Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?

Maybe ask some of these people:

1 hour before you Ask HN: Do you like the term 'nocode'? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29187754

2 days ago Ask HN: No Code GUI Tools? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29160858

3 months ago Ask HN: Is there any future for low-code/no-code development? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28150056

4 months ago Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27593073

3 months ago Ask HN: What do you think of Producthunt's obsession with no-code solutions? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28194430

I find that it is great until you want to do something it doesn't really support... and then it is hell. The inflexibility is a killer. I am only interested in a system that lets you code if you want.

My first job out of university was working with a very large firm that bought into Computer Associates' product suite - including 4GL code generators such as Telon ("green-screen" generators) and Easytrieve (4GL report generators). From what I recall, we spent 90% of our time trying to work around the code generators to accomplish tasks, as opposed to simply using native CICS, which was difficult to master (hence the 4GL). I've since used a number of 4GL-type tools, and they've all had the same limitation in that the tail wags the dog, to use an old idiom. Quite fast and seemingly magical if you stay within the guardrails, but as soon as you veer off course (and unless you don't want any differentiators, you will) they quickly become far more onerous than hand-coding, plus lock you into their 'forced march': cost, upgrades, incompatibilities, and so on.

As an aside, it was a very interesting time to be a developer as we had a mix of youngsters (me), who were raised on personal computers, many people seasoned on mainframes/mid-range computers, plus a few "old-timers" who started coding in the 1950s without any formal training. Everyone had great stories, and I feel lucky to have been exposed to people firsthand who were some of the first programmers (and they universally thought everything above assembly language was 'cheating'). Their stories and perspectives have stayed with me throughout my career.

There is still code in no code in the same way that there is still procedural code running when I execute an SQL query. I don't care how much code is being executed. I care about maintenance burden. Postgres is better maintained than anything I can make. So I'd rather just maintain the SQL query than the entire procedural mass that's actually executed.

No Code can solve problems that have been solved so many times before that a bunch of developers decided there was money in solving the entire class of problems once and for all.

So I think they are great, because who wants to reinvent the wheel? It's so much nicer to pay someone else to deal with the problem while I focus on building solutions to novel problems.

Is it a paradigm shift? Yes, in the same way that Excel was a paradigm shift. When you make it easier to solve a class of problems, then people solve more problems in that domain.

Excel radically transformed so many industries because it suddenly became dirt cheap to do complex costs analysis, so instead of paying an accounting firm to run two or three various costs analysis for a product, they could instead be paid to find the optimal solution for a product to hit a specific price point. Suddenly, we have candy bars with 54.51g of chocolate in them.

Something to keep in mind, is when the cost to compete in a segment goes down, competition increases to the point where the cost to compete is driven back up. If anyone can build a competing product in a weekend with 0 background, then competing products are going to pop up where ever money is being made. And one of those competitors is going to innovate their way to the top, through technology, marketing, corruption, or some other means.