As they say on social media, “All you had to do is disappear and we’d never think of you again!” Well, yes, I could have. But I wanted to take a moment and share some thoughts I have had over the last 14 months.
I just canceled my Legacy Non-Profit Plan. I have a dozen or so Apps on free plans that I will continue to develop and maintain until it is no longer feasible. They consume so few resources that I am hopeful.
I also have half a dozen Classic Apps on free plans that “are no longer supported”, and some features in them have begun to be non-functional. So those will probably have to be abandoned.
On the new Apps, there are features that don’t work right on mobile, but work correctly in the builder.
I have my main Classic App, which until today was run on the Legacy Non-Profit, but henceforth will run on a free team until I can find an alternate solution. I have waited for at least a year and a half for a promised, “we will have a tool to port your classic app to the new apps format; just be patient”. Then there was the note (from an exert user) that doubted it would happen. Every time I have pushed, I would get a note in the forum from an actual Glide person stating, “Well, it will happen, but if you need it now, get to porting:.”
Even an 80% port to the new App format would have been acceptable to me, to get me going, as many of the screens operated in the same way; and to be honest, have no special features or experimental code.
Even on the other front – “feature requests” – I see so many feature requests with votes and ++++11111, even coming from experts, that are completely ignored by Glide “because it doesn’t fit with our business model”.
“Why don’t you report the bugs to Glide?” Well, long story short, I spent most of my career advancing the development of a language that was quite popular in its heyday, and I often pushed the limits of that language and often felt that I was a beta-tester rather than a developer. I did not want to get in that situation with Glide, especially seeing the slow response to things that really matter to me.
During my time in this community, I feel I have made a positive impact, and I truly enjoy developing with Glide. I know management says they have not switched gears, “Look at our original business statement”, but based on the templates available, the tutorials galore, and the Showcase Apps, etc., it did seem that Glide was a good fit for me, and those tracks have certainly changed.
So I am not leaving the community, but I have to set my eyes on the future and so I will be a lot less active here. The one development product that could possibly replace Glide for my main app (Appgyver), is a much bigger learning curve, which is why I went with Glide to begin with – although it is also more powerful than Glide. But I’ve never been afraid of learning, so I shall do a deep dive into Appgyver very soon.
Thankful for the friendships I’ve made here, and good luck to you all!
David Gabler
). Truly remarkable.
