Szymon Kaliski

Reusable Code Components for Glide

Glide is a no-code platform which allows end-users to build custom applications from spreadsheets. The users start with providing their data, and then assemble the application from a set of available high-level components. The problem here is, that when the use-case doesn't neatly fit into one of the existing components, there's nothing that can be done — the system is closed, and can't be extended by end-users.

The focus of this research project was prototyping a UI-builder that fits into Glide's aesthetics, and provides a way to edit, and re-use, the visual components available in the system.

The project is document with a long write-up at the Glide research page, and below you'll find some more thoughts (and a demo video!) originally published in Q3 2022 newsletter.

Transcluded from Research at Glide

Glide is a no-code tool for building mobile and web applications from spreadsheets — you provide your own data, choose how to render it from a set of high-fidelity components, and you can get to a working application in minutes. This incredible convenience comes at a cost, of course — if you need something outside the set of pre-made components, you are pretty much at Glide's mercy to make new one for you.

The main goal of the project was to prototype a possible future in which technical Glide users have more freedom in how their apps look and behave, while still keeping the convenience of easily assembling ready-made parts. We followed the intuition that at some level, some code, is ok — and the main question is how it's being packaged and composed into bigger wholes, and re-used at different levels of abstraction.

Below you can find a short narrated walkthrough of the prototype that we've built, to give you some sense of what we've made:

There are a couple of things here that I'm excited about:

• creating a space for local developers (after Bonnie Nardi) — power-users who are comfortable working with small pieces of HTML/CSS/JS, and/or assembling complex graphs for other users to re-use
• using the exact same components through nesting in the layout tree, and inside other graphs
• the semantics of multiple inputs and outputs which allow creating components with custom configuration UIs, and packaging related functionalities together
• this is already a part of Glide, but worth repeating ad nauseam: working with real data inside a live system — the changes that you make to your data tables, to your logic, or visual components refresh live and are always visible — you never have to simulate a computer in your head to figure out what values flow through the system

I know that Glide is actively hiring, and if that sounds interesting, feel free to reach out to them directly or let me know if you want an intro!

Backlinks

1. 2024-02-21Live-Programming Issues¹
2. 2023-04-03Joining Replit, and musings from the Job Hunt¹