I have been a fan and advocate of Wappler for several years. I’ve tried to get it adopted at several organizations (mostly unsuccessfully but have had some success recently.)
When I found Wappler, it was the low code solution of my dreams. I could have a real database, I could deploy to my own servers. It was the low code solution for developers. All the flexibility but none of the constraints.
My problem is I really hate coding. I have had so many projects that I’ve wanted to launch, but the thought of coding just depresses me. I loved it 20 years ago but now - not so much.
I feel Wappler is too “codey” for the average user. And it doesn’t have to be.
I’ve done another go-around looking for the low-code solution of my dreams, thinking maybe others have shown up since. Most solutions still have all the old issues, but I’ve found Flutterflow, which meets some of the awesomeness that Wappler has (not everything and has a learning curve.) But they have something Wappler does not. An AI mode for generating screens and a decent drag/drop interface.
So - here’s my wishlist of the low-code solution of my dreams:
- Drag and drop screen capability and data mapping. I think Appery.io has the best version of this. Their databinding is simple to set up and easy to customize.
- Use generative AI to create and modify the screen. (i.e. “Please create a screen that has these fields…” then “please add this field underneath this other field”.) Beautiful.ai does this for slideshow presentations and it works pretty well. I have created presentations in less than 10 minutes that would have taken me hours in the old world. I’ve done this with ChatGPT asking it to generate bootstrap code, and it was amazing!
- Either including DreamFactory as part of the solution (it’s open source and supports docker containers) or a dreamfactory-like interface to create database tables, security, roles, and supports row-level security. They have very nice data meshing as well to join data between systems. They also provide a UI to manage this out-of-the-box and also APIs so you can automate these actions as well. I believe that the company that partners with Dreamfactory and bundles their solution with UI generation and custom REST capabilities will win the market. Right now their support refers people to Retool (which sucks.)
- Generative AI to generate the source code to create database schemas. I’ve used ChatGPT to do this. It has been awesome!
- A Wappler-like interface that lets you view the source code and edit it when the low-code box doesn’t work
- Ability to create real databases and handle database and data migrations elegantly
- Plugins for common screen types (login, reset password, list/detail)
- Plugin library where people can purchase solutions similar to Envato for WordPress.
- Deployment flexibility: If I want to use your hosting, I have 1-click deployment options and you charge based on instance usage/data size or I’m able to deploy to my own servers.
- Ability to call internal apis from within server components (see my latest issue.)
- Last but not least important. Ability to support python. Node.js is totally a fine language, but python with FastAPI is really such an elegant and easy language. And python is used for many data science applications.
If anyone else has a wishlist item…please feel free to comment!