Josh Snow

I’m getting very tired of this black box approach. Reliability is terrible. We have many instances of workflows that haven’t been touched and have run flawlessly for over a year suddenly and randomly misbehave. This then creates a shitstorm and the solutions to resolve are often some dinky cumbersome series of workflows which always makes me nervous about what’ll happen next that we can’t foresee. Did someone say house of cards?

Bubble is such a black box when you need to see what's happening in your app. Seeing that CPU usage is maxing out is useless if you can't show me why. 🤬

@george_nqu @bubble

this @bubble app worked with a large agency for 3 years. Can you tell?

@benspringwater Hey 👋

Just sent a big batch of TestFlight invites for Halo. We're adding the paywall in two weeks. Everyone who helps us test before then will get grandfathered in for 1 year free. Reply here for an invite!

@KMkota0 👋

a motion graphics editor… without layers or easings - who wants a beta invite?

What a shitty SaaS billing experience @PageFlows. Last year you sent me a reminder 1 week out from the renewal - perfect 👌 Silly me expected the same again and didn't get it 🙄 Actually, I haven't had a single email from you since that reminder a year ago... since then you've arbitrarily decided I don't need billing reminders? Complete silence from you over the last year until you charge my card. Why not send reminders to all people on all plans. Why not keep is consistent from year to year?

@george_nqu Maybe great for SaaS but not a small agency! Really shows they understand your business model 🙄

sounds like torture!

It’s an easy path to get lost down. I see it all the time where clients will spend too much time focusing on the how instead of the why in the first place. The best processes to automate with tech are the ones that are already burning admin time and causing you pain. Not the ones you anticipate causing an issue at some stage in the future. It’s an easy decision when you spend 1 hour automating something that then saves 12 hours of admin time every month after that. But I can’t tell you how many processes I’ve had clients insist needed to be automated that took considerable effort and cost, only to be so rarely used. Many months later we’ve still spent something like 20 hours automating away 30 minutes of work. Madness! Simple always wins!!

I started building software because I experienced how much time it could save me in my service business, not because I like tech. I’ve lost my focus.

@george_nqu @PeterSasMusic @bubble Well your app should connect directly to your database for CRUD operations. I wouldn’t have everything piped through n8n Then use db triggers, functions and edge function in Supabase do all the simple stuff. What’s left? Complex automations right?

@joshsnow @PeterSasMusic @bubble i use n8n for automation and think it's great, but people seriously use it for an entire backend?

Going back to @bubble with a new big project. Web + Mobile. I’m actually not trusting Cursor or other tools with this. And Bubble’s backend is unmatched

@PeterSasMusic @bubble Sounds like you’ve got the right approach. I don’t understand where Bubble fits in all of this 😂

there are some nice points! Yeah I mainly use Cursor for Swift apps, and Next.js with tailwind. Shadcn too for some initial design. Yeah I also exclusively use Supabase too. Also an expert, I built the Supabase.js plugin, so I haven’t used Bubble database for ages, and there’s pretty much no WU for me. n8n is nice, but for more complex stuff I use Edge functions or Workers or python scripts but I rarely design workflows with loads of steps.

@yelkhayami Just make sure they’re not your keys. That sounds expensive 😅

what if you create a group chat with all the llms, start an argument and then dip

@NigelGodfrey Haha yes, and somehow all of the no-code platforms are totally secure and you’re prevented from doing stupid things 🥱 forum.bubble.io/t/how-over-2-0…

I see a lot of posts about vibecoded apps having bugs, edge cases and security issues... Have the people making them ever actually USED the internet?

Coding with AI isn’t perfect, but imagine this: You need to get across town in rush hour in the most efficient way. Do you: a) Plan your route for the entire journey and only once you know how you’ll get there you start moving b) Decide at every corner which way to turn Those that struggle with AI usually approach it a bit like B. A series of disconnected statements that lack context. One of the things I always do is have it generate a plan first that includes a bunch of things including testing, highlighting likely issues, identifying alternate approaches.. you name it. Then once you have a solid plan and steps to implement you can grab a coffee and let it do its thing. It may not one-shot it but I’ll get close if you’ve got a clean project and it has access to your browser to debug.

I've been coding a little side project with AI and it's been the most frustrating process. Insanely fast initial prototype, but as soon as I started refining features it's been one step forward, two steps backwards. The app has been getting progressively more broken the more I work on it. It's doing very silly things like writing the same function across multiple files, sometimes even in the same file, and calling those duplicates right next to each other. It rewrites or even deletes huge sections of code that aren't related to the feature it's working on. It references functions that don't exist, and then struggles to debug why the logic chain breaks down. I've switched between half a dozen models, and they all have the same issues. What I've realized from this is what I have been preaching for years: coding is not programming is not software engineering. The AI generated code is not problem solving, it's just code. You have to guide it very carefully to actually solve the problem. You have to think about the architecture of the app, and what design makes sense for what you're building. You have to make sure the AI is following good practices yes, but more importantly, is building in a way that makes sense to what you're doing. In short, you still have to be the software engineer when using AI to code.

@ClausISaidSo It was a shitty way to start the day when I opened the workflow tab on an app no other devs are actively developing on. My heart instantly dropped and I knew deep inside at that moment there was no going back. One hurried click through the settings confirmed it. 😔😂

I fear I've given too much of my life force to this company.

@elibeachy I feel like this mostly explains my day to day life 😂 Man the amount of time burnt navigating limitations and weird quirks. It’s a perpetual motion machine!

The quandary with Bubble. I'm rebuilding part of a feature today and can do it faster because it's in Bubble. But if it wasn't in Bubble, I wouldn't have had to rebuild it.

@NocodeTalks Yeah we talk fast also and use a bit of a different vocabulary as well 😂

@joshsnow Surprisingly never had a bad experience with anyone. But people from Australia and Germany have completely different English accents that I find hard to understand (my issue) so I sometimes prefer text.

Countries clients I have worked with: 1. Australia 2. USA 3. Canada 4. Singapore 5. Dubai 6. Germany 7. France 8. Philippines 9. Netherlands 10. Ireland 11. India

Only if they take a proper open approach. Adding AI to a closed model where you don't have freedom with the code is going to become increasingly less attractive. The AI builders will push quickly into providing a seamless experience where you get the visual UI tools, one-click deployments and so on (so benefits of existing no-code platforms) while retaining control if/when you want it. I don't think most of the no-code tools get this yet. They still think locking down the codebase or simply offering an export will be sufficient. I don't think it will. My issue with weweb is while I have an export function and can theoretically do what I like, how do I manage the codebase then? I can't. So it's kind of like unlocking a door to an empty room.

Wonder if nocode tools will have to change their business models to compete with ai? @weweb_io have done it and anecdotally it’s gone down very well