Writing to you from the airport on my way back from No Code Conference. The last 10 days have cemented my belief that we're at the beginning of a new wave of visual development tools that I truly hope will unleash a new era of productivity and creativity.

During this pilgrimage to the no code conference, I talked to a lot of new players (new to me at least!) in the no-code space: website builders (UI Bakery), no-code mobile game builders (buildbox), many no-code app builders (Adalo, Draftbit), connectors (Parabola) etc.

Learning about all of them, I got anxious at the idea of having to learn them all to be a "true no-coder".

And frankly, I'm not that good at learning tools. I didn't really understand Webflow the first time I picked it up over 18 months ago (even with their amazing online university). Bubble, a popular app builder, is still a complete mystery to me despite seeing the cool stuff Dave/Tom build on Makerpad with it and 3-4 attempts at building anything (literally anything) with it.

But sometimes, I'll pick up a tool it'll instantly click. Airtable - my first love - was an instant draw. Same with Zapier. Slowly with Integromat. Looking back, it's pretty clear what made learning them so easy:

• A ton of people telling me to try the tool
• It instantly solved a problem for me

There are smarter more adventurous no-coders out there. I trust them to refer the right tools to me. Referrals and recommendations get me over the initial fear of registering (just the idea of having to learn a new tool is exhausting). Beyond that, if I can't find a quick win in your tool -- an instant adrenaline hit to keep me motivated to go up on the learning curve -- I'll probably drop it.

The only tool coming out of no code conference that I'm excited to learn (not that the other ones aren't great!) is Parabola. Parabola is a tool that imports tables (including API queries that Parabola will turn into tables) then lets you do operations on them (including API enrichment and table operations) and then export those tables to whatever you want (airtable, sheets, etc). Think Zapier but with tables and APIs. Referred to me by Tom and many others, I instantly found a really compelling easy use case.

So I'll be livestreaming that exact use case at 6PM EST this Wednesday here (recording is instantly uploaded to that link after the stream). Maybe it'll speak to you, maybe not.

Beyond Parabola, I guess the lesson for me here is that it's OK not to learn all of the tools. There are just too many of them. Try the popular ones. If they don't solve an immediate use case for you, then drop em' and come back later (or never).

If you're building a no-code tool, I guess the lesson is reach out to Tom before you reach out to me 🤷‍♂️.