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

I've looked at a whole bunch of low code tools in the last two years and my opinion has shifted from high grade bullshit sold by the clueless to the even more clueless ('Now: coding for managers') to where I believe that the current crop of low code/no code platforms has something real to offer and has staying power for some use cases.

Specifically: lots of forms based processing backed by relational DBs with occasional excursions importing/exporting data to and from other systems where the flexibility outweighs any kind of performance and integration issues.

Have a look at: Mendix, Betty Blocks, Outsystems. Each of these has something to offer the others do not, and all of them help non programmers or beginner programmers to roll out working applications for themselves and their peers.

This is known as shadow IT. And it is a risk for any big corporation.

Are you going to leave to "users" to implement GDPR and other regulatory compliance? No, that would be too risky.

"low-code tools" seems misleading.

On the other hand, I agree that if you think that data-scientists are not tech people. There is going to be a big increase on non-tech people (data-scientists) working in IT. But this is more a definition problem that any fundamental change.

> I'm the co-founder of Budibase, an open source low code platform, and 70% of our signups 30,000) are from IT.

I'm curious, what makes up the other 30%?

I spent half of last year working on a project built using a low-code tool that will remain nameless. The company that produces it had recently raised money at a valuation in the 9 figures if memory serves me.

The project took something like 5x longer to complete than it should have. We spent almost the entire time working against the tool to try to figure out how to do pretty basic styling and/or logic.

We discussed at some length during the project what use cases the tool actually would require less work to implement. There were a few, but they were essentially just the exact workflows which had been implemented in their examples and/or were obviously easy to do given what tools you got from the toolchain.

Edit: Just checked. The funding was at a 10 figure valuation actually (more than a billion). It's hard to believe.

If someone can build a low/no-code product, then the barrier to entry is so astonishingly low and there will be a ton of competition for that product. Another consideration is that these low/no-code products almost always cost money.

So not only will the market be flooded with clones, rent-seeking from the provider will eat into margins.

Much like the cloud is someone else's computer; SaaS is someone else's programmer.