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

I've heard of companies organising the low code department under UI/UX. Any explanation for this?

it just comes down to abstraction and associated tradeoffs. Low-code/no-code fundamentally isn't all that different from the difference between using Python vs a lower level language.

Low-/no-code environments are really great for exposing domain-specific landscapes to non-coders, but that significantly reduces the hype value of the lingo, which aims to convince buyers that they can replace those pesky non-specific domain problem spaces and coders with capex and a smidge of opex. The value proposition of these products is the same as before because this is a repackaging of fourth-generation languages, and the economics have not changed.

The more narrow the domain, the easier it gets to figure out a low-/no-code environment that will work for the users. But the smaller the base of purchases. And distilling the complexity to just the right level still takes some really bright domain experts with extremely good intuition of where the most profitable use cases lay (the hardest role to fill) and highly empathetic coders (also hard to fill) who work well together (extremely rare), or a single person who embodies both (unicorn).

If energy and money were no object, low-/no-code is absolutely A Thing. I believe there is some kind of emergent Shannon–Hartley theorem behavior here, where complexity down a communications network with certain noise/bandwidth/etc. properties has some suspected hard physics-as-we-know-it limits.

I am a non-tech founder building a app on building, basically very CRM/Data centric for a specific industry vertical I work in professionally.

I am pushing Bubble to its limits where I have access to approx 150m records with all sorts of other database relationships to many millions of records.

To build this app in a custom software solution, I have been quoted $100k to $500k depending on the backend architecture.

Instead, I am spending around $20-30k in development costs to get my app off the ground to be able to pick up the first paying users... at least that's the goal and I'm a few weeks away from launch.

I would also say that my "MVP" is not like Airbnb's MVP... my hope (and it seems) that it may be functional enough to nearly (70%) replace my existing CRM that I use day to day. Of course, I am planning to transition to a custom software solution once I validate, so I don't see bubble as a long term solution.

I've self taught myself a bit of python and tried teaching myself JS as well off and on, so I am able to generally talk through with software developers what I'm trying to achieve and generally understand the technical things that might be discussed. So I'm not entirely a total non-technical noob.

But the issue with Bubble is there is still a high barrier to actually learning how to use the platform for the average non tech person. It's a black box of sorts and they don't have the best education (unlike webflow). I mean come on, you have to pay $800 to take a bubble sponsored course? Lame. Nonetheless, you learn programming concepts by learning how to build on bubble.

I'll end by replying to the top comment about code being perceived as complex.

Spanish isn't complex. Nor is French. Maybe we can consider Japanese to be more complex. But even then, millions of people speak it just fine. Conjugations in Spanish are complex for a 40 year old English speaker new to Spanish but not complex for a 8 year old native speaker.

But after a certain age, life takes hold, you begin working, and you lose the time and opportunity to spend 100's or 1,000's of hours learning another language. Trying to learn how to code is like this. I sometimes need to carve out 3-6 hours of a day to context-switch away from my busy (non-technical) professional & social life to get back into programming mode.

Low code tools abstract away hours of that complexity you would have to learn, which allows you to start building something functional quicker than you otherwise would have. I know software devs look at low code and say "what's the matter with this crap, I can just spin up a X to do Y in 1 week, this is worthless!". But you are the native Spanish speaker in my metaphor, not the folks learning Spanish way past the days they had time to learn Spanish in college, trying to build the next greatest Spanish hit song to tell their story (i.e. software app!)

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

Low code doesn't help at all? It's still code.

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

Sunken cost is about investment already incurred that can't be recovered. It's very likely that low code increases software sunk cost problems.

If you use low code as a prototype thing to throw away, that's almost a complete waste of investment.

Wrong low code often is much harder to programmatically test for correctness and debug, so you often need a larger investment to fix it.