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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?

#311

Post by haswell »

ethbr0 wrote: post #280
eropple wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> Node-RED, UiPath, or Power Automate.

All of which have teams of developers behind them, maintaining the code that underly those control flow constructs and form the higher level abstractions that the low code user interacts with.

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

#312

Post by rubyfan »

It’s awful and I wish the fad would go away. Just please stop.

I work at a fortune 100 company where a team just had to write off over 2 years of development at over $10M. Executives were sold a no-code solution and then instructed their team to use it for some complex business processes (duh). It was obvious to a few of us but wow, what a shame.

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

#314

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#315

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

There’s nothing new, here. It’s been going on for decades, in one form or another.

Visual Basic was sort of a “no code” solution, at one time (of course, it is, actually, “code,” but the barest minimum possible).

The dream of the C-Suite has always been to toss out those filthy engineers, and generate product directly from the (obviously) superior minds of the executives.

Not sure how well that’s worked out, so far…

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

#316

Post by toss1 »

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…

Yup, this is a very old hype cycle. Seems that every bunch of years, the industry has to relearn it. Yes, they can be useful for some situations, but the limits close in fast, and soon you will have to deal with real logic, concurrency, etc, as well as product limitations, and vendor lock-in.

And there are multiple reasons that corps separate development tools from ordinary users. First is that it is a very short path until the project will encounter questions that require actual development training and expertise to get right - and there are 100 wrong ways to get it wrong, many of which will create real damage & business costs.

And the other perhaps best described by the exec who said (a few decades ago) that "I don't want to turn a great senior $200k analyst into a mediocre junior $35k BASIC programmer at the same cost".

So yeah, giving users such tools to hammer out prototypes to give better specs to developers ican work great, but thinking that the latest "no code" tool is the end of it is foolish.

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

#317

Post by rsj_hn »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #315

There’s nothing new, here. It’s been going on for decades, in one form or another. Visual Basic was sort of a “no code” solution, at one time (of course, it is, actually, “code,” but the barest minimum possible). The dream of the C-Suite has always been to toss out those filthy engineers, and generate product directly from the (obviously) superior minds of the executives. Not sure how well that’s worked out, so far…

The thing is, I hear people give as examples "excel", "visualbasic", and all I can think of is "wow, these are wildly successful technologies that improved the lives of millions of people"

Also, these types of technologies do not reduce demand for real programmers. And a desire to deploy them - effectively to make a product more "programmable" by end users - may not be rooted in a desire to replace developers, but rather to make the product more useful, and thus be able to charge a higher premium for it.

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

#318

Post by eropple »

haswell wrote: post #311
ethbr0 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> Node-RED, UiPath, or Power Automate. All of which have teams of developers behind them, maintaining the code that underly those control flow constructs and form the higher level abstractions that the low code user interacts with.

Yeah - where I've seen those things used for more than trivial things, there's usually a developer in the org who's handling the places where they fall over.

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

#319

Post by kall »

I see a lot of great tools these days that describe themselves as no-code. To me it kind of means: this tool is a tad more powerful than average and can accomplish things you might expect to need code for. In that sense, handing every user tools that are a little bit more powerful, seems great.

The "no-code" where you are building end user apps inside a proprietary, cloud based WYSIWIG editor, that seems like a fad.

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