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Low-Code and the Democratization of Programming

oreilly.com

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Re: Low-Code and the Democratization of Programming

#71

Post by Chris2048 »

rvense wrote: post #61
wiseowise wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make it no-code or low-code. It's just a high level programming language that's more efficient at solving one problem than another.

You're really just arguing about the definition of the word "code".

arguably, higher level language use higher level general code features, where-as no/lo-code solutions are using specialised/domain features.

This would make them similar to a framework like chef/ansible/puppet that requires a large library of "knowledge" on how to do various things (all written in traditional low/high-level general code).

Re: Low-Code and the Democratization of Programming

#72

Post by forinti »

bilalq wrote: post #21

I've seen "low code" and "no code" solutions running at huge enterprises and it always inevitably ends up resembling a house of cards. Proponents often cite how much quicker they can ship things and how it lets users define and automate their own workflows without waiting for engineers. The reality is that these time savings come by cutting corners from the development cycle. Because you're not doing "code", the code…

It turns into a house of cards even when professionals use it.

Oracle Apex is a great tool for simple CRUD and reporting apps. But as systems grow big, you start to have complex flows, integrations with other tools (for file conversion, image manipulations, etc). and it becomes a big mess.

Re: Low-Code and the Democratization of Programming

#73

Post by kinj28 »

foxbee wrote: post #70

The problem with many low-code platforms is three fold: - many over-promise and under deliver. Low code platforms are great for simple CRUD apps, defined automations, etc. - some, like Bubble, are anti-code to their own detriment - code is good, your platform was created with code - only a few, like Budibase [1], Tooljet [2], n8n [3] are open source. I cannot understand how users are willing to bet their data and pro…

Looks like you are associated with Budibase from your previous submissions & ideally you should have disclosed it to let others reading your comment understand your bias

Re: Low-Code and the Democratization of Programming

#74

Post by snarfy »

revskill wrote: post #29

What if i tell you, code is the "no code" tool itself. Why ? You of course could run any code with assembly or machine language, but now we have high level programming languages, it's because we want "low-code", or "low machine-code". The point is we want to map business problems/solutions into machine, code is just a "no code" tool which allows u to do that.

Yep, the 'no code' idea is as old as COBOL, because it is COBOL.

Re: Low-Code and the Democratization of Programming

#75

Post by simonh »

lysecret wrote: post #62
blunte wrote: post #37

The challenge of programming is not really about writing in a programming language - it's about thinking, problem solving, and organization. What low/no-code does is remove the setup and tooling barrier. I believe it's this barrier which scares most people away from programming. After all, even as an experienced software developer, I find some languages more intimidating because of the many tooling choices and setup…

Exactly that. Also in my expereince as a Data Science consultant was that by far the best approach was to just rebuild what they attempted in excel in python. Also now that I think of it Excel is the original low code solution haha

This came up in the thread on Bank Python (last week?). These systems have frameworks for implementing Directed Acyclic Graphs of functions in Python to simplify migrating Excel workflows into peer reviewed, version controlled code.

Re: Low-Code and the Democratization of Programming

#76

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

A bad low-code experience is being forced to manipulate endless drop-down menus and checkboxes when it’d be 10x faster to just write a SQL query. For example, Salesforce. Ideally you should be able to drop down a level in any such tool (e.g., Excel to VBA, Python to C).

Re: Low-Code and the Democratization of Programming

#78

Post by beanjuiceII »

bilalq wrote: post #21

I've seen "low code" and "no code" solutions running at huge enterprises and it always inevitably ends up resembling a house of cards. Proponents often cite how much quicker they can ship things and how it lets users define and automate their own workflows without waiting for engineers. The reality is that these time savings come by cutting corners from the development cycle. Because you're not doing "code", the code…

I been at one very large enterprise for the last 15 years; the amount of low/no code apps I've been through is...well you know when neo is in the matrix, he is shown the previous matrix versions by the architect? its that feeling, but in this case there is no version of reality where there is a win. The biggest problem I see even if this were to work, is that you don't really want non-developers using these tools. Who's to blame when the low/no code user makes a booboo ? These people typically don't want this burden, so I've always seen it pushed back to a developer...and the requests are usually beyond the scope of the low/no code tool such that it eventually always becomes a worse burden for devs than code

Re: Low-Code and the Democratization of Programming

#79

Post by chazu »

JamesAdir wrote: post #54

Am I the only one here who remembers MS Access? It was a great no-code/low code product that created silos of information in many organizations and it was a real PITA to transfer it to other technologies. The advantage in MS Access was that it was part of the MS ecosystem and used VBA which is well documented. What will happen when you'll want to transfer something you've made in today no-code solutions to another pl…

Newer solutions which use abstraction layers like postgREST will hopefully result in easier migration down the road - but I doubt most products/projects use such a thing.

Re: Low-Code and the Democratization of Programming

#80

Post by ethbr0 »

> Extending fundamental software development practices like version control, automated testing, and continuous deployment to other low-code and no-code tools sounds like a job for programmers, and one that’s still on the to-do list.

This, so much this!

The amount of wilfull low-code ignorance of standard, 20-year+ old best practices for producing reliable software is mind-boggling.

Integrate with standard version control. Have a textual representation of your source. Integrate with standard CI/CD.

No, you are not a special snowflake. And no, no one wants to have to use your cloud SaaS build tools vs something they can own, integrate, and run themselves.

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