How It Started For Me.

Already from a young age, I was interested in computers and programming. For my first work, I did programming for a computer Cash Register.

Then I did many years of helpdesk support. But programming still had my interest. My knowledge was getting old and what I had used in the past could not be used anymore. I tried several things. Like PHP, Python, and some others. But I did not get the hang of it. For some reason, it was not sticky with me. It was different from what I knew.

After the start of my health problems, I was looking for something to keep track of my medication. When to take it, how much I still had or how much I had to take.

So I was looking into how to create apps. This was also not easy. Because there are iOS and Android and both have different ways. But for some reason, I wanted something that could work on both.

During my search, I found MIT App Inventor. You could create apps by just putting building blocks together. This only worked for Android, but there were rumors that maybe in the future it also could work for iOS. After trying this for some time, I thought that it was too simple. And at that time, there was not really something to connect to a database. So I gave up on that.

In the meantime, I was still searching for things to create apps.

No-Code/Low-Code.

I also tried things like building apps from Google Sheets, but that also was not really easy.

Then suddenly I found something that was called “No-Code/Low-Code”. This opened a whole new world for me. But slowly on also confusion.

The confusion is meanly the amount of No-Code/Low-Code platforms. There are really a lot of them. All have different features and options. Also different price plans.

For me, at this moment, there are several platforms that have my interest.

The platform right now that I like the most is called Glide Apps. With this platform, you can create “apps” from Google Sheets. (Later I will try to explain why I am saying “apps”.)

Others that have caught my interest are FlutterFlow and Fliabit. Recently, there is also Bubble with which now you can create “Apps”. Before it was more meant for creating Web Applications.

Progressive Web Applications.

Progressive Web Application or PWA. Platforms like Glide Apps and Bubble Mobile are called this. It means that it is a web application, that can run on a mobile device and it also feels like a mobile app. But these “apps” or not Native Apps. This means that they are not programmed in an original Android or iOS language. Native App can do more than PWA’s. One example is Push Notifications. Only Native Apps can push notifications to a mobile device. PWAs cannot do this. You need “workarounds” to get this to work a little bit.

Right now Glide Apps is my favorite platform. I already made two apps for myself. Just some simple apps to see how it works and what is possible. One app is to keep track of all the tv shows and series I am watching. It shows me what the last episode was that I had watched. So I know what to watch next. The other app is to keep track of the scale models that I am building. I can see what I had built and what I have in stock.

My next challenge is to create my own app to keep track of my medication. This is a whole other story with his own difficulties. More posts will follow on that.