Thoughts On Long-Term Stability

Coffee Lounge
#1

Wappler Team!

After using Wappler for a project in a team environment (ie, shared Github repository), a trending theme has popped up.

"Wappler is the least-stable tool in our workflow by far" - One of our developers

The amount of git reverts we use to get things to “work” or just general frustrating “do overs” caused short bug/css fixes to take longer than writing the whole thing in Visual Studio…

In a recent issue post-mortem, the conclusion is that we couldn’t even determine how a simple css commit caused an API call (tied to a button) to be run in an infinite loop in browser. On top of the inconsistent editor quirks and crashes, Wappler seems to be incredibly sporadic in how it handles backend Wappler JS dependencies, etc. We haven’t even use (and do not plan on using) the backend features because building the front-end elements has been so unstable already (we are using Google Cloud functions for our business logic).

What is curious is that HUGE new features are launched weekly - to the confusion of our team (because of how unstable Wappler is as a whole).

A Couple Of Thoughts

  • Can the team take a break from launching new features and focus on stability?
  • Can the team give us transparency into issue tracking?
  • Can the team set up a dedicated support team & support ticket system?

A Final Word

We really do love the vision of Wappler - this post certainly isn’t a disrespectful nod to the product or the team. We would love to rely on the tool as a core part of our workflow - it just doesn’t feel there yet from a stability standpoint. What can we do to get this resolved?

Thanks,
Andrew

1 Like
#2

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for your post and feedback. I can understand clearly your position.

With Wappler our goal is to deliver a very stable high-end product that shines with its visual integration of the top web development frameworks and huge productivity boost as low code platform.

It might have been a bit unfortunate That you jump in exactly weeks before the final release of Wappler 3.0 in the time of the beta updates which were indeed with many new features and sometimes breaking changes till it all got finalized in Wappler 3.0

Also by choosing not to use the integrated server side API builder and framework Server Connect, you are actually stripping half of Wappler’s power. By implementing the same functionality with google functions and plugging them in Wappler as API, You are actually doing twice the work and making yourself very difficult. Hence maybe your struggles.

The quick updates cycles and introduction of new features are part of our The Wappler's philosophy

Nevertheless now that Wappler 3 is out we plan to have a larger stability improvement period and also after that, we plan switch to beta and stable channel of Wappler releases.

So make sure all issues you encounter are well reported in our #wappler-general:general-bugs section as this is how we handle the issue tracking in Wappler

And keep on providing us with feedback so we can improve And continue to build Wappler as the perfect tool!

4 Likes
#3

George

I appreciate your thoughtful response!

With Wappler our goal is to deliver a very stable high-end product that shines with its visual integration of the top web development frameworks and huge productivity boost as low code platform.

It sounds we jumped into this project at the wrong time. Looking forward to seeing how the next couple of months play out!

Also by choosing not to use the integrated server side API builder and framework Server Connect, you are actually stripping half of Wappler’s power. By implementing the same functionality with google functions and plugging them in Wappler as API, You are actually doing twice the work and making yourself very difficult. Hence maybe your struggles.

I am sure that the backend will be a process of discovery for our team to see what we can realistically use. For this project we are building microservices to interact with different enterprise services at scale. We are using Wappler as a client-side portal to interact with those services (backend isn’t realistic with the stability, scale, and flexibility we are requiring).

Nevertheless now that Wappler 3 is out we plan to have a larger stability improvement period and also after that, we plan switch to beta and stable channel of Wappler releases.
So make sure all issues you encounter are well reported in our #wappler-general:general-bugs section as this is how we handle the issue tracking in Wappler

@George, is dedicated support something on Wappler’s horizon? If Wappler makes it into the rest of our projects, we would love to have a support team we can jump on the phone/chat to give insight into what we aren’t doing right (obviously with the appropriate expense of that). However, I can imagine a set of scenarios where Wappler’s core values don’t include dedicated support (which I totally understand).

#4

Our community support is already mighty fast. Next to the direct involvement of the Wappler core team a lot of Wappl is experts are Involved that offer great practical advise and best cases experience.

We do not plan to offer dedicated support for Wappler.

However many of the Wappler experts are already offering custom, one to one support and training like @mebeingken, @Hyperbytes, @JonL and others depending on your location.

3 Likes
#5

+1 for this, and something I’ve advocated for before. I am happy to be a free resource for the Wappler team by submitting carefully reproduced bugs, but it can be discouraging when the reports are ghosted. When that happens I’m forced to go back and recheck in case the bug was quietly fixed and then bump the post. I realize there is a loose process of tagging posts, however it is not consistently used.

This was a critical mistake on the part of Bubble—taking full advantage of community support, without responding in kind.

4 Likes
#6

We want to use the forum as our main support channel and not having different systems to keep care of. We already have installed some plugins like the assign and answered plugin to keep better track of the issues. If there is a better plugin for issues in Discourse then we could install that perhaps. I think the biggest problem currently is keeping track of the issues you posted and the state of them.

2 Likes
#7

I like everything you stated–more systems are not always the solution and the biggest problem is a shared understanding of where they stand.

Perhaps it is just commitment to the existing systems, and expanding the tags and perhaps mimic other tools: bug, won’t fix, duplicate, in-review, queued for dev, milestone 3.0.12, etc.?

And on our side a process of posting the bug, having another user confirm and tag as such, plus anything else that can make your jobs easier.

1 Like
#8

Expanding on your points @mebeingken I’ve also noticed that some new bug reports seem to get unlisted pretty quick.

Maybe if there was a separate listing page for bugs only rather than appearing on the main thread? I don’t always know the correct term to search for so a list of recently reported bugs would help me find out if it’s already been reported.

4 Likes
#9

Totally agree, we were already planning to add also more tags for priority as well.

All bugs are posted with their reports in #wappler-general:general-bugs - so there you can find all the open bugs and when the bug is clear it is assigned to a team member. When a bug is solved, it is closed and unassigned.

@max_gb - bugs topics are unlisted when enough information is available the the bug is assigned and can be handled by the team. So no additional involvement from the community is needed - hence the unlisting.

2 Likes
#10

+100 for better stability… :face_with_head_bandage:

#11

@George I’ve definitely noticed better tagging and responses on some recent threads for potential bugs. Well done and keep up the good work :+1:t2:

5 Likes
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