GitHub Copilot obviates the need for these platforms, in my humble opinion. You don't need "low-code", you want "low-effort coding". You want something quick and dirty that does 80% of the work.
Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?
41–50 of 95 posts
Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?
#42Perhaps at risk of sounding facetious, but Excel.
I don't need a spreadsheet that much, but I've been finding MS Office 365 version of Excel to be obnoxious to use. They've changed a lot since I used it 5 or 10 years ago. I don't need it enough to learn it, so I've just been using Google Sheets as needed.
In the browser the google office suite absolutely beats microsoft’s, even after years of benign neglect by google. Comparing the desktop microsoft apps vs the google web apps I would say the microsoft stuff is more fully featured, but slow and more confusing to use.
Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?
#43No code has its role, there are many simple things it can make easier. For most non trivial systems, no code will get you 80%-90% to a solution and the last 20% of your solution will be extremely difficult, complex, or impossible to deliver in any maintainable way. Developers are hostile to these types of solutions specifically because once you go past basic CRUD your no code solutions make everything so much harder…
in my experience this makes sense. really true, hands down. however the answer still boils down to "it depends" since it intersects with different industries, and companies of different maturity stages. making a landing page for some simple site? no code works. need a fast crud for operations team? no code works. creating a web app prototype to validate a simple idea? no code works. refining a product with existing u…
For anything complex, for example a SaaS platform, your best bet is to build from scratch with code. The flexibility, ownership and technical viability are essential in these scenarios.
For simple CRUD apps, internal tools, reports, spreadsheet replacement - low-code platforms - particularly OSS options (Budibase, Appsmith, and others)
Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?
#44No code has its role, there are many simple things it can make easier. For most non trivial systems, no code will get you 80%-90% to a solution and the last 20% of your solution will be extremely difficult, complex, or impossible to deliver in any maintainable way. Developers are hostile to these types of solutions specifically because once you go past basic CRUD your no code solutions make everything so much harder…
I am sincerely wondering if this must be the case or is it a shortcoming of the existent solutions, but something that can be overcome. (Disclaimer: I am a programmer who never seriously used any low code product apart from a spreadsheet. Unless you count Emacs as a low code platform, which would not be wrong, I guess.)
I think it's intrinsic to the problem. That 20% long tail of the customer's problem is not just different for every company, it takes a decent programmer to recognize where that border line is.
As a result these solutions work just fine until the point where they trip the user up and start repeatedly punching them in the face. The user will usually try to work around the limitations and that's when it goes really badly wrong. Often the users will blame themselves for not knowing how to progress or for creating a mess.
If your needs are simple enough you might never reach that border. It's suitable for those tasks.
It's made worse by the economic incentives of no code platforms too. They try and trap the user on their platform. So, once you reach the border line the user usually has to dump the entire app and bring in a programmer to code it all up from scratch. That makes bad workarounds that much more tempting from the user's perspective and thus that's how the no code solution dumpster fires are born.
Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?
#45Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
One huge problem is that with code the usual way of ensuring maintainability is to revisit old code and rewrite parts of it as needed, in order to be able to maintain it properly. One huge problem with no/low code solutions is that people usually think that this doesn't need to be done for no/low code solutions, only for code solutions. But solutions using nodes in order to build stuff also need to be revisited, refa…
And with none of the intelligent tooling which IDEs and version control software have developed to make that process easier / less error prone. Git commits of node coordinates and minified JavaScript is not my idea of a good time.
I agree. Check out what we’ve done with Lowdefy. Web app config that is Git friendly.
Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?
#47> My group writes .NET code
If you are clever enough, your current ecosystem can be bent into a "low" code arrangement.
We pushed most of our logic into SQL queries over time. Domain experts write "code" these days. This was only possible after years of refining our schema relative to our customers and problems. Learning what should be configurable and what should not. To do this effectively usually requires that you already wrote a lot of code.
SQL databases are a superpower. I feel like they are your ultimate low code platform. Especially SQLite, which can run literally anywhere. In this arrangement, the query planner and virtual machine are your programming staff. The quality of this low code ecosystem is entirely defined by the imagination of the person responsible for designing the schema.
If you find yourself having a really hard time writing a query that seems somewhat ordinary for your problem domain, it might be an indication of a skill issue with your DBAs or schema author. This is where low code typically goes off the rails. Your in-house employees are also now customers and you have to accommodate their requirements in addition to the ones that these abstractions are ultimately trying to address for your outside customers.
Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?
#48Also, why is this thread been removed from the home / front HN page?
Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?
#49There more I work the less I care about no-code or development languages. The cost is in requirements and dependencies. The tools and implementation is the cheap part.
> The tools and implementation is the cheap part.
Not always true. This is a bit of a myth I myself sometimes fall for. Tools and implementation require a lot of very skilled workers to become cheap, because they must know all the traps that any language or framework implicitly or explicitly adds.
For example, I have been learning SwiftUI lately as it is sold as the new cool shiny stuff, and coming from a backend background it was nice at first, until I started fighting with xcode, "this thing is not possible yet in swiftui, so you must wrap an ns controller", etc. Now that I know these issues I am not anymore the clueless guy but I would still consider myself pretty junior in this field/technology: are you happy to have someone with 0 experience do this kind of work? Then yes, it's cheap in terms of salary and expensive in terms of time/quality of your product. The guy learns and eventually leaves to make more money.
Ps: overall I agree that requirements and dependencies are costly too. I wouldn't underestimate the costs of language/tools/technology though.
Re: Ask HN: What low code platforms are worth using?
#50> I know most “normal” developers have a reputation for being hostile to low-code platforms The word you’re looking for is “experienced”. You’re echoing all the concerns everyone that’s dealt with it shouts from the roof tops, but you’re saying the same thing they did before getting that experience, “this time is different”. See you on the other side.
I have around 20 years of experience doing work with third generation languages. So I’d classify myself as both “normal” and “experienced”. The closest thing my group does with “low code” is the odd Azure Logic app for alerting, and we don’t have any plans to change that. I’ve been around long enough to see things like Lighswitch die on the vine.
The problem is that I don’t control the entire IT org and my group has to deal with issues like presentation logic bubbling up into our APIs from underpowered and overhyped low-code platforms.
I guess the difference between you and me is that I’m open-minded about the possibility that some of these tools might potentially, someday, be better than what we’ve seen until now.