I understand that simplicity is key. I don’t disagree, but so many times as a 20+ year software engineer, I’ve fought for days with Glide’s current limitations to do something that would be super simple with a few minutes spent writing a few lines of code, or a small tweak or addition to the built in feature set. I honestly don’t think Glide can solve every possible use case without adding some level of complexity. Glide has changed immensely in the past 5 years and they do a lot of things very well, but to build specific simplified features that would cater to most if not all scenarios would lead to feature overload. Are there any feature that exists now that you use regularly, but would have said is too complicated 3 or 4 years ago? It’s an evolving ecosystem that needs to adapt to change and requirements as it matures. People are going to forever need more and more capabilities and push the envelope to achieve their desired goals.
I have a specific use case where I need to save both the displayed and the underlying value from a choice component, but for half of those choices I need the user to manually enter a custom underlying value instead of saving the underlying value from the choice, and subsequently display the underlying value on the screen either way as a confirmation to the user before submitting the form. This is only achievable with a custom form, which requires USC columns, which includes unnecessary updates. I don’t forsee Glide ever building something for this specific of a use case, but it’s something I absolutely need, and I don’t know of any other way to pull it off without some complicated action sequence or backend scripting which still wouldn’t completely solve the problem. To me a session variable column would be the simplest solution as I can build a custom form that works the way I need it to and does provide the update hit to temporarily store values and performance computations before the form is submitted.
I have another use case where I use a choice component to control component visibility. I sincerely hope Glide makes a native tabbed container, but will it’s design fit my app style? Will it allow me to place containers or another tab container within that tab container? I could use buttons or an action row that opens an overlay, but the overlay has it’s own issues especially when you start to open overlays on top of overlays. I can wait months or years for Glide to ‘maybe’ address each and every one of every user’s use cases, or they can make one single change which would address a whole host of use cases for several different users. I don’t want to wait for a maybe when I need something now. For now USC is the only option for me but it’s not ideal, especially at scale.
It’s like comparing Microsoft Notepad to Microsoft Word. Notepad is simple and easy to use. You could argue that text written in notepad will convey the exact same message as it would with a word document, but I’m not going to write business documents with it. I need custom formatting. I need dynamic content. Word is complicated for sure, but it’s way more flexible compared to Notepad. I don’t have to understand or use every feature of Word, but if and when I need them they are there, whereas Notepad is severely limited. Would you submit your CV to a potential employer written in Notepad or written in Word?
I also think it’s advantageous for the certificated experts to confidently tell their high paying customers that they can build the customers wishes rather than say that Glide is only for simple use cases and not meant for advanced logic or design.
I get where you are coming from, I honestly do, and every new feature should be thought out very carefully by the Glide team to be simple to use and understand, but this request would open up so many possibilities to make Glide more powerful.
