Ideal no-code solution would be that can talk to users, convert user stories to code, debug/fix code that broke production server and can make sense of new/existing technologies. Anything other than that is just abstraction over already existing code.
Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
191–200 of 404 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Some years ago someone posted here on HN an excel extension that turned excel into an actual IDE. While it’s true for a lot of people is the only choice, there’s also an amazing amount of enterprising users that sadly don’t know any better!
That's the Venn diagram problem: how many people are there who (a) understand the needs of line of business non-developers, (b) understand their corporate IT policies that non-developers suffer under, (c) know the better way that other developers do it, & (d) are willing to wade through the political and policy @&$& to actually get something done about it?
In my experience, not too many. Non-developers don't know what they don't know, and developers don't know what non-developers need.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#193It's interesting, but always calibrate their claims against the fact this is about the tenth time this movement has come around. This movement literally goes back to COBOL. That is not a typo. It's not only likely older than you are, but probably much older than you are. I recognize COBOL may not seem like "no-code", but that's just because "no-code" is a stupid label. "No-code" doesn't mean "no code" just like "serv…
I can say from our experience: we made more that 2000+ no code projects so far and it really required some customization, some coding and technical understanding from "no code developers". No code operates together WITH normal developers. At WeLoveNoCode ( https://welovenocode.com/ ) we have mix of no coders who knows design, no code tools but also can dive into code. So it's not like isolated function, no code is an…
Did you have any cases when devs collaborate with no-code devs?
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> Most of us here have forgotten that many businesses flat out ban access to programming tools for the majority of users. That sounds... counter productive to say the least.
You get no argument from me, but I've seen it too frequently to believe it's not by design.
Typically the rationale given is "Non-developers can't be trusted to write code and follow development policies," while leaving the unspoken that they're limiting development to people who by their organizational seat definition aren't experts in the problem they're being asked to code.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#195Good examples of no-code (relative to the things they replace because a good no-code solution degrades gracefully into code/abstraction it replaces for complex cases):
- spreadsheets :: textbook example
- OS/file systems :: it is hard to imagine times without it, when these operations had to be programmed manually
- relational DBs/SQL :: compared to myriads of ways data manipulation was programmed previously
- shell pipeline :: compared to manipulating processes directly in C. People can be tricked into writing useful shell commands without thinking about themselves as programmers.
There are many [less general] domain-specific examples such as GraphEdit, GUI/web-site builders, yahoo pipes, labview, etc.
Declarative configs for various things (even if they literally called "code" can be also considered no-code solutions e.g., IAAC) or various DSLs that discourage the general code with loops/ifs (even if it is Turing complete formally).
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#196This 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…
It's a perfect analogy. Don't sell yourself short. Look, the following things are true. 1) This industry absolutely has the capability create more tools like Excel that are both extremely empowering and orders of magnitude easier than what we think of as coding. 2) Unfortunately, there's a strong, likely frequently subconscious, incentive to definitely not do this, since it carries a strong danger of IT making itself…
> 2) Unfortunately, there's a strong, likely frequently subconscious, incentive to definitely not do this, since it carries a strong danger of IT making itself "obsolete."
I can't think of a single case that this has ever been the decision making process when creating a product.
If you look at the myriad of available tools that trends in this direction, in all fields, you'll realize that the industry is littered with both successful and failed examples, ERP systems alone are a huge market.
It's just that people wanted to replace actual convoluted general purpose logic known as coding, that they ran into problem that could not be addressed by some GUI. And that no-code solutions that exist today propagandize about.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#197every so many years this movement comes back and has a different name. I think I've now seen 5 iterations of it over the last 25 years. back when frontpage was first launched everyone screamed it would be the end of web development and everyone and your mom would build websites and we wouldn't need those cranky developers anymore. and here we are.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#198I've used Microsoft's tools, like the Power platform and Logic Apps. For anything interesting you want to do it boils down to Excel-like functions. Have you ever worked with a series of nested If statements in Excel? Its kind of a nightmare to think about and there is definitely code there.
If you want to do something really really basic its fine. If you want to do something complicated then its a hinderance.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#199The 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. It was the best I've ever seen balance of managing complexity, yet letting you write code when you needed to. The C++ version was nowhere near as god, it generated a ton of templates and…
>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 first one I encountered from that same era was Interface Builder, on the NeXT. And it turns out it's still around, as part of XCode on the Mac.
Re: Ask HN: What do you think about the no-code movement?
#200No code just means non text based code with limitations, perfect for people that are scared of text.