The Golden Era of Wappler 🙌

[Max_Saravia]

Wappler 3 was, for me, the golden era of Wappler. Do you remember when we could simply edit a server action from the left panel without losing sight of the frontend file we were working on? Oh boy, now instead of something so straightforward, we have to contend with tabs. When we click on an action, a new tab opens that needs to be saved, closed, and then we must search for the tab we were working on in the frontend. To me, Wappler is the world of tabs. At times, I find myself with more tabs open in a project than those I have in use in Google Chrome.

Remember when we could seamlessly switch from edit mode to visual mode with a simple keyboard shortcut? And now, we have to move the mouse back and forth, making it easier to have a Chrome window open on the side or on another screen, Visual Studio-style, rather than dealing with such time-wasting. (btw, yes I made a request about this a long time ago, you can search for it in the community.)

Remember when we were eagerly anticipating the next version of Wappler, and now we tremble at the thought of the next update that might make our workflow even less enjoyable, slower, and more cumbersome to the point where it’s better to manually edit the code than to spend hours moving the mouse around?

Of course, now Wappler looks more visually appealing, with a beautiful logo, and features many more attractive colors. I won’t diminish the many good ideas and functions that have been added, such as CouchDB and PouchDB, additional components, critical updates, and an improved data management system, among other functions. Many of these have room for improvement, as is evident from the comments in the community, yet they often go unaddressed.

I believe that for Wappler 6, we could consider: Do you remember when we had a server action panel where we could edit and hundreds of actions without having to scroll, zoom out, zoom in, and waste so much valuable time? But of course, now we’re going to have a fancy Server Connect Flow Designer that nobody asked for, that nobody (I believe) needs, but of course, it will look better on the website and be better for marketing i guess.

The truth is, we don’t even have an official function for something as commonly used as exporting a list to a PDF file, or a mapping system that doesn’t require us to pay a fortune to Google, as previously suggested, such as Leaflet.

I stopped creating topics like this because I realized it didn’t make much sense to try to change something that doesn’t seem open to change, and usability and workflow speed appear to be less important than implementing new technologies and making the interface more visually appealing. Many times, I wanted to add new tutorials and share discoveries from my daily workflow, but after Wappler 4, my application development time increased significantly, and what used to take a week now takes much longer.

I still love working with Wappler, I am very proud to be a Wappler developer, to enjoy this great community and above all I appreciate the great effort that the Wappler team puts in.

Perhaps it’s time for us, as Wappler users, to ask them, “What do you want to achieve with this? What is your goal?”

[JonL]

I was one of the most vocal tab promoters when we went from Wappler 3 UI to Wappler 4.

@Max_Saravia, do you remember our discussions, sometimes heated arguments, about it? I still stand behind the idea of everything being a tab, however after more than 2 years I feel let down about the execution. And I feel the need to apologize to you for promoting to get rid of your workflow.

The idea was good, the execution not. I still can’t believe that we didn’t get splitting tabs as it was promised. I was only so vocal defending the idea of tabs because I was assured that being able to split tabs and having further flexibility in deciding how the tabs would be positioned was coming.

In other words, you would be able to have side-by-side two or three code views, or a code view and a design view, or whatever. In any case, it doesn’t matter anymore.

It was at that time that I started noticing a trend. Wappler features will always be 50% baked. And if you don’t get the team’s attention during the next 2 or 3 weeks to implement some additional changes you won’t get to see them.

Add to that some questionable decisions from my perspective and some backtracking on some core fundamentals(for me) that I already decided to migrate all my projects out of Wappler and stop contributing to the community (specially on the extensions side).

I don’t know if that will change in the future. I don’t discard it, but I don’t anticipate it either. This break-up is not anything close to Bubble’s one. That was mainly because the founders were jerks and sold-outs, and their offering rubbish.

Wappler is still a great tool, and the team is great, but I can’t justify any more the subscription when I spend more time in VS Code working on Wappler projects than in Wappler’s own desktop app. Did you guys know that I built all Wappler extensions in VS Code?

Anyway, I don’t want to steal this thread with my quitting shenanigans. I will leave that for another post.

Sorry Max, I truly believed split tabs were coming and that they would make you happy again.

[Apple]

I joined at the time of Wappler 4.x and saw the transition from Wappler 4 to Wappler 5.

@JonL

Wappler features will always be 50% baked.

This particularly hit me hard when I made the feature request for the environment variables. I wrote a perfect, really detailed implementation to match the level of professionalism of other frameworks, and they decided to add environment variables to a JSON file instead of a .env file (among other quirks). It’s interesting to see it’s just not me that noticed this detail of half-baked features. The Wappler team has no idea how I felt having my technical recommendations fully ignored, despite the feature request being implemented.

@JonL

Add to that some questionable decisions from my perspective and some backtracking on some core fundamentals(for me) that I already decided to migrate all my projects out of Wappler and stop contributing to the community (specially on the extensions side).

I thought you were just busy, but now I have a confirmation of what really happened. I’m not at the point of leaving Wappler yet, but their surprise decision of replacing the step editor really managed to wreck my brain.

My stay at Wappler forums made me follow the activity of certain users. Users like @scalaris, @JonL and @Max_Saravia are an example of users that lost their enthusiasm for actively contributing ideas to Wappler:

@Max_Saravia

I stopped creating topics like this because I realized it didn’t make much sense to try to change something that doesn’t seem open to change

@JonL

Add to that some questionable decisions from my perspective (…) I already decided to migrate all my projects out of Wappler and stop contributing to the community

@scalaris

I stopped contributing my ideas as they weren’t welcome anymore

The Wappler team is on the verge of @Apple becoming like @scalaris, @JonL and @Max_Saravia - a user that doesn’t actively contribute his ideas anymore, and they don’t seem to realize the damage they’re doing… 4 power users can’t be wrong, can they?

[George]

Let me start by saying that I fully understand and support all of the above comments.

Yes, it is true in some development areas, we could have done a better job.

Because Wappler is fully community driven, we listen very carefully to you are users and build Wappler around your requests and feedback.

We can’t however implement directly every single feature request, we have to pursue the common good, features and direction that is useful for everybody or at least many users of Wappler. So I understand that some users might feel that their specific requests are not been implemented directly. Also we have to balance a lot between new features implementation, big fixes and stability improvements. The moment we give more priority to one of those, users feel we come short in the other areas, so a good balance is desired.

Next to that as we support many different server technologies, we also have to pick a common dominator, so we can’t implement many exclusive features for one server language that aren’t available in the other. Good example is indeed what @Apple mention as his feature request in support .env files, we choose there for more common approach support all server technologies and not only NodeJS. If it was up to @JonL we will be running all exclusively NodeJS only, but we have to also support PHP, ASP.NET and we even want to go further and support Go and Rust to join those powerful backend systems as well.

With Wappler we provide you with a common visual tool that let you work in the same visual way with all those complex backend languages, without the need to manually do all the programming in them. That is why next to the language support we also are improving our tools to become more easy and visual, specially for new commers, with initiatives like the new Server Connect Flow Designer. I understand that when you are used very much the old way of doing this new features might look scare initially but I assure you we are taking all feedback very seriously and take it all in consideration.

When doing such major changes in the Wappler’s UI, we do try to execute those only within the beta phase before the release of a new major version. This is to allow all great video produces like @Hyperbytes, @ben and @mebeingken, deliver their videos without many changes the rest of the year as the UI is stable then. But this approach might feel to other users like @JonL that some big UI changes are left behind, but that is not the case. Also the tab editors was not really your own idea @JonL it is the general movement of all tools to be more popup-less and focus on the editors. We are continuously improving the tab editors but still also doing well balance between them and the popups. So don’t worry @Max_Saravia we will be also bringing more Server Connect editors inline as well when they are needed quickly, continuing on ideas and requests from @mebeingken to allow direct Server Connect actions creation and editing from the App Connect Panel.

Also Wappler have to support all different types of users, from beginners to advanced users. So some of the new visual tools like the Server Connect Flow Designer might seems way too visual for some advanced users that use mostly code view, but believe me they are very welcome to the new users for easy understanding of Wappler and its workflow by offering a well known flow paradigm. Still we are trying to satisfy both type of users allowing the user to pick which views they want to use and customize their Wappler UI to fully suite their needs. So that is why in the visual html designer you can switch between design and code view, but also in the Server Connect Editors you will be able to switch from Flow (Design) and Tree (Code) Views. So yes the tree view won’t be going away

And lastly I have to say that it is more of a natural evolution when people have used Wappler extensively, learned many new technologies thanks to it and eventually become to a level they don’t need Wappler anymore. And that is ok, we are glad that Wappler have made a difference in their carriers and helped them and their path. We are also very thankful for their community contribution and can only hope they stick around and provide us with valuable insights @JonL

So to summarize, the Wappler development, might seem hectic, but we have it all under control, have great ideas for the future but most importantly, keep on providing us with feedback and new ideas as we rely on you.

[kfawcett]

Personally, I feel Wappler is only now getting into its golden era. I stumbled upon Wappler 4 years ago and saw a tool that was moving in the right direction for me. A tool that was far ahead of others in the space in terms of flexibility and capabilities. It’s taken nearly four years for the set of features I needed to be available, but I am continually impressed with the teams commitment to listening to us and trying to balance the demanding needs of so many users between bug fixes, minor improvements, and new features.

[Max_Saravia]

Hi Jon, thanks for your feedback. It’s true that every time I have to switch from one damn tab to another, I think of you and all your ancestors

Yes, I remember our heated discussion about those blessed split tabs, and the truth is, I wasn’t really against your idea. In fact, I believe that if it had been done as you proposed, I would have gotten used to it, and the Wappler team wouldn’t have to read my endless complaints about this issue from time to time.

Actually, I disagreed because I had a hunch that something like this would happen. I think I saw it before with Node.js when we had to beg for them to properly implement websockets. That’s why, despite also having a brief discussion with Teodor about it, I still feel like it was an unfinished job, and it lacked precisely what was promised the most: split tabs.

I appreciate you writing me this message, and I believe I owe you an apology too because I focused more on how you expressed things than on what you were actually trying to convey. As as the proverb says, “sometimes we must look beyond the words.”

Nevertheless, I think the truth is that you’re creating some kind of bastard program, a mix of Bubble and Wappler for free, which will likely disrupt the market. I even think you must be using your own AI, “The grand son of Anton.” So, count me in as a alfa and beta tester

Btw, I understand that you do not want to contribute more to the community from a technical point of view, but that does not exempt you from the “obligation” to continue writing sarcastic comments and funny gifs, after all when in 50 years or more if someone arrives read some of this, all the code we write is going to be worth nothing, but the good comments and gifs are still going to be worth gold

[franse]

@Max_Saravia

the good comments and gifs are still going to be worth gold

I’m waiting the moment

[Max_Saravia]

@Apple

This particularly hit me hard when I made the feature request for the environment variables. I wrote a perfect, really detailed implementation to match the level of professionalism of other frameworks, and they decided to add environment variables to a JSON file instead of a .env file (among other quirks). It’s interesting to see it’s just not me that noticed this detail of half-baked features. The Wappler team has no idea how I felt having my technical recommendations fully ignored, despite the feature request being implemented.

I started using Wappler in 2019, I think around that time they were already on Wappler 2.something. Back then, things felt different; it seemed like the Team Wappler truly understood what we, as developers, needed. It even felt like George could read our minds, and every week, they made our lives much easier with add-ons and features that gave us an edge over other programmers in the market.

Gradually, that started to change, and from my perspective, I think they focused more on bringing in new technologies and implementing them as quickly as possible rather than streamlining and improving our workflow.

As I mentioned before, not all of these were bad ideas. In fact, the biggest leap they made, in my opinion, was bringing Node.js and Docker to Wappler in a way that made it very easy to migrate without significantly altering our way of working.

I believe, as you once suggested for an April’s Fool prank, we should have already incorporated Go into Wappler before the flow designer

[Max_Saravia]

Hi George, thank you for your message on a Sunday. Your commitment to Wappler and your entire team has always been evident.

I completely understand the challenges of managing a user community and trying to strike a balance where everyone is satisfied, even though often only one group ends up content while the others may not. I know this because, just like I’m a Wappler customer, I also find myself on the other side of the counter when I have applications with multiple users who can drive me a little crazy every time I make a change in the user interface or functionality of the program.

However, I believe that to truly understand the best way to implement a new process, function, or feature, it’s necessary to put oneself in the user’s shoes. The user doesn’t really care if the app was built with PHP, Node.js, Go, or Basic. What matters to them is that it’s useful for their day-to-day work, especially for tasks that need to be repeated over and over again.

I know that you’ve often been suggested to try creating an application with Wappler yourselves to understand what’s important and what’s not. I understand that doing so might take up your time, and you might not be able to continue developing Wappler for perhaps a month. However, it might be worth the effort collectively so that you can understand that what we truly need isn’t necessarily flashy interfaces or cutting-edge technologies, but rather the ability to compete with other companies and developers who use different tools.

Certainly, the development and deployment time are crucial points for me, and I dare say for most users. This is why sometimes simple things, like a component that can easily scan a QR code, for example, are much more useful to us than having Rust this year or the next.

I believe that the best balance to aim for is to incorporate “simple” components alongside cutting-edge technologies that elevate Wappler to the next level.

After all, Wappler has the potential to be a tool that is not only robust but also makes application development fun, educational, and exciting, saving us time and the need for a larger team of developers to achieve the same goal.

Lastly, but certainly not least, I think that whether or not I agree with many things happening in Wappler, one thing that’s very true is that actions speak louder than words. No matter what we do, we’ll always receive both praise and criticism; it’s part of being an entrepreneur. That’s why you, George, Teodor, and Patrick, will always have my profound respect and admiration for everything you’ve built over the years and continue to build for the future.

[JonL]

I am planning to go to psychotherapy soon because I have been having anxiety and panic attacks lately. I think that what triggers my brain the most is that my brain can’t reconcile the amount of retardation in the world. So I am going to get ahead of therapy and I will not hold back any longer. Bear with me while I insult all of this community, the team, and specially myself.

@George

Because Wappler is fully community driven, we listen very carefully to you are users and build Wappler around your requests and feedback.

Let me paraphrase a brilliant sentence I have heard many times said by a guy with a beard.

Wappler is basically driven by the people, of the people, for the people. But the people are retarded.

@George

Next to that as we support many different server technologies

And who’s fault is that?

@George

I understand that when you are used very much the old way of doing this new features might look scare initially

That’s a very condescending thing to say. I am actually going to tell that to my 5yo little guy this Wednesday on his first day of school after summer.

@George

If it was up to @JonL we will be running all exclusively NodeJS only,

Because in retard kingdom, the fool is the King. Why maintain 6 backends that are abstracted behind a thing called Server Connect. It’s one of the most retarded things I’ve seen in Wappler.

Just pick the most popular one and force the fucking retards to adapt. Unless you are planning on getting sunken by retards. If that is the case you are on the right path by implementing Go and Rust.

Do you really think that you are going to attract the Rust and Go community here? When they set foot on this community and witness the fucking retarded shit-show of a community that this is (I love the community, but we are retarded) they will laugh and then run.

Do you think that go and rust people are going to waste time between retarded people that are using Wappler to build red light district portfolio pages among other retarded pages? Do you think go and rust people are not going to laugh their asses off when they see a post about uploading a site via FTP?

Pick Nodejs and fuck the rest of models. Keep them in security maintenance and fuck all retards or they will never take the leap and they will drag you to the fucking bottom of the ocean. If that bunch of ASP and PHP retards love Wappler so much they will eventually migrate. Because just so you know, NodeJS is the new PHP.

@George

With Wappler we provide you with a common visual tool that let you work in the same visual way with all those complex backend languages, without the need to manually do all the programming in them

That much is obvious and the very reason to stick with only one or two backends at a time. A stable one(NodeJs) and an experimental one(Go or Rust). And leave the obsolete ones(php and the rest of rubbish for the real retards). They will soon figure out how retarded they are and migrate.

Or if it were me just keep one main full stack backend(node) for the majority of retards that have no fucking clue in what world they live in and add support for (edge)functions in the language that tingles your balls(js, go, rust, python, etc).

Because the current backend proposal is retarded as fuck.

Spend 50% of your time on the fucking UI as its the fucking CORE of your business!

@George

With Wappler we provide you with a common visual tool that let you work in the same visual way with all those complex backend languages, without the need to manually do all the programming in them.

Again…who’s fault is that?

@George

That is why next to the language support we also are improving our tools to become more easy and visual, specially for new commers, with initiatives like the new Server Connect Flow Designer.

That is actually the less retarded implemented idea you guys have had in the past months. I personally don’t like it in it’s current state. But it’s good for the business and I endorse it 100%. Unless you planned on removing tree view which would have been the most retarded thing since Wappler was born. Good unretarded thing you backtracked on that because I am pretty sure you were considering it.

It’s much less retarded to spend extra resources on keeping flexibility in the UI than maintaining backends for retards.

@George

Also the tab editors was not really your own idea @JonL it is the general movement of all tools to be more popup-less and focus on the editors.

Completely and utterly untrue. I was the retard who spoke with the first guy who created the tab design pattern. So 102% my idea. I think I have a patent liying somewhere in one of my 5 mansions I bought thanks to that retarded patent.

George, what fucking retarded comment was that?

@George

Also Wappler have to support all different types of users, from beginners to advanced users.

And who’s fault is that again? Wappler should help beginners go to intermediate and to advanced through the UI. And you do that spending time with a top-notch flexible UI and a good academy of up to date resources. You won’t achieve that with FTP and PHP just because a retard needs cheap hosting.

There are absolutely no advanced users here because advanced users have to leave. Here you have retarded people building stuff that can be built with static free builders or notepad and other retards that are building light complex stuff that are put in a pedestal by the first bunch of retards that pay a subscription to build a red light district page and a pizza calculator.

@George

And lastly I have to say that it is more of a natural evolution when people have used Wappler extensively, learned many new technologies thanks to it and eventually become to a level they don’t need Wappler anymore.

That’s another retarded take. Users leave because you keep catering to the worst kind of retards and don’t force them to be better retards ergo people that realize they don’t want to keep being retards are forced out.

@George

can only hope they stick around and provide us with valuable insights @JonL

You mean retarded insights. But sure I will stay around as long as you allow me to point out how retarded you all are.

And to the rest of you beautiful retarded people. Stop sucking Wappler team cocks. They are not the smartest people alive and are far from it.

They will not be getting a Nobel price anytime soon.

They have built a product catered to you retards based on the work of very smart people. They had to dumb it down because you are too lazy and retard to take advice from less retarded people and you keep dragging the product out of selfishness.

Learn, educate yourself, take a fucking challenge and stop being retarded. Or get the fuck out of here and build your stupid website with ChatGPT. You will get a legion of junior developers which are more brilliant than you for 20 bucks a month.

And Wappler team cut the fucking bullshit and contribute APPROPRIATELY to open source. It’s a fucking disgrace the fucking business you have built on top of smart and selfless work from very smart people.

I mean it…we are all fucking retarded. Some less than others.

Sincerely,
The most retarded person for taking so long to realize.

P.S. My psychotherapist is going to be so proud of me.

[Hyperbytes]

I really think.you should bite the bullet Jon and just speak your mind for once.

[kfawcett]

Wow. Please seek help.

[JonL]

Yeah. I already got to that conclusion a few days ago.

Good luck with your desktop mail app. Maybe this time you actually finish it.