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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#61

Post by donatj »

While I certainly saw them coming a mile away, the rise of sites like Squarespace and Wix still unnerves me a little bit.

While I do primarily backend data work these days, I spent a lot of the early 2000's working for an agency that built websites for people and companies. Many of which would have been simple enough to throw together in Squarespace.

I'd always thought I could fall back into building websites if this didn't work out, but I feel like that's falling out as my backup plan. I still try to keep up on CSS and JS though, just incase.

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

#63

Post by dirtybirdnj »

I'm a backend focused engineer that's worked on PHP and Javascript API / apps. In the past I had to write a lot of boilerplate code, now things like Strapi make it super easy to prototype data models and give you authenticated APIs for very little effort.

I'm a huge fan of Plasmic so far, I've tried to make frontend react sites and they don't look as nice as what I'm able to achieve with what I can only call a "website builder" tool.

My goal is to customize the CMS and use it as an API for a separate frontend site. JAMStack is the future... I don't think there is anything specifically 'no-code' about it but I'm suggesting two tools here that let you do no-code and also have nice doorhandles to let you get under the hood. I think that last part is key.

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

#64

Post by a4isms »

The “no code” and “low code” movements come up over and over again because programming is now like writing: Yes, it is its own profession, but also yes, it permeates all other professions as software eats the world.

Languages and tools are user interfaces, and any time you have many different jobs to be done by many different people with many different contexts, it is natural to develop several different interfaces for what may appear to be the same work.

Thus, low-code and no-code. But!

Programming is more than just coding. It’s also all the activities AROUND the coding, including things like reviewing code before it is deployed, version control, reverting code, testing code, automated tests that also serve as DSLs for describing the behaviour of code, &c.

Robust no-code or low-code systems also need to address the needs that the systems and tooling that live around high-code serve.

They don’t need to do these things the exact same way, but it’s a Chesterton’s Fence situation: We shouldn’t just ignore those other systems, we should figure out why they exist and make sure that either we know those needs no longer exist, or address them another way.

https://raganwald.com/2012/01/08/duck-programming.html

Discussion around the original post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3442419

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

#65

Post by redisman »

vadfa wrote: post #58
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…

>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

The problem is that you can’t usually afford to target just a Windows 95 PC or equivalent today so such a tool cannot exist. The UI must morph and adapt and feel native across phones, tablets, retina displays, etc.

Even video games these days need to adapt to a different UX on each platform even thou they are the closest to having one unified UI across the gamut

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

#66

Post by goohle »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #56

The most popular programming environment on the planet is Microsoft Excel, a no-code product. I think a lot of developers are very anti-no-code because they know, as any rational person does, that any no-code solution flexible enough to do everything will look pretty much just like programming. But no-code shouldn't be a 'do everything' solution, it should be a 'do a lot of things more easily' solution. No-code, to m…

Formulas are the code, otherwise FORTRAN is another popular no-code product.

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

#67

Post by redisman »

meheleventyone wrote: post #38

It's weird from the perspective of game development because it's so obvious. A lot of time is spent on development tools because making a modern game is a very complex undertaking that is highly data-driven. A large amount of game tools are #nocode not because it's a movement but because it's useful. A classic example is level design tools that are much more about spatial design with some coupling between entities in…

I feel like there is a distinction between tools and no code and these are just tools. You can maybe prototype a game mechanic if it’s not very unique with drag and drop but it’ll never scale to production. By the end the game code will have thousands of special cases which would make the nice no code experience a complete Frankenstein monster

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

#68

Post by vb6sp6 »

vadfa wrote: post #58
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…

>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 :)

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

#69

Post by sirwhinesalot »

They need to stop locking people into their ecosystem and generate code you can get out and hand out to a developer if necessary.

No-Code / Low-Code / Full-Code is a false trichotomy anyway. There's no reason why visual coding needs to be any more restricted than the real deal.

It's all just one big usability problem. We'll continue to develop software pretending we're running 80 character wide terminals for awhile, but I believe this will change someday.

Tools like Enso, or the Elm debugger already show how much better things are with instant, actionable feedback, even on "real" languages. Then you remember Smalltalk and HyperCard existed in the 80s and you wonder how it all went so wrong.

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