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Will low and no code tools ever truly disrupt tech development?

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11–20 of 208 posts

Re: Will low and no code tools ever truly disrupt tech development?

#11

My main issue with low-code/no-code is that it attempts to solve the complexity problem, without understanding what "complexity" is. Code is perceived to be complex, but when you look deeply into what people mean when they say that, it's almost entirely a social perception. They see these weird characters and it looks like gibberish and they assume that the people who understand this gibberish are somehow on another…

[deleted]

Re: Will low and no code tools ever truly disrupt tech development?

#12
I do a fair amount of pre-seed and angel investing and I've seen a _massive_ increase in the number of very early businesses that have a "product" that they've been able to build with no/low code tools. It gives non-tech founders a set of options they've never had before, in my experience.

That obviously isn't viable for all early businesses and even the ones it is viable for eventually need to hire engineering teams to build their products, but I love how much more accessible these tools have made shipping something basic.

Re: Will low and no code tools ever truly disrupt tech development?

#13

My main issue with low-code/no-code is that it attempts to solve the complexity problem, without understanding what "complexity" is. Code is perceived to be complex, but when you look deeply into what people mean when they say that, it's almost entirely a social perception. They see these weird characters and it looks like gibberish and they assume that the people who understand this gibberish are somehow on another…

Complexity is definitely the problem. I think the main problem with most LC/NC solutions is that they offer TOO MUCH customizability. I think there will be more in roads when it becomes a little more opinionated. People always think they want all these features and weird use cases but they forget about any kind of 80/20 or 90/10 rules.

Re: Will low and no code tools ever truly disrupt tech development?

#14
No.

But we will continue to see domain-specific tooling that require less "coding". There are plenty of "no/low code" CRUD app builders, tools that manipulate components on a canvas to create web pages, even tools to integrate different systems together. But the second you need to go off the trail, you've now got a big problem: you're constrained to doing things that don't break the no/low code environment, and that's a lot harder than rolling your own components and customizations.

Anything interesting enough to "disrupt" tech development will, almost by definition, not be possible in a no/low code environment.

Re: Will low and no code tools ever truly disrupt tech development?

#15
post #2

I've seen a lot more interest for this kind of tool in enterprise environments recently. Never seen this kind of interest before. I'm curious on how this is going to pan out.

I was involved with a project to bring these low-code / no-code tools into a financial company. I think its almost all driven out of the idea that software developers are expensive and development takes a long time. The "Dream" is that the business analyst or financial analyst or whomever automates their own job away, or that they write the business process (While being paid half as much!). Of course the issue is that they can't easily do this while they are also doing their own job, mistakes are made and they need "real" software developers to come in, it takes just as long or longer, etc.

Re: Will low and no code tools ever truly disrupt tech development?

#16
post #2

I've seen a lot more interest for this kind of tool in enterprise environments recently. Never seen this kind of interest before. I'm curious on how this is going to pan out.

I think the potential value for niche line of business apps. The kinds of things that used to be drive by a spreadsheet can now be driven by a spreadsheet-driven mobile app with better defined workflow. I think this won't really displace much, if any, real development work. It will open up a lot of smaller tasks to automation. The kind of things that weren't valuable enough to warrant an expensive development project.

Re: Will low and no code tools ever truly disrupt tech development?

#18
My hope is that no code / low code disrupts the waiting for developers to have time to do stupid tedious stuff that changes randomly. My perception is the tech industry recruits a ton of people into it that aren’t particularly interested or suited to try to triage the amount of simplistic logical manipulation of data and processes that doesn’t require going through a full development cycle. By offloading some portion of that back to end users you can give them an inflection point to work without danger while keeping engineers focused on the complex parts of the system - and hopefully hire less people into tech teams who aren’t engineers.

Re: Will low and no code tools ever truly disrupt tech development?

#19

My main issue with low-code/no-code is that it attempts to solve the complexity problem, without understanding what "complexity" is. Code is perceived to be complex, but when you look deeply into what people mean when they say that, it's almost entirely a social perception. They see these weird characters and it looks like gibberish and they assume that the people who understand this gibberish are somehow on another…

The problem is difficulty in developing the business requirement. I have to plead with Product owners to give me more than a few sentences about what it is they want to built. It makes no difference what the tool we use to express requirements is if we cannot have a firm grasp of the requirements themself.

Re: Will low and no code tools ever truly disrupt tech development?

#20
As someone who got their start in tech with a low-code environment (ServiceNow reporting) I have found the true value of low code is the ability for business/ops teams to create tools that serve their needs without waiting on a team of "real" developers to make time for them.

One of the biggest benefits is the sense of excitement this creates for these users as they are able to add the logic of programming into a process that was formerly a manual one. When they do reach their "edge" around low-code, they can then engage development teams with better knowledge about the system and a clearer vision for what they need.

As other comments have said, low-code will always have trouble solving special cases due to their very nature of being simple and interchangeable. However, empowering others to solve these low hanging fruit problems liberates the develops from a backlog full of basic functionality and allows them to focus on the big problems that will require more robust tooling and design.

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