First Thunkable Try

My first Thunkable try.

After working with Glide to make some apps, I found it was time to give Thunkable a go. It looked nice and the building blocks were something that had my attention.

Just by placing/clicking blocks together, you can “program” your app.

The Thunkable Academy

In the Thunkable Academy, they had several videos, to get you started with Thunkable. I did those video’s videos and it got me started with building my first app. In Glide I already had made one app to keep track of my scale models.

By using one of the Thunkable videos I made a start to recreate that app in Thunkable. The app looked very basic, but at least I had a start. I tried several things, just to see how things were reacting. At one point, I accidentally removed one option and lost my “code” for that part. So next time I had to be more careful.

Thunkable Community

Thunkable also had its own community. I was afraid that there would be low activity on it, but I was surprised to see that people were active on it.

I also asked some questions and got some answers to them.

Now it was time to work further on my app. The plan was to create some “filtered” views. Because now everything was just shown together. You could not see what was on my inventory, what was already built, or what I was working on.

I asked my question in the community. I got one reply with some suggestions and questions. In the meantime, I also looked further on Youtube, just to see if I could find something. There were 4 videos that showed how I could do this. First I watched them all and then went back to try it myself.

Not So Lucky

The way it was shown, it was doable. The first part I managed to do. Then came the testing. This was a failure. Nothing was going like in the video. I checked all the “code” and blocks and all looked okay. But no success. I gave up. I placed my thoughts and what had happened in the community and someone came back with a question.

It was a good idea. But to execute it, that is another story. I tried some blocks and components, but no result.

When I checked my data, I suddenly saw that the first blocks were working. Suddenly. No idea why. I removed all the data and tried it again. And indeed, it was working. But after a close look, I saw that all the data was double. Another strange thing was, that some text was converted to numbers and ended up as decimal numbers. It was the scale of the model. Normally it is shown as 1:8, 1:10, etc. But now it was like it was calculated. There were still a few that were correct, but others were calculated.

Closing

At this point, I had throw in the towel. I gave up. I was getting frustrated. It looked so simple but everything I tried, was not working. Also when checking the documentation, they only show the block, and what it will do. But there is no sample on how to use it correctly. There are also no videos with clear instructions or explanations.

It is such a pity. I think Thunkable has a lot of potential for me, but it is the lack of videos, samples, and clear instructions that makes it very difficult. I know this is normal for when you try to learn something new. But I was hoping it would be a bit more clear.

I had placed my frustration in the community and I will see what happens.

Do I already give up and look for something else? I don’t know. My first thought is to keep on going, but if it keeps on making me frustrated, I don’t know what else to do.

I know everything is trial and error. You learn by making mistakes. But what I am doing looks logical to me, but not to Thunkable.