80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools • Hacker News Board

Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools

#31

Post by radicalbyte » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

bunsenhoneydew wrote: post #23

When I first started building applications back in the 90’s, I did it using the only thing I could get my hands on at the time, Access 95. Many of these low-code tools just feel like a web version of that. Form builders, drag and drop, define data types, hook up queries to forms and fields to text boxes and grids. I guess I just got old enough to see the approach come full circle.

That was an explicit design goal of one I worked on a number of years ago.

These tools have their place: they allow smart technical people to be highly productive whilst abstracting a lot of the complexity away.

Low-code tools fill a gap, they're the PHP / Rails / Python for Line-Of-Business / data-driven apps. They allow you to achieve in days what would take weeks in those languages and months in C++.

Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools

#32

Post by travisjungroth » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

My two predictions:

1. A higher level of abstraction will come along that ends up getting used much more than the current most popular level of abstraction.

2. The same people and same type of people that worked in the old lower abstraction layer will work in the new higher one.

This has happened a bunch of times with computers already. I see no reason that this time point 1 will happen but point 2 won't. And, the article really didn't convince me.

Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools

#33

Post by sabas123 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

Did they make up this claim or is this grounded in anything? If so I would love to see a paper on this because this seems like an outrageous claim to me.

Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools

#34

Post by mellosouls » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

The underlying press release [1] uses - as suspected - Gartner's beloved phrasing like "Citizen Developers" aimed at gullible managers who they sell this nonsense to with the wording's warm, fuzzy, implications of saving cash spent on those pesky overpaid techies.

Note that there are no "Citizen Consultants", "Citizen Managers", or "Citizen Snake-oil Salesmen" (where surely far more money could be saved at far less loss to business functionality) mentioned in their ridiculous marketing blogs.

[1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-06-1...

Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools

#35

Post by Closi » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #13

100% this won’t happen, and certainly not by 2024. By 2024, enterprises won’t even have them on their radar.

They already do, most ERPs or CRMs are partly made/customised from some sort of version of lowcode soup (eg dynamics, salesforce).

Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools

#36

Post by alxlaz » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

You could replace every occurrence of 1991 in this article with 2021, and every occurrence of 2024 with 1994, and it would read exactly like a piece from 1991, and have just as much substance, too.

(Spoiler alert: nope, it didn't happen in 1994, either.)

Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools

#37

Post by thom » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

There seems to be a wave of no code hype, much of it coming from the VC community, and I’m baffled as to what has happened to convince people it’s going to work this time. Is there some breakthrough tool I’m not aware of? Or is it just like this article, a bunch of pitch decks saying “if we can take just 80% of the tech market we’ll be zillionaires”?

Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools

#38

Post by silvestrov » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

This is a song we've heard before: the 4th generation programming languages [1]. They failed completely.

Programming is no more about "the codes" than writing novels is about spelling.

The difficulty in writing novels is being able to tell a story well (just like some people a good at telling jokes, others not). It is not about how good you are at spelling words. Most winners of spelling bee competitions never become good authors.

You can't make most people into being good authors by handing them a tape recorder.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...

Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools

#39

Post by carlmr » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

I had a university professor with the same near term horizon stating this in 2006. If it wasn't a mandatory class I would have dropped it right then

Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools

#40

Post by Maultasche » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

In my experience with no-code tooling in the past, it works great as long as you stick to the narrow use cases it was designed for and are satisfied with that.

As soon as you want to do anything advanced that the no code tooling doesn't already handle, it gets ugly and complex, and you have to bring in specialists who know how to modify the system or work around it, and that requires coding and IT specialists.

It always happens that people want the application go beyond what the no-code tooling was designed to handle and behave in some particular way that requires advanced functionality and coding. Not once have I ever seen it go any other way. Organizations are attracted by the simplicity and speed of no-code development, but they always want it to something that goes beyond that tooling.

Does that mean that no-code tooling is useless? No. Just expect that it is limiting and you will likely require coding specialists to supplement the things that can be done without code.