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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?

#101

Post by metadaemon »

pessimizer wrote: post #48
metadaemon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'm sure that the futuristic lay-person will have a better basal understanding of technology and how it's made. I feel like we actively discourage people from having an understanding of technology for fear that they will understand it and complain about it and/or be in a better position to judge the quality of alternatives to our products. As a result, it seems like more people understood basic computer operation a…

I say it like I'm sure, but honestly I worry about this. It's possible we achieved such a technological peak that future generations won't be able to understand the basics; only the simplifications, leading to the premise of Idiocracy.

That being said, we've always built knowledge on top of the backs of others and never really had to deal with supporting its weight without necessarily knowing the basics. It would really make for an interesting case study if it led to the collapse of society.

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

#104

Post by danielvaughn »

sgarland wrote: post #85
danielvaughn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IMO, Zapier is a little different because it's connecting disparate APIs. Disclaimer: I work for Zapier.

Ah yes true. My point was really that any tool can generate complexity, it's all about the underlying problem you're trying to solve.

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

#105

Post by icefo »

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've had the misfortune of participating in a large-isch LabVIEW project and it looks similar.

Vcs integration and merge were also a big pain so most of the development was done on a single computer in the lab by many people.

The hardware that runs the LabVIEW code is solid tho and once you wrestle LabVIEW into doing what you want it works well

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

#106

Post by failrate »

duped wrote: post #56
failrate wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and I have never struggled to execute something complex as I have with no-code tools. Nocode usually makes the HelloWorld trivial and anything meaningful more challenging than it would be to do in a general purpose language.

This isn't just true of NoCode, it's endemic to young tools. These products are over-optimized toward low friction on-ramps because the only thing that matters is growth in DAUs. NoCode is just attractive because it propagates the myth that you can do things without programmers, and programmers are expensive. So you've got low friction + perceived lower cost == more users signing up.

I appreciate your feedback but can you point to a single nocode tool that does not have this problem?

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

#107

Post by lofatdairy »

RajT88 wrote: post #88
lofatdairy wrote: post #80

I think no code/low code solutions certainly have a place, but the way they're currently designed is not necessarily helpful (I've worked on replacing integromat and automate.io solutions in the past). Those solutions are fine, for the most part, but they're main flaw is that in order to get anything done you have to integrate them with other tools/software, which means that you're limited by what parts of the api th…

Excel wizards who consider themselves non-programmers, end up with what I would consider programming skills. And this is the rub with low/no-code solutions. To use them effectively, you have to have some programming skills already. They are perfect for lazy programmers, but less so for "Citizen Developers". At least, I haven't come across any I was really impressed with as a "Citizen Developer" platform. I would happ…

Honestly, I might be wrong, but in my experience the target consumers for no-code/low-code aren't the people completely intimidated by computers or navigating software in the first place. However, someone who wants to build a tool for themselves or someone else are not necessarily experienced enough to build it using code, and these seem to me to be the ones who are more likely to turn to a low-code solution. In the sense that using software someone else wrote, that has a UI and operates in a familiar way, is a lot more easier for many than writing code from scratch.

If you were trying to write a simple Python program, you'd need to know how to run it in the first place. This means you'd need to install Python (if you're on Windows then you need to add it to PATH which an entirely new issue). Then to edit the program you need an editor (thankfully Jupyter has made this a lot more trivial). If you want to do anything outside the standard library, you need to learn to use pip (hell you need to know what is considered standard and what's outside of that scope in the first place). Coding to me seems to some extent to be more than writing logic, but also experience with programming environments. Low-code solutions seem to be just a lower on-ramp. You still have the logic, but everything is self contained so you don't need the environmental experience. You're therefore limited by whatever is provided in that self-contained environment.

So while I may not have met enough people to really say, a lot more people can "code" than can write programs in the sense that they fundamentally can abstract the necessary logic, but are intimidated by the unfamiliar work flow. Citizen developers can be born from this demographic of people, but the problem is that the tools available are often too limited to stick with and don't allow for production solutions.

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

#108

Post by gumby »

They already have and will continue to. Most programmers don’t even think about their machine’s internal circuitry, much less know how a circuit works. They put their attention on other things.

The ability to assemble 60%, 80%, even 100% of a simple application by snapping together building blocks has lead to a massive democraticratization of programming. Yes, and buggy crap and security holes, but it’s easier to fix some of them by improving the Lego bricks. This is a triumph of abstraction.

==

The first “no code” system I ever saw was called, IIRC, “eve” at some PC expo back around 1981. There was a bit of buzz in the press and then that was the end of it. Then again, that was the promise of FORTRAN (and then COBOL).

BTW the article itself was meandering and mushy. I gave up on it.

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

#109

Post by drewcoo »

sbf501 wrote: post #67
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 c…

Low code isn't about tinkering under the hood. It's about going places.

Most cars have automatic transmissions now. Cars don't have manual chokes anymore. They're reliable enough now that most people don't need to know anything about repair, engine or otherwise, whereas that used to be widespread knowledge.

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

#110

Post by char_star_star »

krishvs wrote: post #41

Having used low-code tools successfully to build ERP systems for the past few years. I feel low code tools can only really disrupt development once they solve the problem of requirements gathering from customers/ end users and also formally describe change management in low-code as well. As long as there is ambiguity in requirements - code or low code makes no difference.

One thing I’ve found is that if you put something together in thirty minutes you’ll get much more detailed requirements because end users now have a tangible thing to organize their thoughts around.
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