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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

#221

Post by liveinspain »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #193
liveinspain wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I've just built out an internal CRM for my travel company using Airtable+StackerHQ.com and for my business, it's hands down better than anything commercially available... because it covers all the nuance of our individual situation. 2 months ago, I was a bit down on no-code, but the experience on building on Stacker was good enough to change my mind. Softr.io is also getting there, too.

Thanks for your comment, I just looked at AirTable and StackerHQ. A quick question: is there a way to export your data to standard file formats, just in case you wanted to move off the platform to other vendors or write everything yourself? I think that getting started quickly on a system that you will likely never have to leave makes a lot of sense, but it is good to have an exit strategy. Like with Heroku: keep run…

Yes, Airtable is exportable. That's part of the reason I chose this solution. I'm big on redundancy.

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

#222

Post by liveinspain »

lwhi wrote: post #138
liveinspain wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I've just built out an internal CRM for my travel company using Airtable+StackerHQ.com and for my business, it's hands down better than anything commercially available... because it covers all the nuance of our individual situation. 2 months ago, I was a bit down on no-code, but the experience on building on Stacker was good enough to change my mind. Softr.io is also getting there, too.

> because it covers all the nuance of our individual situation. Without wanting to downplay your achievement, I've worked for organisations that did the same thing with MS Access back in the early oughts. The 'custom' application grew with the organisation. Features were bolted on over the years inelegantly. It was impossible to integrate easily with other systems. The quirks of the system were known by long time emp…

I understand your point. The reality is that no solution will ever be perfect, be it an off the shelf SaaS or my homebrew no-code build.

There are a few things here which help us;

- Airtable has all the integrations a human being could ever need. Our stack is Airtable + Stripe + Zapier + Wordpress + ActiveCampaign.

- General awareness of the concept of UX. You need a product owner who fiercely defends the product. And .. you need a company culture which treats employee satisfaction as something that actually matters. I know that these things not common.

- I have no viable alternative. SaaS companies in the tour & activity space struggle to make money and struggle to invest in their product.

- A community of contractors. Airtable has a large community of able freelancers and contractors who can come help us out, if needed.

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

#223

Post by RickJWagner »

gregjor wrote: 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…

My thoughts exactly. I remember the hype around 4GLs and CASE.

IMHO, it's the test/validation discipline that makes the difference. No matter how easy the tooling, the 'test before production' mentality is the barrier that proves necessary to overcome.

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

#224

Post by earleybird »

jacquesm wrote: post #123
gregjor wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Tools like that have been around since the ‘70s. They have their uses — building forms and reports point-and-click. But the limited scope and inevitable low ceiling of capabilities means they did not spell the end of programmers. Instead they expand the market because the non-programmers will need help when they outgrow their tools, or even sooner when they can’t figure out a JOIN or GROUP BY or how to handle r…

No, this is a lot better than what was sold during the 70's, 80's and up to the mid 2000's. I'm aware of all of those developments, was regularly pitched about them and have evaluated the bulk of the solutions on offer, from Mimer, Mapper and other mainframe based solutions to the various offerings on PCs and UNIX platforms. Those are not to be compared to the three I mentioned above. Agreed on the fact that these le…

Mapper - I've still got the t-shirt somewhere :-)

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

#225

Post by earleybird »

scsilver wrote: post #208
duped wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compilers may get better but business logic rarely gets simpler and specs rarely more refined

Sure, but if you dont have to translate requirements and a end user can build their own solution, you save alot of overhead.

Many end users don't have the vocabulary in their own business language to formulate their requirements. How will a solution magically appear?

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

#226

Post by routerl »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #74
routerl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agreed. A former employer once decided to empower non-technical users to design their own integrations using zapier. It was fine until someone wrote an action that changed a cell on a spreadsheet, which triggered another action that, itself, triggered the original action. A more software literate user would likely have noticed the infinite loop. That was not a fun week. And anyway, this specific case was all to…

Agreed - I mean I grew up on a couple of Sinclair's. You literally started in a command line. You needed to load up the distracting game from tape. Magazines had print outs to type in (that was less cool but at least you had he point) Damn I need to start those coding clubs with my kids ... it's like growing up in a chefs house who just orders take out cos he is too tired after a days work. poor kids

Even the tired chef can still raise their kids with a healthy respect for food and cooking. By all means, order takeout every night if you can afford it, but take that as an opportunity for thoughtful critique: "maybe this meal was too salty because it was counterbalancing the sweetness of the sauce, or maybe the meat was rank and so it was oversalted".

Don't beat yourself up :)

Just be thoughtful and expressive with your kids, and they'll find their own way around software. Just like you did ;)

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

#227

Post by aryehof »

gregjor wrote: 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…

> Translating requirements into code is the hard part

I so agree. However, I don’t think that a majority of the new generation of developers would.

Technologies, platforms, frameworks, user and system interfaces, and how to best modify persistent data is what many would say is the hard part. With this viewpoint, the pursuit of automation into no-code tools is much more understandable in my opinion.

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

#228

Post by alxlaz »

danybittel wrote: post #130
alxlaz wrote: post #36

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.)

That is weird argument, just because it didn't happen then, it doesn't happen now? Plenty of tech did not happen the first time around. VR, mobile TV, Electric Cars, Machine Learning, comes to mind.

> That is weird argument, just because it didn't happen then, it doesn't happen now?

If you try to do it the exact same way, without even bothering to look at what happened before, let alone learn any lessons from it, then no, it won't happen now, either.

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

#229

Post by MathYouF »

qualudeheart wrote: post #165
MathYouF wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

GPT-3 does only thing, predict the next character based on the previous n characters.

The nuance of the context (previous n characters) and the quality of the prediction(s) (following character, a function of gpt-3 you can repeat by just concatenating its last prediction to the previous n characters) is what has significantly improved.

It has now learned on a significant amount of the writing available on the internet. Which includes guides on writing code, stack overflow, and github repos.

So one is able to write something that looks like a python comment

// This function adds two numbers

And the following n character predictions of gpt-3 will with some unreliability spit out the python code for that function as its predictions

def add(x, y): return x+y

This has been shown to work with simple descriptions of pages, with it returning html with css embedded that matches that description.

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

#230

Post by lwhi »

ozim wrote: post #211
lwhi wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Translating requirements into code - is about language and tools as you have to learn the language, as you noted "few people wanted to learn to use those". I'd actually argue differently. It's more about a design process that requires domain knowledge, technical knowledge and the ability to assess a problem contextually. Coding is only part of this process.

Keep in mind low code tools should ideally be used by domain expert directly as I wrote in my post.

Designing a software product also requires (software design) domain expertise.
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