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

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

#61

Post by fassssst »

I use them to great advantage as an engineering manager. If you have programming skills, you can use these tools to whip stuff up significantly faster than people without programming skills. It’s an organizational super power.

I just replaced an internal web app used for planning with a data visualization tool dashboard that can spit out a spreadsheet for further analysis. Took a week to build something that solves the business problem better than several months of effort put into the web app did. I didn’t have to deal with auth, security and privacy reviews, building a custom UI that people would have to learn, learning data source API’s, or build/deployment.

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

#62

Post by char_star_star »

smt88 wrote: post #25

Yes, absolutely. I know firsthand. Instead of hiring developers to do a 2-month project to build us a suite of admin tools, I built them myself in Retool over the course of a couple of days. For a non-developer, maybe we're still far away from disruption. Excel seems to be the programming platform of choice for most people anyway. But for developers, these things turn you into RoboCop. It's amazing how much I can get…

Thank you for expressing exactly what I’ve felt. In my experience something like Retool lets you spin up an incredible amount of functionality very quickly, and it also does a great job of helping you find the boundary where you should do something elsewhere.

Honestly the hardest part of my work with Retool has been convincing other devs that they should use it for internal use cases. While they’re still waiting on designs to be done in Figma I’ve got multiple users trying out a solution in Retool that I can update in near real-time to see what works best.

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

#64

Post by pxue »

danielvaughn wrote: post #7

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…

Low code allows "less" sunken cost when the inevitable misalignment of requirements happen.

It's same reason why design starts on napkins, then wireframes, and then low def, high def and eventually a fully interactive prototype.

In software we dive into code way to eagerly and way too early in the product process.

Equating no/low code tools to full on dev is impossible. Just as you wouldn't/shouldn't equate a design prototype to napkin scribbles.

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

#66

Post by upupandup »

Joe8Bit wrote: post #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…

Basically this space is deliver multiples on what engineer team would bring at multiple discounts. It's not really a sustainable model because they are constantly viewing it as a cost center even with the productivity no-code tools. So the moment some open source version is released or they see a cheaper solution they will flock to it especially if you allow easy migration. I've had requests from companies who were doing well with the no-code SaaS but felt they were being held hostage/realize they want an internal tool they own because their requireents always devolves past what no-code tool can do.

This might not be an issue for SaaS who already publish their source code but for the vast majority of no-code/low code, it seems to cater to small to medium enterprises who are constantly looking to reduce their cost centers, even after achieving it an optimal setup.

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

#67

Post by sbf501 »

danielvaughn wrote: post #7

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…

Automobile engines are also very complex, but no one talks about no-mechanic cars. In highschool where I grew up, the bottom academic 50% of boys ended up being mechanics of one type or another. At one point in time, being an auto mechanic was an elite, rare profession, and that complexity was encapsulated as something that low-performing academic students could bank on for a career.

I see the exact same thing with code: the complexity is eventually abstracted away until it becomes a vocation that doesn't require a college degree (think mechanical engineer vs mechanic, computer scientist vs programmer).

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

#68

Post by danielvaughn »

aeruder wrote: post #30
danielvaughn wrote: post #7

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…

100%. I worked at a company that really went in hard on Agilent Vee for hardware testing in the early 2000's. Absolutely a thing where a manager saw a "Hello World"-like demo and was so impressed that they went 100% full buy in. Besides the obvious UI issues (like the fact that you couldn't really zoom out, you could just pan around your code), we had a bunch of engineers that still needed to do things like "get the…

I work out of a co-working space. A few months ago I walked past some people fidgeting with Zapier. Some (former) employee had built this crazy complex system of integrations, with connections going back and forth everywhere. It looked very much like this diagram, and I couldn't help but laugh, because it's the same kind of problem that coders face on a daily basis.

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

#69

Post by DAVer98 »

nscalf wrote: post #43

For everyone saying no, this is exactly what Shopify, and arguably Wordpress are. These things have already disrupted tech development. I think the real question is how much complexity can they take on, and I think they’re largely near the end of that curve.

Good point. Not too different to the application surface of AI where nocode is similiar to general AI but instead of aiming for that we're now learning to scope down to expert systems to see real gains.

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

#70

Post by pid-1 »

metadaemon wrote: post #22
danielvaughn wrote: post #7

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…

To expand on this, you will have to house the complexity somewhere. For low/no code tools, it's swept under the rug, or rather, under layers of abstraction. I don't think it's a good idea (in a disruptive-amount of cases) to deviate from the simplicity of straight forward code. We are growing closer and eventually will realize as a society that programming doesn't have to be hard or scary. I'm sure that the futuristi…

Anecdotally, most kids I know only interact with devices that feature strong guard rails like phones and tablets.

Those kids are generally more ignorant of how software systems work than someone who grew in the 2000s.

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