/webb-app with no or low code writing.

I will voluntarily ignore the closed, non open-source problematic of all this, because it’s a subject on it’s own. You won’t be able to publish (alaIk) your no code app on sharing platforms like github. You won’t be able to access to the code source and you will have some limitations. It can also be considered to potentially cost too much, but you can’t have everything… for the moment ^^’

The first tool I tried was Bubble:
https://bubble.io/home
It’s online since few years know and it has grown to something mature enough to build a wide range of solutions.
Limitations are:
You can’t easilly make a PWA, because it’s not integrated. You can tweak, of course, but I’m not sure that, for the moment, it will be persistent in time (someone built a plugin available on the platform but it’s deprecated since the dev stopped the maintenance). So it’s web-app ‘alaways online’ oriented.
If you want to make API requests, you will have to ‘connect’ every actions, so you can forget to make HTTP request on a local network because of the ‘API connector’ is only accepting online requests. (even in the setup)
Most of the plugins will ask you to pay to use them.

Second one is Adalo:
https://www.adalo.com
This one is more mobile application oriented. Customization seems shallower than Bubble, but it will make the creation of the app maybe less messy and cleaner.
One of the downsides is that you have to pay if you want something usefull for anyone. The free plan is only to test the platform.

A fun solution for no code is Glide:
https://www.glideapps.com
You will make apps based on informations you’ve written in a google sheet. Database and the application’s logic will depend on the way you filled your google sheet.
I found it quite fun, but we can clearly measure the no code limitation “by design”. You will not be able to produce something different from one project to another. Most likely a clone, with different datas.