TL;DR Would taking a full stack web development class through something like Udemy be helpful in making more advanced Glide apps?
I work part time for my company working on apps, primarily for different conferences throughout the year. My degree is in Computer Information Systems, but college was 10 years ago and I don’t remember many specifics from my intro classes into a few different programming languages. I haven’t worked specifically in that field, and I’ve only kept up skills with some spreadsheet formulas (which has been helpful for Glide).
I’ve made several different apps with Glide so far and I’ve been able to implement some more advanced features like basic gamification with a leaderboard (with help along the way from others in the community!). There’s been a handful of times when I’ve wished I could do a more advanced layout, implement features that are sometimes possible, but involve complicated workarounds or simply make my apps more efficient. I’ve seen the experimental code column and talks of JavaScript implementation which has me wondering if it’d be worthwhile to dive back into learning some web development.
What would be best to focus on? HTML, CSS and JavaScript? Is it worth it to learn beyond those for the purposes of working with Glide? Or would taking some kind of course on spreadsheet formulas or Google App Scripts be more worthwhile?
While the development of the Glide platform continues over time with great success, becoming more and more nocode, it must be said that the knowledge of programming languages can still help to cover what still cannot be done without coding in Glide .
From the point of view of data management, the alternative without code, to go beyond the functions of the platform, is to rely on external integration services such as Zapier or Integromat.
While as far as layout is concerned, there are no other alternatives besides the knowledge of CSS (which however must be taken with a grain of salt, as it is not officially supported in Glide).
If you want to learn a language that can be profitably integrated into your apps, the most fruitful investment in knowledge you can make, from my point of view of course, is in the javascript language.
Mastering it can also help you a lot in learning Google Apps Script, because it is the same subject in practice; you should only know more about its specific object classes.
In addition to this, on the client side, you could have some benefits using the experimental column to get complicated computations quickly (but forget about being able to make changes to the DOM structure because this will never be possible in Glide, you cannot inject code into the screens like in a web page you can do) and this can lighten your app by promoting its performance.
I don’t know if I could have been of any help, but that was my subjective opinion.
Don’t stop at me and good luck with your studies
