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Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

economist.com

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Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#121

Post by kthejoker2 »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #96
analog31 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom taught programming in the 80s, and the first thing she told students was: "Computers are stupid. They only do exactly what you tell them to do." People have to get over the misconception that computers can think. Maybe it was easier in the days of DOS, because merely using a computer required the same precision.

So much of the ML hype is business people wanting something that everyone can operate equally poorly. The fact that so much of ML is inscrutable alchemy and a guessing game is a feature not bug.

But ML (from a pure programming perspective) is just a lot of mathematical functions being strung together, usually as part of high level libraries.

If you truly have good data, approximating a signal from noise is trivial.

It's way less complicated code than, say, your bank's web app and payments system.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#122

Post by kthejoker2 »

streetcat1 wrote: post #28

The author miss the point that coding complexity is exponential, not linear. I.e. a lot of people can understand 10-20 lines of code, less can 100 LOC, less can 1000 LOC, maybe top 10% can understand 10K, 1% - 100K. So no code can work, just that the size limit of the program will be low (10-100 LOC) . However, most program start at low LOC, but ends up with high LOC, where the low code tools breaks. Hence, the low c…

Relevant blog post

https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/norris-numbers.htm...

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#123

Post by kthejoker2 »

ivansavz wrote: post #57

Word meaning tangent: I have never heard the expression "line-of-business employee" before and I'm not quite sure what it means. Is it trying to differentiate from the "IT department" which is a cost centre? Or are they just trying to say "ordinary employees" as in non-technical? Why don't they just use a generic term like "office workers" or something?

Yes, LOB is consultant speak for "non-IT employee" (after reading your comment, I can't tell if it's a badge of pride or shame that this jargon is second nature to me)

It's because (rightly so) IT gets mad when you insinuate they are not part of "the business"

So "line of business" is the compromise to mean "any business unit but IT"

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#124

Post by tonfreed »

I think it low code/no code only gets you so far. I've worked in many places that were driven by an excel spreadsheet.

Hacked together solutions work fine, to a point, that's where us "geek elite" take over, and that's fine in my opinion.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#125

Post by kthejoker2 »

dmitrygr wrote: post #13
kitrose wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t they bad examples? There’s a distinction between an extremely rare occurrence of biological factors like being 7 feet tall in order to succeed, and that of needing a decent education in order to think critically.

Some people just cannot wrap their head around pointers. Some just do not get recursion no matter what. I used to teach CS, and tutor in CS. It is as rare as being 7 feet tall, sadly. And without understanding indirection and recursion, the most you'll ever do is ...well..not much...

This kind of gatekeeping is ... beyond parody.

Have you ever used a no code application?

They never - not even close - mention pointers.

You can create great business apps without ever understanding a pointer.

What's so hard about understanding this?

Not every piece of software is Linux, or an NSA-worthy encryption algorithm, or a bespoke Silcon Valley web forum for that matter.

I don't know how a carburetor works but I can pump my own gas.

I don't have a medical degree but I am still allowed to self-medicate a cold.

I tune out when math PhDs start geeking out, but I can do my taxes.

I am aware of what a pointer is, but my old ship captain-turned-trading desk boss most certainly is not and he wrote several nifty SharePoint workflows to automate invoice approvals and legal reviews.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#126

Post by bitwize »

analog31 wrote: post #91
orev wrote: post #64

One of the main differences I see on the road to learning to code has nothing to do with the tools; it’s the thought process. A major hurdle is trying to get the business people to coherently express what they want. They seem to have a general sense of how something should go, but can’t actually put it down on paper. Or when they do, it looks different than what they imagined (simply because the required logic doesn’…

My mom taught programming in the 80s, and the first thing she told students was: "Computers are stupid. They only do exactly what you tell them to do." People have to get over the misconception that computers can think. Maybe it was easier in the days of DOS, because merely using a computer required the same precision.

Computers do appear to think more and more these days, what with the tracking and targeted ads and so forth. To which your mom might say: Computers still aren't thinking; someone else -- someone at Google or Apple or Microsoft -- told them to do that.

Maybe that would help bring the privacy implications into clearer focus.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#127

Post by ZeroGravitas »

I don't want to make fun of the idea, because more people thinking about software as a tool they can influence is good, however the initial paragraph which says, paraphrased:

Giant corporation had $12 million software problem they had no process for flagging up and fixing properly, until an untrained employeed took it upon themselves to personally sort, seems like the bigger issue.

If that kind of thing can happen, the the user created app can be mismanaged into catastrophe as well from similar root causes.

And wouldn't we all be better off if having decent software tools to complete your tasks was just table stakes in modern corporate life, rather than something to write excitable stories about?

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#128

Post by kthejoker2 »

pasquinelli wrote: post #25
dmitrygr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people just cannot wrap their head around pointers. Some just do not get recursion no matter what. I used to teach CS, and tutor in CS. It is as rare as being 7 feet tall, sadly. And without understanding indirection and recursion, the most you'll ever do is ...well..not much...

i've been homeschooling my daughter through middle school. she's very smart, she's been in the highly capable program since maybe 2nd grade. she honestly surprises me with her ability to reason, but i've yet to hit on a way to get her to understand loops. i've been considering learning an array language with her in the hopes that it would allow her the chance to get interested in programming and excited about its pot…

Definitely recommend MIT's Scratch, it's the closest thing (in terms of "they don't even know they're coding!") to Hypercard out there, tons of games and community examples, my kids make animated movies with it.

There's a board game Robot Turtles based on the Logo version where you provide instructions via a stack of cards to navigate your turtle through a maze.

The game is scored like golf, fewer cards are better, and it includes looping cards.

Definitely designed more for elementary students but it's visual, intuitive, and you (as parent) can "design" the maze.

There are several similar video games (they are simple and cute enough to paper their very dry subject matter, and they are level/puzzle based so easy to dole out in manageable amounts of enthusiasm )

Lightbot

Human Resource Machine

7 Billion Humans

Also my kids and I whiteboarded out and then coded a few of the games from

https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games

It was fun acting as the game designer who wanted this feature or that!

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#129

Post by scandox »

booleandilemma wrote: post #52

A lot of non-programmer office workers I've met aren't capable of writing software. Full stop. They're simply too incompetent. It's an uncomfortable truth. I'm talking about scrum masters who have trouble navigating Jira, business analysts who aren't able to have a written conversation, product owners who struggle to create Outlook calendar invites. Imagine asking these same people to write software rather than just…

A lot of programmers aren't capable of writing software. This is a nothing argument. Lots of office workers are very intelligent people.
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