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

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

#261

Post by jen729w »

908B64B197 wrote: post #186
ethbr0 wrote: post #112

Earlier 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.

Good luck even getting access to cmd.exe at a lot of places.

We have a phrase where I work: “Security: we put the ‘no’ in ‘innovation’!”

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

#262

Post by eropple »

ethbr0 wrote: post #183
mdpye wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you are talking at cross purposes. You are suggesting no-code first on a micro timescale. For prototyping. That seems like a solid suggestion and use of resources. But from the GP, I read a statement on the macro scale. No-code can't codify turn-key pluggable building blocks until the problem spaces of those blocks have been thoroughly explored by code solutions, and a small number of "winning" configuratio…

We have a different definition of no-code, I think. I wasn't including any tools that don't offer generic enough primitives to build an arbitrary business process. If we're reducing no-code to "things that have been written in code first, that can then be plugged together by the no-code user", then we're talking about libraries with a visual designer on top.

I think you’re thinking higher level than the other side of this conversation thread? Maybe a better way to describe it is that you couldn’t build something like Retool (which is super cool, I like it) without a lot of prior formative design around CRUD and repeatable consistent model handling even across very different data stores and dealing with double-sent commits and the like.

No-code approaches need to be prescriptive about how they deal with systems and it takes a long time to get to the point where we know how to do that in a way that won’t infuriate people.

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

#263

Post by nickdothutton »

I’m still waiting for widespread adoption of 4GL or 5GL from the 1970s/1980s. I’m all for no-code but the problem is after a while you outgrow the platform then you need low code. You know what low code is? It’s code. The moment you have code, you have all the associated “code problems?

Personally I’ve spent more time working on domain specific languages than I have trying to eliminate code.

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

#264

Post by can16358p »

StevePerkins wrote: post #240
can16358p wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as villain as Dreamweaver. Not directly but considering how MS saw that has no future and abandoned it, while Dreamweaver became the "web dev tool" for many, many out there for long years until Adobe understood those tools had no future at all.

Pfft. Dreamweaver (and even FrontPage) were perfectly fine back in the pre-IE6 days when they dominated. People today crap on using 's for grid formatting, just as we crap on 1990's Java code for its `AbstractStrategyFactoryFactory` excesses. Because it's "what people did back in the bad old days", and is a glaring red flag that one's skills are out of date. But whereas OO design patterns are a matter of subjective d…

Pre-IE6 days, sure. I'm talking about much later, Adobe abandoned DW just a few years ago, much, much later than it should have been.

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

#265

Post by aksss »

coldcode wrote: post #150
mountain_peak wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I knew a team that did 4GL on AS/400s (generating RP4 I think) and they were all about how superior their tool was and how terrible the Java team was in comparison and how they would never be out of a job. Within a couple years none were programmers any more as their tool was abandoned and they had no other programming skill.

Where did they come from, and where did they go? Business analysts that were given no-code tools, thought themselves the new-wave programmers, and then faded back into analyst/architecture roles?

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

#266

Post by WalterBright »

jerf wrote: post #10

It'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 remember an ad in the programming rags of the 80's that ran for about a year. It advertised (from my memory) "no coding required! Just use our script interface!"

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

#267

Post by bpicolo »

niark wrote: post #244

In my experience, these tools have another - counter intuitive and often overlooked - strength. Their limitations. You want to handle this very specific edge case? With code, there is certainly a way to do this. It may take days, it may add unreasonable complexity. Nevertheless, someone (yourself?) will ask that this kinda insignificant edge case is properly handled. And won’t take no for an answer. With a (too) limi…

You may underestimate the ingenuity of non-developers hacking on no-code platforms. They end up thinking a lot more like developers than one might think.

Our operations organization has independently arrived at some things pretty darn adjacent to more advanced software patterns, like circuit breakers. (This being for workflow automation no-code tooling, vs website builders).

And a ton of real world work is getting done out there with Zapier, that's for sure.

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

#269

Post by filoeleven »

Bret Victor has ideas. https://youtu.be/8pTEmbeENF4

There is a fundamental tension between “what computers understand how to do” and “the problems that humans are trying to solve with computers.”

Every programming language lies somewhere between one of these two fixed points. The goal of many if not most programmers is to end up with a system that lets you express all of your domain-specific problems as clearly as possible, abstracting away the fiddly bits that you don’t care about.

There’s a lot of stuff that has to exist in order to get to that level, and we neither agree about it nor know all of what it entails for any specific thing. So Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) are often the best that we can do, and they vary wildly in quality.

Some DSLs lend themselves to being visually programmed. They tend to be rare and niche, and incredibly helpful to the people who can use them. Perhaps more is possible, but it requires a foundation to build upon that does not yet universally or even commonly exist, and may never exist.

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

#270

Post by hyperpallium2 »

Without going into the actual reality of current products... and current marketing claims...

All technology has natural adoption phases. The technical problem becomes better understood. The technical solution is improved. The market problem and solution become better understood and improved, and presented in terms that make sense from a user perspective, and solve their problem. It becomes easier to use, More people adopt it.

Typically runs through several different companies' lifetimes; some would argue the changes are so great, it requires different companies, with different foci and competences, at different phases.

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