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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

#162

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…

this!

exactly- even though I have read many interesting other reasons why this will not work out.

programming is about modeling and formulating a problem so that a machine "understands" it and can execute it.

Not so many people can and want to do it well...

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

#165
post #37

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”?

I believe GPT-3 being able to convert descriptions of functions or designs into semi-functional code is what has some excited. It's certainly the strongest argument and reason to hope it could be different this time that I know of. I'm skeptical but come from a generative AI background so I wouldn't underestimate it will be able to do things previously unaccomplished by making templates in the past.

How does GPT-3 differ from a gui based no code tool?

I’ve tried to find that out but dunno. Do you have an idea?

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

#166
Is there some technological advancement that has created this most recent low code hype?

I’m certain that there have existed companies who didn’t want to pay programmers for exactly as long as there have existed paid programmers; what’s unique about right now?

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

#167
post #11

Somebody’s still going to have to maintain no-code apps. If they do as much as current apps, they’ll be just as complicated as current tech. Seems like that maintenance role will be left to people with system design and debugging skills—i.e. software engineers.

Software engineers don't have a monopoly on system design and debugging skills, not by a long shot.

well if you design IT systems and debug them, you have what skillset?

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

#168

It's been around 8 years since this happened: I started learning R and a Gartner consultant told me I was wasting my time because, "as Gartner puts it", the future of data science is citizen data scientists with very little coding skills because the tools and frameworks will do all the heavy lifting. I ignored him because I liked the language anyway. I guess every now and then someone will try to sell a tool to "buil…

Generally I share your skepticism, but a lot of BI tools are low-/no-code. Generally you can't build a SaaS platform on them any more than you can build it on Excel.

I deal with Microsoft’s PowerBI and it is true that somewhat normal people can do a lot but the generated result ends up extremely inefficient and we usually end up getting sql experts in to manually write the queries anyway because it costs an obscene amount for the resources to run these auto generated reports.

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

#169
post #47

This idea gets recycled every generation. I can’t count how many “low code” no-programming-skills-required tools I’ve seen come and go in the last four decades. Both COBOL and SQL got presented in these terms. I’ve yet to see a “non-technical manager” write a non-trivial SQL query, much less know how to confirm they got the correct results. The various 4GL tools that proliferated in the 90s led to complex amateur spa…

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 occasio…

There is an assumption that code syntax is the difficult part about building applications.

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

#170
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 occasio…

There is an assumption that code syntax is the difficult part about building applications.

For many people this is true.
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