Microsoft has always had the best developer tools. This is an exciting step forward for low-code
Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
11–20 of 198 posts
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#12This is addressing a market. I have seen it first hand more than once. Highly driven and competent individuals that are not programmers for whatever reason and that create a monstrosity that works (using some low code solution). It’s ugly and buggy but gets a job done. This works for as long as they don’t hit a technical limitation then call devs like myself in to replace it. It was a great phase 1 and made money. Th…
Yeah, this is pretty much the use case for low-code solutions like Access. Being a developer is an exception, rather than the rule, and there are a lot of smart BAs out there who know software could improve their lives.
I feel like if AI gets really good, low-code is the future. In the future we won't eliminate software engineering but it will become increasingly less technical until software devs and BAs merge as one profession.
But that's decades off if it comes at all.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#13This is addressing a market. I have seen it first hand more than once. Highly driven and competent individuals that are not programmers for whatever reason and that create a monstrosity that works (using some low code solution). It’s ugly and buggy but gets a job done. This works for as long as they don’t hit a technical limitation then call devs like myself in to replace it. It was a great phase 1 and made money. Th…
>>It’s ugly and buggy but gets a job done. This works for as long as they don’t hit a technical limitation then call devs like myself in to replace it. Or more likely they leave the company, it breaks and no one knows how it worked, how it was suppose to work, or anything about it so they need to call in someone either from Internal IT, or and outside consultant to figure out what broke, and how to fix it...
No difference than Excel Macro apps today. When Excel Macro wiz kid leaves the department or the company and it either breaks or needs new features then it goes to IT and they don't work on Excel so they will push to rewrite it into a web app.
The plus is that the use case and value for the program is already proven, so IT is not wasting time creating things people will not use.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#14This is addressing a market. I have seen it first hand more than once. Highly driven and competent individuals that are not programmers for whatever reason and that create a monstrosity that works (using some low code solution). It’s ugly and buggy but gets a job done. This works for as long as they don’t hit a technical limitation then call devs like myself in to replace it. It was a great phase 1 and made money. Th…
I think low code works for smaller more routine projects where hiring devs is just not all that feasible.
A lot of people stuck in places like, say, the accounting department have the soul of a dev. They like technology and want to automate things. And often times when they do that, they actually improve their departments quite a bit with stuff like VBA and Access projects (as uncool as they may seem to some).
It works because "real" programming environments have learning curves that are hard to tackle if you have a day job, and even if you do tackle them, IT is probably not going to give you direct database access.
I had a friend like this, who was bored as shit as an accountant. I convinced him to migrate his career to software and now he's in a data science master's program.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#15This is addressing a market. I have seen it first hand more than once. Highly driven and competent individuals that are not programmers for whatever reason and that create a monstrosity that works (using some low code solution). It’s ugly and buggy but gets a job done. This works for as long as they don’t hit a technical limitation then call devs like myself in to replace it. It was a great phase 1 and made money. Th…
I'm sure a lot of projects would never make it to developers if somebody out in the field wasn't trying to solve a problem like this in the first place.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#16This is addressing a market. I have seen it first hand more than once. Highly driven and competent individuals that are not programmers for whatever reason and that create a monstrosity that works (using some low code solution). It’s ugly and buggy but gets a job done. This works for as long as they don’t hit a technical limitation then call devs like myself in to replace it. It was a great phase 1 and made money. Th…
Yes, no-code solutions almost always become ugly, buggy, monstrosities, and there are technical limits that mean it needs wholesale replacement, but pragmatically I too have seen them getting jobs done. I'd also wager it will not cost more to rewrite it, especially if you deeply discount the non-developer resources that were used to create it (often salaried employees' time, and even then those individuals likely came out ahead compared to the tedium of doing it manually). Consider it a prototype. Also, the functional spec of "do exactly what the domain expert made this convoluted Excel spreadsheet do for the last 2 years, but with better validation of inputs" is often far more accurate than some daydreamed RFQ.
The part that confuses me is why this makes sense as a separate enterprise product. Had the original author been interested in learning a new tool, they'd have probably been better off starting with Python. I recognize that non-developers are silently building their own tools, some of which will be a hit and later need replacement by developers, but are there really sales teams going around to big enterprises suggesting that they buy licenses for all their employees to be able to build their own tools using their particular low-code solution that will eventually be replaced? Seems like a difficult thing to sell IMO...
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#17Who has actually seen a success story with this sort of thing? We arrived at "low-code", but by way of actually solving our problem domain through many hellish iterations and figuring out what all of the various points of configuration should be . As far as I am aware, this is not something that Microsoft or any other vendor can determine for your business ahead of time. I am sure that there are a lot of types of sma…
Do you consider Excel a low-code solution?
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#18If this works, Microsoft is going to hit a long-term retention jackpot. Low-code ecosystems are sticky and excel in ARR as their model is usually consumption based. Moving away costs companies millions. Every employee is automating their work on this platform. I working with a consulting firm and one of our customers (+50,000 employees) has onboarded power-platform for every individual to automate their work. If ever…
I think it will work, especially if Microsoft can also build self hosted version of some of these tools. There is a huge market for such tools (look at how much attention self hosted Airtable alternatives are getting). Between self/cloud hosted versions, their sales machine and deep integrations, Microsoft has a huge advantage over Google and Amazon.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#19This is addressing a market. I have seen it first hand more than once. Highly driven and competent individuals that are not programmers for whatever reason and that create a monstrosity that works (using some low code solution). It’s ugly and buggy but gets a job done. This works for as long as they don’t hit a technical limitation then call devs like myself in to replace it. It was a great phase 1 and made money. Th…
Yes, no-code solutions almost always become ugly, buggy, monstrosities, and there are technical limits that mean it needs wholesale replacement, but pragmatically I too have seen them getting jobs done. I'd also wager it will not cost more to rewrite it, especially if you deeply discount the non-developer resources that were used to create it (often salaried employees' time, and even then those individuals likely cam…
Not everything is a large ugly, buggy monstrosity that needs to be rewritten into "real software". There are may business processes served quite well by excel which might be enhanced with a low code solution like this and could stay that way for over a decade.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#20Low Code is the modern version of "Write Once run Anywhere" It is pipe dream that will cost companies millions in Vendor Lockin, rewrites, and all of the other problems that come with non-developers "developing" See the nightmare that is Excel Workbooks, the fact they are modeling FX on Excel Function is a horror I do not even want to think about
The relevant question, I think, is extensibility. If the low-code solution, upon hitting a wall, can be extended instead of rewritten, it's going to be a great solution for small companies to prove out ideas without the cost of general-purpose developers and custom software stacks built from general-purpose software.
If any company can solve the extensibility question, I think Microsoft has a better-than-average shot at it.