Congrats on your launch, always great to see Bubble apps topping HN!

Great to see a Bubble-built app! Nocode lets you do things over the course of one day

This is awesome!! (disclaimer, I founded Bubble).

We've actually had a few teams at YC using Bubble, either to get in or after, once they were in the program. It's awesome as it's a great validation for our technology.

Thank you for doing the same in their hackathons!

Congrats man, we demoed a product at NYTM the same day as you guys (QuickMVP, now pivoted away from).

Been great to see your progress!

Thanks! Yeah I remember! I hope all is well.

Delphi has actually been an inspiration for the UX (i was a big user in 1996).

What UX?

Ah, you are one of the creators. If Bubble is similar to Delphi, I wouldn't call it visual programming (can you develop IF statements, loops and functions visually?).

A better name for Delphi kind of tools would be "Rapid Application Development Environment". And it's more convincing name than "visual programming" - I have never seen a successful visual programming environment.

Yes, I've been following Bret's work with a lot of interest.

We think so (and in fact wrote this https://blog.bubble.is/improving-computer-education-less-cod...). We’ve seen a few high schools use Bubble already, but haven’t had time to push for a more systematic approach (providing content, etc.)

That's right. We need the permission to sync plugins code, and therefore have to ask for the whole set of permissions around repos :/

Can't you ask to expand the permission once that becomes relevant? I imagine that people who just want to try bubble don't want to give you all their private code.

This is actually custom-built, as it's very closely integrated with our editor (i'm talking about the learn lessons with the arrow).

Thanks for the reply, wow you could sell it as a separate product, looks very impressive! I like the contextual videos and the fluent integration with the rest of the interface. Great work!

Yes, that's the vision. But then other people can use the plugin without coding, so the work is only done once.

Disclaimer: I'm the founder, but didn't initiate this thread. Happy to answer questions though.

Bubble is such a great tool, and you really put a lot of attention to the details. I really enjoyed trying it.

My question is: So one big strength of textual languages vs visual tools(and DSL's) is expressivity - visual languages are limited to their specific domains, while you can use, say, python to build complete systems.

Do you see this distinction remaining ? or we'll have some way to build multi-domain systems visually ?

Thanks for the kind words :)

Yes, this distinction will probably remain, but we're trying to push where we need to get back to textual languages. If you need to build a machine learning algorithm, I'm not sure visual tools will ever be the way to go (though i'd love to see this).

But both ways work well together. In Bubble, you'd build your optimization algorithm as a plugin, and then you (and even better, others, non technical colleagues) will be able to use the action you've built visually. The Bubble interface becomes the common language between business, product people and coders.

That's actually very close to how modern game engines with with large teams(substitute designers/artists for product/business) work.

Very cool stuff, kudos.

Yes gaming is more advanced that general purposes applications for some reasons. Let's change that :)

Yeah, I've tried it at a few shops and it tends to be a cultural problem more than a technical one.

It's also really hard to build the right tools. It's very easy to sink 3-6mo into a tool that doesn't get a ton of usage because you either don't have partners on the other side who are invested or didn't solve the right problems.

For it to work right you need a lot of factors to go just right. When it does it's pretty incredible but feels a bit like trying to catch lightning in bottle.

I think if we want explore ways to connect these worlds we should do same as we are trying to do our architecture: separate view and logic. Most programming languages are quite messy if you think those as abstract model and therefore compilers won't have very good API (if any) for building application from non-textual inputs.

On the other hand views should be much more data-oriented. For example user actions should be copy-pasteable, editable as data and therefore usable for automation. -Text? Easy "it has been since 60's". -Visual (button click, drag&drop etc.)? "IMPOSSIBLE!". I claim that it's just bad habit which started as "MVP"-syndrome, continued as "Typical user won't..."-syndrome and finally ended up to "This is what GUI is"-syndrome.

Yea I think I may cut some corners but I cannot see any fundamental barriers here. Therefore I am currently researching this area and hopefully get something out at some point (or die tryin’).

Many visual languages are limited to specific application types, but there are also general purpose ones.

Curious how many paying users you have.

I won't be too specific, but in the thousands of apps, and enough to support a team of 6 people (we're entirely bootstrapped).

Is there a bias toward a specific industry or application type among your paying users?

Not really, as long as it’s a data driven app (and not a platform game...). About half of our paying users build startup-type, customer-facing products, while the other half is small businesses building internal management tools (like invoicing, custom CRM, etc).

Can you reverse-bubble websites?

What do you mean? Go from Bubble to code?

When I wrote it, I was thinking along the lines of "hey, I like visual feature x in this website. It would be great to just tell bubble I want that". Just thinking out loud.

Congrats!

Thank you!