Im a noob so take what i says with a big grain of salt:
I really struggle with the lack of documentation particularly on the mobile side of things, everything else seems much better documented.
I often think my life would be a lot easier without app connect as then i could just simply follow the documentation of the frameworks i am using without being met with surprises when trying to follow that documentation that i cant use that feature unless i use it in a very particular way, or that when i follow that documentation that its going to have unintended consequences to app-connects integration.
Part of the documentation helped to sell me on using app connect was this " Step 8: Adding it, will allow you to add any component you might need within your page:" https://docs.wappler.io/t/framework-7-including-the-framework-on-your-mobile-app/2843 which while technically true i felt misled by this when i discovered that adding anything that is not already implemented to be a struggle. I stick with it knowing there will be a payoff there sometime down the road but its can be really difficult and often times frustrating to stay the path.
The only hints on the forum i found to use anything that was not already implemented was to “read the router documentation” which i did and eventually made some headway. However then when doing that i have now found that i cant use app connect as i thought i may be able to with very little on the forums pointing to how that may be able to be done, and what is there being heavily outdated to 2019 era pre “framework 7 with app connect” days. (a question to be asked/answered in another thread)
I spend a lot more time in the code editor than i do the UI which is i feel is not how it was sold to me initially how i would be using wrapper where much of my work would be done easily inside the UI. It feels like that is the case where you may be having a server doing your heavy background lifting. As i am trying to perform as much in app, due to the need for my app to be able to work offline as much as is achievable i do not feel i am able to leverage wapples stronger points. The server side of the application feels like that is where actions to manipulate data and present it back to the client are much better documented, supported and thus much easier to achieve within the confines of the user interface.
Hence, I do not feel like i am getting the same value for money that other people may be getting when it comes clarity of documentation and wealth of knowledge on the forums compared to more server focused leaning projects.
It also feels like a lot of the documentation exists on the forums, a good example of that is this post: List of all the dmx functions? These to me feel like critical features in the program that make wappler worth using but to find these features you need to dig through the forums to find them in the first place.
There is also a bunch of components in the UI i do not have the feintest idea what they do except for what their name suggests and do not know where to go to see what they do because there is no list that documents what each do that i have been able to find. Each of these undocumented components needs to be searched on the forum on as case by case basis with the hopes there is a user that asked for clarity and a developer has had time to answer the question. Even if if a developer has answered the question its still doesn’t feel like documentation as the answer can be specific to the users query.
I do understand that the program is still being developed and that things are in flux so that documenting things may lock things in so they are limited in the future as has been explained with some features (like custom components). I feel like it would just be better to document these things and be front up about the fact they would change in future than to have to dig through forum threads to find functionality with no word that they may or may not change in the future. There appears to be plenty of great features in the program but due to documentation being sparse and spread throughout the forums its really a struggle to make use of them and im often unsure if a feature will still work the same way it has in the past as the threads can often be pre-date other features that may have superseded them.
Its not all bad though, at the end of the day i know that i can eventually implement anything i would want because at the end of the day i own and control every last bit of code in the project (even if i dont know if how most of it works. I am not beholden to anyone when it comes to server hosting, nor do i have gun next to my head asking for dollars if i wish to export the code i have made to a different platform; i can do that anytime i please. I can also have an app that works totally offline and does not require someone else’s sever to handle the most basic of tasks.
That comes with a cost though and its the real struggle it takes to understand what exactly wappler can and cant do for me.