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No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

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Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#111

Post by jfoster »

wolfgke wrote: post #80
jfoster wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots of people who want to do stuff, but code is expensive. They are excited for solutions that let them do "pretty much" what they wanted to, without having to make that investment into code.

> There's lots of people who want to do stuff, but code is expensive. Nearly every work is expensive if done by other people.

That's true until the work done can be shared among many.

Shopping websites used to often be custom built or unsuitable platforms (eg. web forums) repurposed. Now they're on Shopify.

Warehouses used to be something that you rented, fitted out, and hired personnel to run. Now they're Fulfillment by Amazon.

Servers started on premise, then moved to data centers, then moved to cloud.

With each of these shifts, a little bit of control is given up on order to have these things on-demand at lower cost.

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#112

Post by mettamage »

wolfgke wrote: post #76
mettamage wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of a few. Most of these things could also be done with text-based code, but typically aren't when you're just starting out: - No set up issues (visual programming is cloud-based) - Less of a discoverability issue (visual programming shows a lot of things all at once) - A sense of familiarity (people have seen flow chart like things before) - It's easier to see the difference between arguments and paramete…

> - No set up issues (visual programming is cloud-based) Cloud-based has nothing to do with visual programming or no-code (you can also do cloud-based editing of conventional code if you desire). Counterexamples: LabVIEW, Simulink. > - Less of a discoverability issue (visual programming shows a lot of things all at once) Wasn't "shows a lot of things all at once" actually an argument (marketing pitch) why conventiona…

I said

> Most of these things could also be done with text-based code, but typically aren't when you're just starting out

This means that it all can be done, but isn't. Which means that it's a cultural issue, not a technical issue.

Also, I was under the impression that discussion was about mainstream programming languages and mainstream visual programming languages (of which you said there were none). Here's a workable definition of mainstream: the Stackoverflow top 10. It doesn't have LabVIEW and Simulink.

When you discount niches for visual programming, then you have to do it with text-based programming as well, otherwise the argument isn't fair. I presume that you know this. So I find it peculiar that you don't qualify why you're using languages that aren't (seemingly) remotely mainstream, or why you're not using mainstream examples.

> Wasn't "shows a lot of things all at once" actually an argument (marketing pitch) why conventional programming language overwhelm many people who are not programmers, and visual programming languages are "thus" better because charts have a lot less "intellectual density" than computer code?!

I wouldn't know.

I'm quitting this discussion, the exclamation mark + question mark, "what is actually the difference?" There seems to be no wonder or curiosity from your side. Instead it seems purely adverserial.

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#113

Post by _curious_ »

0x6c6f6c wrote: post #109
_curious_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love the historical context here... "Lots of successful products and fortunes made with No Code and low code." What are some examples?

Were all of the examples leading up to that sentence not enough for you, or did you perhaps skip to the end?

Was Powerbuilder, Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Zapier, IFTT and Yahoo's pipes made with no/low code?

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#115

Post by csallen »

Thorentis wrote: post #26
robjan wrote: post #19

This post makes no-code feel like an MLM. Half of the highlighted startups are no-code startups founded to teach about no-code.

This is the vibe I regularly get from Indie Hackers. So many start-ups exist to serve the start-up/SaaS industry. Every second day there's a "SaaS that helps you create a SaaS that sends Emails for SaaSes" start-up posted there.

Startup founders often cater to other startup founders, and it seems oddly circular, until you look at more mature businesses and realize the same thing is happening: businesses selling things to help other businesses sell things to other businesses…

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#116

Post by anotheracct_ »

_curious_ wrote: post #113
0x6c6f6c wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were all of the examples leading up to that sentence not enough for you, or did you perhaps skip to the end?

Was Powerbuilder, Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Zapier, IFTT and Yahoo's pipes made with no/low code?

They're used to make things with no code.

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#118

Post by _curious_ »

anotheracct_ wrote: post #116
_curious_ wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Powerbuilder, Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Zapier, IFTT and Yahoo's pipes made with no/low code?

They're used to make things with no code.

Yes and I am wondering per /indyike's statement "Lots of successful products and fortunes made with No Code and low code." - what are some examples because the product names mentioned were not made with no/low code.

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#119

Post by shrimpx »

Most software engineering is yak shaving in the sense that your high level goal is some business domain feature like “process a payment” but you spend most of your time in far detached language and os primitives, fighting idiosyncrasies in some json parser or UI state update library that has nothing to do with processing payments. Geeks really dig this impedance mismatch because they get to do the “fun stuff” instead of the boring business domain stuff. But a lot of people care only about the business domain stuff and could care less about descending into the catacombs. There will always be a need for point and click application creation and the tendency to want to get rid of the geek middlemen.

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#120

Post by amunicio »

indymike wrote: post #94

The first real low-code solution was a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets were what drove businesses to buy PCs in the early 80s. In the 90s, CASE (computer-automated software engineering) was a big thing. Powerbuilder was huge. Novell had one where you could draw a flowchart and fill in dialogs to make client-server apps... UI builders became common as language vendors added graphical IDEs to their game. In the 00's we had a…

Originally, SQL was sold as a way to make programmers redundant by allowing business people to write their own reports.

In theory, with SQL any executive could write his own report instead of having to wait for weeks for those pesky software guys to write the reports.

For many decades, different waves in the industry have tried to bring tools to the market to allow non-programers to write programs. The thinking is that the tooling or the grammar are the obstacles for regular people to write programs (applications).

The issue is that it is not the syntax or the tools that are the barrier. The barrier to write programs is that the author has to thing about all possible states and conditions and handle them. That requires patience and a certain mindset. If you are not able/willing to be that exhaustive, you will not be able to write general programs. Conceptually you could write programs (or web applications) that have been narrowed to very specific choices of workflows with most of the conditions already taken care of for you.

Creating a website with drag-and-drop tools is not that difficult; until you start to consider: what happens if the user shrinks the window below certain width? What happens if he views the site on a phone? What happens if I have to change the length of a piece of text?

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