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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?

#361

Post by tluyben2 »

GordonS wrote: post #136
mikewarot wrote: post #57

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. 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…

I used Delphi a lot in the 90's and early 00's, but I never really considered it "low code", with the exception of the drag and drop forms designer of course.

A lot of companies, especially from Russia and Ukraine, sold visible and invisible VCL components that you could drop on the form and configure. Depending on your functionality you needed very little or no code at all. We a lot of applications that way in the 90s and begin 00s.

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

#362

Post by zby »

What is 'no code'? Is it everything you can do with computer without writing code? That would probably be too much. Maybe it is about adding a feature (to an existing system) without any code that seems like previously you had to write code for adding it.

The definition is tricky when you start from a negative.

There is a companion term 'low code' - because people discovered that 'no code' is too restrictive. But that is even more foggy. If a new library comes out and suddenly your program shrinks to a short script - is that 'low code'?

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

#363

Post by tluyben2 »

I have experience with low and no code tools since the 80s and built a bunch myself (for niches like insurance) and eat my own dogfood by using my own no code tools for current (side and client) projects.

What I found is what everyone finds; when the tool does not support something, it gets very hard.

I think of that as follows: the request to make that 'impossible' feature came from somewhere; if you rethink the feature so it's trivial to click together with the tool and then convince the owner of the feature to accept that reality, you often get away with it. Just accepting that you don't need certain complexity for things to function well is often, imho, a perfectly fine solution.

If the client or owner does not accept to work this way, I don't use no/low code at all.

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

#364

Post by tluyben2 »

rukuu001 wrote: post #305

I know an agency of 5 people absolutely flat out delivering low-code solutions on the MS Power Platform, mostly for government agencies. The thing is, these solutions probably couldn't be delivered by non-engineers, but these people are able to move extremely quick because of the platform.

Most apps with the power platform are indeed LoB applications which people here would immediately cry over for bad UX/UI. If you do not care about that (big orgs often seem to not), many many old and new low/no code tools can do the job.

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

#365

Post by raxxorrax »

rukuu001 wrote: post #305

I know an agency of 5 people absolutely flat out delivering low-code solutions on the MS Power Platform, mostly for government agencies. The thing is, these solutions probably couldn't be delivered by non-engineers, but these people are able to move extremely quick because of the platform.

Counter example: MS Flow. It is a nice idea but is completely torpedoed by Microsoft itself. All workflows are executed in a user context and if you want that to change you have to pay thousands of dollars and self-host infrastructure. HTTP is a "premium" feature... Some function don't work with MS own features to block networks by IP. they release their Azure IP range tables, but it still doesn't work. The usability is worse than 2010 SharePoint workflows with the exception that it can interface a range of web services by predefined adapters.

Power Apps is quite buggy and quite difficult to implement with questionable design decisions (The programming language changes with regional language, so member selectors like . get translated to ,) that makes code incompatible if you change Power Apps language (yes, really). Not that you can easily export/import projects from one tenent to another. The programming language itself is not less complicated than classic languages, the strength is the platform. What wordpress is to blogs, Power Apps wants to be for mobile apps if you will.

Power BI is a lightweight App that basically leverage pivot functions of Excel is a small web app. Quite useful, but there should be no illusions about the capabilities. Nice for quick data analysis with the usual drill down.

For a government to use Power Apps means to be extremely dependent on MS. It is rather questionable and very expensive in my opinion.

That said, no code workflows and applications builders would help a lot. But current examples are severely lacking in my opinion.

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

#366

Post by steve_gh »

ashtonkem wrote: post #343
GordonS wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely think that's a large part of it, but I saw impressive uses of Excel and Access by non-coders long before it was typical to lock-down workstations the way corporations do nowadays (like, 20 years ago).

Excel is used because it's understood by business types, not because it's the only thing available. They're comfortable with spreadsheets, it's no surprise that they'll try to solve any given problem they have with spreadsheets. You see the same thing in reverse, with programmers reaching for Python when Excel probably would've been a better choice. Everyone reaches for what's familiar.

I regularly have issues with new hire data scientists straight out of Uni.

Connect to database, pull multiple tables into pandas / numpy. Then start joining to find the records they want in python.

Why, why, why ???

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

#368

Post by js4ever »

vb6sp6 wrote: post #68
vadfa wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

Vb6 still works. I just put out a new version of my project today :)

I love this, you are a great example of dark matter developer, using old and boring tech to deliver everyday some real value to businesses

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

#369

Post by named-user »

santiagobasulto wrote: post #145
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #121

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.yc…

We have to start doing like those Soccer Mom Facebook groups and put something like: "please use the magnifier glass[0] to search if your question hasn't been asked before" [0] https://hn.algolia.com/ Edit: I'm getting heavily downvoted. Sorry guys, it was just a joke.

Not everyone checks HN and Reddit every day.

Just because it's been asked before doesn't mean that the people answering it are the same etc etc

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

#370

Post by diomio »

No-code it's just code, but scattered around in many forms and places, instead of being a bunch of text files in a folder.

At the end of the day you are still instructing a machine to operate.

Every task that's complex enough still requires a "coder mentality" to perform.

It's just that many people don't want to bother with the quirks of classic programming languages and the technical baggage that they drag around from birth.

The worst feeling comes when you realize you are spending most of the time fighting with the tools than actually solving the problem you had in the first place.

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