Was this post removed from the frontpage because of it's title starting with a number?? Can’t we change the title?
80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools
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Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, but there is a kernel of truth here, which is making programming more accessible by means of higher level constructs that are easy to use while also being less general. Excel is a great example, in that it opened up the world of macros and programming to a huge population. Yes, you still need technical skills and programming skills, but the entry bar is lowered in exchange for playing in a tighter sandbox. I…
The entry bar got lowered back in the 80s with cheap home computers running BASIC. Lots of us learned on low-end low barrier to entry systems like that. There’s no gate keeping. Anyone who wants to learn programming has a wealth of tools and languages and resources to choose from, for free. This is a replay of previous attempts to pretend to democratize programming and reduce the dependence on rare and expensive prog…
Yeah, those basic computers were fun, but having an entry level computer you could write basic programs on wasn't going to help you automate business processes, whereas writing an office macro would. That's kindof the point - to embed the functionality with the data and existing applications, so you can think of these "low code" interfaces built into online apps as the cloud version of those old MS visual basic macros. Except some of these added various drag and drop functionality to graphically add some logic, lowering the bar a bit further.
Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools
#83Having worked with Mendix and Apex (both low-code tools) for over a year: I wasn't convinced.
Anytime you're trying to color outside the tool's predefined lines you'll be hurting and spending ridiculous amounts of time.
But stay within their lines and you'll be fine.
Because of this I don't see any real use-case for it in the B2C market. That in itself makes the 80% mentioned in the article hard to achieve.
In B2B there are more opportunities for low-code tools, but there too I don't see it working everywhere. Simply put; if you build something from scratch it's going to be a lot better than anything built with a low-code tool and you can easily grab market share by providing a better offering than your competitors. Low-code tools are not the means to out-compete the market.
If you do succeed in the B2B market with a low-code tool offering; likely you'll be building some very customized setup that required a huge investment to get to that point. I'd not be surprised it'll be just as unwieldy and difficult to change as most other software is. And for fixing big issues with your app (performance, complex bugs) you'll be requiring devs who worked and understand all those abstraction layers. Those devs will be extremely rare and hard to come by. I was one; but I am not anymore. It's just not fun to develop in them compared to normal coding; you feel constrained and fixing issues all the time that shouldn't exist in the first place.
However if you consider the huge set of internal tools lots of companies develop and use; yes there indeed is a big market for low-code. Basically use cases that were run in excel are generally great candidates for these tools. And that's a lot of use cases. Not the big money-makers though.
There's a reason Frontpage and Dreamweaver never made it; this won't happen to low-code tools. They have their place, but know their limitations.
Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools
#84That title is painful ("could be" = meaningless, and 80%? why not 85?), but the thread is surprisingly good, and who doesn't love an old "this comes up every decade" smackdown. Visual programming anyone?
Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools
#85Was this post removed from the frontpage because of it's title starting with a number?? Can’t we change the title?
It set off the flamewar detector. The thread is better than that, though, so I've turned that off. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27511358
Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools
#86I don’t even know of good standards-compliant WYSIWYGs for HTML besides maybe(?) Webflow these days, and that's proprietary. I don’t know how you’d do low-code anything today in any meaningful sense.
Of all the people who care about automation, if there were good, viable low-code options, developers themselves would want to use them!
Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools
#87That title is painful ("could be" = meaningless, and 80%? why not 85?), but the thread is surprisingly good, and who doesn't love an old "this comes up every decade" smackdown. Visual programming anyone?
It really does come up every decade:
https://modeling-languages.com/last-one-code-generator-basic...
Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools
#88Something I've realized about programming as a profession is that people hire developers to build even stuff that's mostly cookie-cutter, because nothing is ever totally cookie-cutter. Every CRUD app has a few weird edge-cases that aren't covered by the framework (or low-code tool), and require you to bail out and code around it.
Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools
#89There is a place for low code like system administration or application configuration. Eventually all end user software will hit boundary conditions because it’s impossible to test for all permutations the moment you go beyond the simplest applications.
Re: 80% of tech could be built outside IT by 2024, thanks to low-code tools
#90This 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…
I feel like it didn't really fail because of the technical aspect, but rather a business one.
Once such a tool is successful, there will be lock-in and/or slightly incompatible competitors. You, as a user, become dependent on single company, which is almost always abused in the end. Both factors are driven by the complexity of the systems that were built with the tool (the complexity hides in the tool, which made these systems easy to write in the first place).
A similar thing IMHO happened to Unix, Common Lisp.. the only way to avoid the fate is to establish and maintain a common standard, but that means yielding the power (it's not particularly appealing business model) and is a subject to the tragedy of the commons, and embrace/extend/extinguish.