What is everyones opinion here on AI and us as app developers. I am seeing more and more on AI and how it can build everything. Thoughts?
Itâs very tempting, but if you donât have an engineerâs mindset, anything built with AI is likely to be unsecure and very fragile. Even if you are an experienced software developer or computer scientist, you need to know how to direct the AI and evaluate its product to be confident the product is suitable. AI makes making simple apps easy, but complex apps remain difficult.
That said, an AI layer that helps you build on top of an existing robust platform could dramatically speed your efforts. Maybe AppSheet has such a feature for enterprise customers?
Yeah. I agree Steve. I was meaning more like job security. I am hearing a bunch of people around my office speaking about AI and all it does for them. I guess itâs more of a worry that AI will force some of us out of workâŚ.
If your job offers you the opportunity to use AI, do it! AI can be an amazing tool. There will be a world of difference between people who use AI and people who donât for the same type of work. AI will replace people because itâll be better-informed, faster, and cheaper than the equivalent people. Businesses will need people to manage & direct the AI.
Thanks Steve.
Very true. Since I created the App-Bridge chrome extension, people that have been using Appster before vs. now talk about it like itâs night and day.
- being able to ask what a formula is, without having to go find it
- understanding where a column is used throughout your system
- understanding many-layered multi-dependent references
Being able to talk to something that has the ability to pull in all the context that it needs to understand all of the complicated nuance needed in order to make whatever subtle change youâre trying to do - has sped up the app building process dramatically. What once took five or 10 minutes of digging through the app to figure out how things are configured and connected and how it all works, is now dropped down to a 30-second ai agentic call.
Iâve got a prototype co-pilot Chrome extension that allows Appster to make changes and modify your app editor configuration in certain ways⌠Itâs very limited because of the lack of an official editor api, but even these small browser hacks can dramatically speed up the process.
- Me: âHey Appster, we need to throw in another condition in the status column on the orders table; we need to also make sure that the assigned user column is not blank, and if it is we need to show the status âUnassignedâ.â
- Appster: âOkay, let me get that formula first⌠I can clearly see what we need to do, let me make that update⌠There you go, orders now check if theyâre unassigned.â
Sure, I could have gone in and modified the formula myself⌠But this is a lot faster!
Having a dedicated editor API would be amazing, and open up the floodgates to build an agentic app sheet solution. Until then, weâre stuck with Chrome extension browser hacks - which work, but it sure would be nice to have a dedicated official API!
Learn more about the app bridge extension here: https://www.multitechvisions.com/app-bridge
My take
Hey @Uribe
- I would actually suggest using the newest model, 5.3 or higher
They have made it difficult to get in and make changes to custom GPTs (I literally canât get in to make changes anymore, the âeditâ button links to a blank page.
) so I canât update the settings.
The GPT system is pretty limited, always has been; the biggest restriction is the limit on the instructions and supporting resources, because of these Iâve had to cherry pick what is included in that version.
- The best version is the actual Appster Chat UX that I built
Itâs got the best version of the instructions (theyâre actually adaptive, including certain context when needed), has all the resources Iâve developed over the years that it can search through, a knowledge base of deeper how-to knowledge it can pick from - plus the App-Bridge (which is a game changer) - and it all works in an Agentic way (sorta how Claude Code, Codex, [insert your favorite coding agent here] go about things).
- I would definitely check this out if youâre actually trying to use Ai to help with AppSheet stuff, itâs night and day
Thatâs great! Gonna check it out. Thanks 
not if the people putting out the apps are smart. AI works much better with a human in the loop, and most AI will tell you that if you ask them. Your agent will do its best without you, your agent will do much better with you
It has its advantages, The nature of programming has changed since I began in 1965, programming in FORTRAN II on an IBM 1620, doing analytics for grad students. There was no extensive library of text-handling functions or sort functions, just a library of Scientific Subroutines. C extended the library but did nothing new for control; in fact, the goal of C was to be an improved assembler. Memory management was a step backward. But for each of these languages, an individual could claim to be a knowledgeable programmer after a one-semester class. He would have awareness of the entire extent of the language.
Now, today, (after having used over 25 different programming languages, Iâm creating an app to move information from Google Contacts and put it into a viewing context for others with easily selected filter options.
The biggest hurdle to overcome is understanding the object models, something that barely existed in 2000. In this case, the Sheets object might have been overcome, but I couldnât even experiment without getting past the Security object. So, I asked Gemini for help, something I had thought I would never do. It took several tries, and Gemini came up with something close. I had wanted a read-only spreadsheet that users could refresh from Contacts in real-time; I wound up with a spreadsheet that auto-refreshes daily at 0400.
As I looked through the AP, I learned that not everything I got was perfect and, were it not for my 60 years of experience, I would have produced something no one would use. The AI agent prompted the user to enter the name of the quality he wanted to filter on, without giving the choices. I started to code a manual enumeration of the choices and then thought of extensibility and prompted the agent to extract the list from the data and generate the UI choice list.
Then I observed that the AI had produced code that read the data row-by-row and hid each row that did not meet the search criteria. Thatâs quite a bit of work to do with interpreted code. I asked Gemini why the native Sheets filter could not be used. The AI responded with code to do that, and remarked that given the data comprises 800 rows, the earlier approach could have suffered from timeouts.
There were more interactions, over a period of a few sessions, but they tended to follow patterns. AI was a great help in that I wasnât coding balancing THREE manuals on my lap: the Security API/object model, the Contacts API/object model, and the sheets API/object model. But the agent did not include consideration for the user experience or the performance aspects. Iâm not manipulating anything that would have corner cases here, but if I did, I would be wary. The feet of clay were definitely clear at the beginning, where the AI agent took three or four tries to get the security right for a Sheets agent to be able to access Contacts and ultimately compromised the objective. A knowledgeable programmer would have known that the initial objective could not be achieved.
TL;DR: AI can save a lot of time. Novices may be able to create simple automations that work for themselves. To produce something that others rely on would work best if guidance came from an experienced person.
Good afternoon, @tigerindustrial I hope my perspective adds some value to your poll, even though Iâm not a developer by trade. To give you some context: I have a degree in Business Administration with a focus on Systems Analysis. I learned Java, C, and Algorithms back then, but life took me down a purely administrative path and I never practiced coding in my daily routine. As I mentioned, if you hand me a block of Java code today, I honestly wonât understand it.
However, Iâve always been a tech enthusiastâobsessed with hardware, AI, and innovation. Currently, I handle the financial operations for the IT team where I work. This is where my reflection aligns with Steveâs point. I am literally developing an entire ERP by myself, including APIs, multiple modules, and complex features.
Todayâs Vibecoding tools are allowing people who arenât professional codersâbut who understand the basic infrastructure of an appâto develop and improve incredibly fast. My goal isnât necessarily to âlearn to programâ right now, but to see if I can successfully complete this project. If I do, it will be a major personal success case. I have a macro vision of the requirements, databases, and security, even without deep coding syntax knowledge. AI is becoming an evolutionary powerhouse for both non-coders and veterans alike.
@tigerindustrial , I suggest you download Antigravity and test it out. Your hesitation might just be from a lack of hands-on experience with it. Once you see how much AI assistance simplifies your life, you wonât want to stop. Of course, it still makes mistakes (just like we do), but in a single day, I produced thousands of lines of functional code. A developer friend of mine witnessed my âexperimentingâ and didnât think twiceâheâs been using AI ever since and is grateful for how it has streamlined his daily deliveries.
Choosing the right AI for the project is also crucial. @Uribe , I saw some massive, detailed tests measuring delivery time vs. token consumption and code quality on a famous Brazilian tech blog. Even though the link is in Portuguese, itâs easily translatable.
I hope this contributes to the discussion! This is my first time participating in the forum, so please forgive any faux pas. I am using a translator to assist me in this conversation.
Thanks so much for this and all your input. I am seeing AI as more than a competitor.
Thank you so much for your input. I know a lot of folks here are really great programmers and are never in trouble of losing a job. I am not a great developer and truly donât have a background in programming. I have an MIS degree. Limits me here. Scares me too . But reading yours and others here help me understand what AI can do for me. Thanks again.
Thank you!
Thanks MultiTech - as usual you always help me with anything I need. You and Steve always help me along!
Thank you