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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?

#271

Post by wonderwonder »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #242
wonderwonder wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think this as well, that No Code was not a real development to production level option. I have very much been proven wrong. I transition recently from 15+ years as a developer to contracting for a no code platform. Virtually everything a regular web dev can do in code can be done in no code. Sometimes its easier to do in code and sometimes it is much easier to do in no code so mileage may vary but no code i…

> no code is very much a mature technology now How is "no code" a technology? Aren't there a variety of "no code" technologies? I'd be interested to hear which ones you are seeing that can produce applications similar to ordinary software development! Like... it's probably not WordPress or SharePoint.

Unqork platform is pretty robust.

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

#272

Post by meesterdude »

jasode wrote: post #16

>What do you think about this movement? The "no-code" desire has been around for decades -- just using different terms. E.g. in 1980s and 1990s, a common phrase for new tools that didn't require programmers was "self-service" ... like Crystal Reports software for "self-service reports without programming" . To put it in perspective, consider that Microsoft Excel is a "no-code" tool. In the old days before desktop com…

> No matter what "no-code" tool is invented, the world keeps inventing new tasks for human programmers to do that today's no-code tool can't do. There's always a delta in capabilities.

And by that logic always an opportunity to make something that was once hard to do, easy.

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

#273

Post by hyperpallium2 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #107
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…

Things we agree on: ignore everything no-code proponents say about their tools or capabilities Things we disagree on: code before no code My experience has been that actual code is always superior* to no-code, because no-code is always more complex. E.g. the no-code developer environment + code (in whatever designer form) + interpreter / runtime / libraries + any integrations + actual generated code. Consequently, bu…

I like this idea, but does it work in praxtice?

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

#275

Post by andyferris »

Waterluvian wrote: post #226
jl6 wrote: post #42

This 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…

I mostly agree. But I think there’s an important semantic distinction: people who use excel are coders. They are programming the moment they write an expression into a cell. I think this is important because we fool ourselves by calling these people non-coders. Excel is really just a coding environment that has a ridiculously smooth learning curve.

Yeah, this is why the term "low code" seems more appriorpiate. We should definitely be describing `=A1+B1` as "code" and we should be calling it the "Excel Programming Langauge". (Especially now with LET and LAMBDA and compound data types making it Turing complete).

(However it's still low code because all the imperative stuff about the GUI and loading/saving files and updating other cells reactively and so-on is written for you by Microsoft.)

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

#277

Post by hypeatei »

worik wrote: post #173

I hate it. Some time (not long) ago I was working remotely on some software that was driven by an API on a remote server maintained by some folks in a different country. A long way from me. Cutting a long story short I realised that the lack of control over the server was because they really did not know how it worked, or how to fix it or diagnose issues their server was having. It was a laraval/MS-SQL system built f…

What do you think about "serverless" architecture where everything server related is handled for you and all you have to worry about is code? I'm talking about services such as Azure Functions, AWS lambda, etc..

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

#278

Post by ethbr0 »

winterplace wrote: post #258
ethbr0 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been consulting in no-code platforms, in addition to writing actual code, for about 8 years. Producing something that works isn't the problem. Maintaining it is. The legacy codebases from this stuff are dumpster fires, because most of the tools are closed enough ecosystems that the companies supporting them have to reinvent every programming best practice from the last 30 years. 'Version control? Sure, that's a…

Maintainability is always the issue, even for the things made from code. What do you think will happen if the no-code platforms become open source?

Every general no code platform I've worked with has had an order of magnitude (sometimes, multiple) worse maintainability story than code alternatives.

And admittedly, maybe I've worked with a series of terrible ones, but I've also worked with a lot of popular ones that big enterprises are adopting.

As for open source, I'd say zero percent chance that happens, because no code solves problems developers don't have: (1) I want to write code, but I don't know how to code & (2) I need to integrate a lot of really boring, legacy, usually-Windows apps.

It's the "Why are there no polished open source desktop environments?" problem from the 90s, multiplied by ten.

Which I think is why you see what open source no-code tools do exist focus on web, because that's closer to what their developers are curious about.

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

#280

Post by ethbr0 »

eropple wrote: post #262
ethbr0 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 presc…

I guess here is where "no-code" as a big-tent term breaks down.

Most of the targeted products in the space seem like they can be expressed as "I know how to ___, but I don't want to ___" (f.ex. Retool looks like: write a query, write a UI). Which, yes, trade opinionated design for design time efficiency, which is most of their value.

On the other hand, you also have no-code frameworks which are icons and a designer wrapped around primitives that afford you enough access to control flow and variables to build anything you could code. E.g. Node-RED, UiPath, or Power Automate. Which don't need to be very opinionated, because their entire purpose is to be a build-anything toolbox.

So it's probably more useful to differentiate focused no-code products from general-purpose ones.

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