I tweeted this ([link redacted]):
The thing with no-code is that there is still code. Only now it doesn't live in git but in a magic ether between sites and services, and in the head of that ex-employee who set it up two years ago.
Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
111–120 of 404 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#112This is an imperfect analogy, but consider for a moment the role Microsoft Excel plays. Excel allows non-coders to do many useful things, and provides a relatively gentle on-ramp to actual code via formulas. If you take that on-ramp and keep going, towards VBA and add-ins and other pieces of Microsoft technology, you might wind up becoming a full-time software developer, leaving Excel behind and using “real” tools. N…
> Excel allows non-coders to do many useful things
I heard a great quip at some point: "Why is Excel the most useful IDE?" Answer: "Because it's the one IDE every business allows every user to access."
Most of us here have forgotten that many businesses flat out ban access to programming tools for the majority of users.
And what is an enterprising user to do, when they realize they're performing the same process 100 times a day?
Reach for the only wrench they've been given access to.
PS: I guess an analogy would be people griping about shell scripting, without considering that someone might not have the ability to install their framework of choice when connecting into a client server. It gets the job done, with the tools available.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#113I am an engineer with 20+ years of hands on keyboard, I've got projects that are now part of Apache, 1000's of stars on github. I've been CTO at a number of startups that have got significant funding. My point is to establish some credibility. I probably still suck. Having said that, I have been working with Microsoft PowerAutomate for the past 1.5 years and while it has saved a lot of time and been overall a good ex…
> I am an engineer with 20+ years of hands on keyboard, I've got projects that are now part of Apache, 1000's of stars on github. I've been CTO at a number of startups that have got significant funding. My point is to establish some credibility. I probably still suck. More about being in a right place at a right time, but granted. > Having said that, I have been working with Microsoft PowerAutomate for the past 1.5 y…
Why are you trying to diminish his accomplishments? Does that make you feel better, to try to bring someone down? You come off as bitter and unaccomplished and this site could use less of people like you.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#114I am an engineer with 20+ years of hands on keyboard, I've got projects that are now part of Apache, 1000's of stars on github. I've been CTO at a number of startups that have got significant funding. My point is to establish some credibility. I probably still suck. Having said that, I have been working with Microsoft PowerAutomate for the past 1.5 years and while it has saved a lot of time and been overall a good ex…
I think this is spot-on. No-code solutions allow non-technical folks in marketing and sales to build some amazing things that would have required teams of software engineers: marketing, shopping cart, and email integrations; email onboarding workflows; complex ad campaigns; better inventory and wholesale sales management; and a lot of other things I'm not creative enough to think of. I've seen an entire application prototype built by a product manager by duct taping Google Sheets, Mailchimp, and a database together with Zapier.
However, their wants always grow just beyond the no-code capabilities, and there's still a need for software engineers for things that haven't been fully solved yet.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#115It's just buzzword bingo. Complexity doesn't go away, it just moves around. Thinking about user interaction, product lifecycle, collaboration, knowledge pools etc. doesn't tie in to 'code' as a one-to-one, and if you swap out code for something else those still exist. The problem isn't code, the problem is the ability to analyse the problem, formulate requirements and design a solution. How you express that is an imp…
Exactly. The code isn't the hard part. The hard part is abstract thinking and logic. I created an email escalation notification system that was manipulated with graphics in a flow diagram. My users couldn't handle the precise logic for doing the escalation chain and always asked for help. Turns out, _that's_ what I'm good at. Logic and abstract reasoning.
I see the same thing in most ticketing and planning systems, they all have some logic to decide what next steps are allowed and to edit those steps you modify a graphical representation of a state machine.
You don't need to write code to modify it, but if you have no knowledge of flows or state machines or logical succession of events you simply can't solve the problem. It's not hard, but no-code isn't going to make it less hard either.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The ultimate "low code" experience I had was back in the 1990s with Delphi. You drag and drop your form elements, get everything just right. Next you hook up your event handlers and type in a few lines of code to do the actual work. Today I was thinking about Visual Basic 6, which worked more or less the same way. I wonder what similar alternatives we have today? Gambas? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambas
The problem is that you can’t usually afford to target just a Windows 95 PC or equivalent today so such a tool cannot exist. The UI must morph and adapt and feel native across phones, tablets, retina displays, etc. Even video games these days need to adapt to a different UX on each platform even thou they are the closest to having one unified UI across the gamut
Delphi is alive! https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#117Background I have worked at a low code/ no code shop. We could deliver prototypes fast. But that’s just it they were prototypes that went into production but at that point clients were hooked just where you want them. At that point feature requests require one of two things. A coder to build a new no code widget or more likely just code the feature. So to summarize they make the easy things easy but the hard things impossible. As time goes on maybe you have enough widgets to be successful but most problems are one offs where the widget is only needed once so why build the widget when coding is faster and cheaper?
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#118https://writer.zohopublic.com/writer/published/kiaow0e244617...
Just wrote this piece putting down my thoughts on what I call domain driven no-code platforms.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#119Yeah, I tried to get on this wave of (no|low)-code to enable non-devs to prototype their ideas. Turns out they run into "counter-intuitive" things when modeling your data and ones mental models have to be redeveloped.. and the query languages (like bubble) get pretty abstract fast. Future AI driven prototyping may be interesting. For now lets get back to "medium-code": rails, django, airtable/baserow, canonic, firebase, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#120I don't see the 'no-code' movement as something new, just a new name on the same idea. Developers are expensive, so let's migrate this work to people who cost less, using tools that provide the same or similar value.
Do you know how many people's jobs today are "this person is really good with excel, so we can hold on hiring a dev team and data scientist"? Probably millions. They're everywhere. I met dozens of them hidden away in Amazon warehouses during my career there. And Excel is the ultimate 'no-code' tool, pinnacle of the industry.
And yet the developers, we're all still here. Frankly, there's more of us. Because what really happens when you don't need developers to do the simple stuff is that developers can instead focus on the hard, higher-value problems, that a no-code solution can't do for you. More gets done, more value gets created.
There's always talk that eventually, we'll reach the end of the runway and the no-code will replace are large portion of us. I don't think we're anywhere near that. So bring on your no-code products, I say.