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Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

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Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#101

Post by fartcannon »

pkilgore wrote: post #70
fartcannon wrote: post #67

This is the kind of article that I believe would benefit from authorship identification/stylometry. I would like to know how much of the conversation occurring in this comment section is real, and how much of it is part of the recently revealed work that Microsoft has being doing in swaying opinion on hacker news. Wouldn't that be an interesting tool for press releases like this?

> recently revealed work that Microsoft has being doing in swaying opinion on hacker news I'd love a link. Unfortunately "microsoft and hacker " get's swallowed up in search results by recent attack news.

https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-corp-msft-q1-201...

"In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress..."

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#102

Post by fartcannon »

iudqnolq wrote: post #72
fartcannon wrote: post #67

This is the kind of article that I believe would benefit from authorship identification/stylometry. I would like to know how much of the conversation occurring in this comment section is real, and how much of it is part of the recently revealed work that Microsoft has being doing in swaying opinion on hacker news. Wouldn't that be an interesting tool for press releases like this?

> it is part of the recently revealed work that Microsoft has being doing in swaying opinion on hacker news. I'm deeply sceptical this is real because the risk would be high and the reward miniscule. Source?

https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-corp-msft-q1-201...

"In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress..."

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#103

Post by filoeleven »

enraged_camel wrote: post #66
ajcp wrote: post #27

I think this article misses the mark of the actual move Microsoft is making here, but I think MSFT also gets their own messaging wrong. Microsoft's "Low-Code" strategy is not RPA, nor is it enabling the development of enterprise applications with "Low Code" development tools. RPA is already a legacy solution in it's current form, and increasingly only useful with regards to mainframe emulators and applications that d…

I've recently been dipping my toes in the RPA space (with Kofax RPA) and what you wrote validates my first impressions. The partner firm I'm working with insists that they have been seeing "insane and growing" demand for RPA solutions, which I kind of find hard to believe.

RPA is a financial services buzzword right now. I’ve worked on an RPA library that manipulates a web application…which the company already provided full API access to.

The RPA library requires those working with it to examine the page HTML in order to hook into it, since it’s highly dynamic: you have to see what form fields are available and their internal IDs in order to interact with them. Meanwhile, the API layer gives access to all the same CRUD, and maybe with better documentation (I have not seen it).

If you don’t have a human user, just use the APIs! That’s what they are there for!

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#104

Post by ajcp »

filoeleven wrote: post #103
enraged_camel wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've recently been dipping my toes in the RPA space (with Kofax RPA) and what you wrote validates my first impressions. The partner firm I'm working with insists that they have been seeing "insane and growing" demand for RPA solutions, which I kind of find hard to believe.

RPA is a financial services buzzword right now. I’ve worked on an RPA library that manipulates a web application…which the company already provided full API access to. The RPA library requires those working with it to examine the page HTML in order to hook into it, since it’s highly dynamic: you have to see what form fields are available and their internal IDs in order to interact with them. Meanwhile, the API layer…

Stories like this make me sad :(

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#105

Post by Havoc »

ajcp wrote: post #27

I think this article misses the mark of the actual move Microsoft is making here, but I think MSFT also gets their own messaging wrong. Microsoft's "Low-Code" strategy is not RPA, nor is it enabling the development of enterprise applications with "Low Code" development tools. RPA is already a legacy solution in it's current form, and increasingly only useful with regards to mainframe emulators and applications that d…

> RPA is already a legacy solution in it's current form

Not sure about legacy. Modern glorified ducktape to make legacy stuff play nice is more like it imo

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#106

Post by F_J_H »

syshum wrote: post #9
dnndev wrote: post #6

This 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...

Yes this happens...sometimes. And, other times, (as reflected in comments ITT), there are many cases where a low-code solution built by a non-dev have brought huge benefit. (I've seen this myself - see below - MS Access apps that saved hours and hours of work, but which IT had not time to look at.) I've also seen the sentiment in your comment lead to an outright ban by IT dept. of all low-code tools, for no other reason than the "slippery slope fallacy" that "if we allow this, we could potentially have a big mess to sort out one day". And in doing so, summarily kill a ton of innovation and productivity.

One anecdote I remember - a regulatory change created a major issue for a billing department. They went to IT to get their help to address it, and were told "sorry, no time to even talk to you right now. Come back in six months. Actually, make that 8 months." So, a tech. savvy person in the billing dept. built something in MS Access that solved the problem. They were thrilled. When IT heard about it, they tried to get the guy fired. Billing Dept. manager had to go to bat to make sure that didn't happen.

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#107

Post by ajcp »

trixie_ wrote: post #94

We really need a revolution in the low code space. The amount of code we write - database, backend, api, frontend, etc.. to do the simplest CRUD task, makes me feel like compared to future programmers we're all cavemen rubbing two sticks together.

Perhaps, but our StickOps team is actually engaged since we moved to Sticks as a Service and implemented our MicroRubbing architecture!

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#108

Post by brushfoot »

ajcp wrote: post #27

I think this article misses the mark of the actual move Microsoft is making here, but I think MSFT also gets their own messaging wrong. Microsoft's "Low-Code" strategy is not RPA, nor is it enabling the development of enterprise applications with "Low Code" development tools. RPA is already a legacy solution in it's current form, and increasingly only useful with regards to mainframe emulators and applications that d…

As a fellow SWE who's been in the RPA space for a few years now, I'll offer an alternative perspective.

Traditional RPA is here to stay, and only getting bigger. By "traditional" I mean screen-scraping and click bots. It's not only for legacy apps. It also addresses two development pain points that will never go away: (1) complexity and (2) missing features.

On (1), I've worked with companies whose APIs are so convoluted and poorly supported, and distributing your client in their ecosystem is so complex, that I've thrown up my hands and gone, "Forget it, I'll implement this with a service account." An RPA process logs into the front end, clicks around, scrapes some data, outputs it to the next process in my pipeline, and it's done. I've written processes like this that have been running for years with basically no maintenance due to stable-enough UIs. UI changes are still a risk, but if you have a mature UI, it's a great, simple alternative to a more complex process.

Regarding (2), APIs don't always expose all the features of the UI, and sometimes vendors won't, or can't, add them in a given budget or time frame. I worked with a partner whose API had essentially one read-only endpoint. Their product was fantastic and they had other integration methods; they just hadn't prioritized API development, which they could afford to do because they delivered so well in their niche otherwise. We had to get creative in how we would pull the data.

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#109

Post by filoeleven »

I searched the comments for some of the big-name RPA “solutions” I’ve had to work with before, and none of them show up at all (Blue Prism, mentioned in the article, was one of them). Not surprising, since ALL of their documentation on how to use the damn things or even how they work on a technical level is paywalled.

As someone who’s had to support them for an org’s clients in the past, that lack of access is extremely frustrating. How can I develop a library that lets clients access the web app through RPA if the vendors refuse to tell me how to make things accessible to them? Waste all around. Good riddance. Not that I’m any more confident about Microsoft’s offering here.

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#110

Post by ajcp »

fartcannon wrote: post #101
pkilgore wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> recently revealed work that Microsoft has being doing in swaying opinion on hacker news I'd love a link. Unfortunately "microsoft and hacker " get's swallowed up in search results by recent attack news.

https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-corp-msft-q1-201... "In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress..."

Recently? This article is over 2.5 years old...
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