Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation • Hacker News Board

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#141

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 1:19 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #91

orev wrote: post #64

One of the main differences I see on the road to learning to code has nothing to do with the tools; it’s the thought process. A major hurdle is trying to get the business people to coherently express what they want. They seem to have a general sense of how something should go, but can’t actually put it down on paper. Or when they do, it looks different than what they imagined (simply because the required logic doesn’…

My mom taught programming in the 80s, and the first thing she told students was: "Computers are stupid. They only do exactly what you tell them to do." People have to get over the misconception that computers can think. Maybe it was easier in the days of DOS, because merely using a computer required the same precision.

[deleted]

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#142

Post by jordanbeiber » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

Having worked quite a bit with no/low-code abstractions and “workflow automations” I’ve seen a few problems arising over and over:

- ownership and its boundaries becomes blurred

- maintainability over time

- lack of systems thinking and architecture

These are things we struggle with in organizations with dedicated development teams!

When parts of critical apps or workflows become like “xls in sharepoint” - PoC’ing is dreamy, anything beyond that potentially very painful.

Just my 2c, although I’m keeping a watchful eye on this segment.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#143

Post by NovemberWhiskey » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

In my experience, whenever user-developed software grows to achieve some kind of critical mass in a large company, it is nearly always discovered that the rapid development and agility was achieved by a complete disregard for the kind of table-stakes engineering practices most take for granted.

Like: "Oh, you control changes to your massive Excel macro that Does The Thing by renaming the sheet and putting it on a shared drive, and it's never tested, and you have no idea who is using which versions of it, and hardcoded credentials for the database backend which running on your desktop which has no defined backup policy, and by the way also contains PII?"

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#144

Post by tyingq » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #143

In my experience, whenever user-developed software grows to achieve some kind of critical mass in a large company, it is nearly always discovered that the rapid development and agility was achieved by a complete disregard for the kind of table-stakes engineering practices most take for granted. Like: "Oh, you control changes to your massive Excel macro that Does The Thing by renaming the sheet and putting it on a sha…

Though I have seen user-developed software used the right way, I've also seen what you've described.

Aside from the concerns you raise, there also a tendency for information to get siloed. Different areas of the business start hoarding data. And people start using the same term to describe different things, etc. The incentive to share and use common definitions is often lost.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#145

Post by loosetypes » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #74

Business/career implications aside, normalizing people thinking about computers as tools that execute arbitrary instructions is an almost purely good thing. I can't think of many other social trends that would be more beneficial for increasing general support for user agency, data interoperability, sideloading/modding, etc... we should applaud every single attempt to democratize coding and lower barriers of entry. It…

> to democratize coding

Does that mean we collectively vote as to whether the next addition is a for loop?

While a company may mean to make more widely accessible but used charged language, I think we should fight the urge to parrot.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#146

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #74

Business/career implications aside, normalizing people thinking about computers as tools that execute arbitrary instructions is an almost purely good thing. I can't think of many other social trends that would be more beneficial for increasing general support for user agency, data interoperability, sideloading/modding, etc... we should applaud every single attempt to democratize coding and lower barriers of entry. It…

I think of this as using the computer vs using software on the computer.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#147

Post by tempacct3575 » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 2:29 PM UTC

I've worked with several of these tools: Power Platform, Mendix, and Outsystems.

I despise the terms no code-and low-code. A better term is "visual programming" (as an alternative to text based programming). You should still follow some basic software development principles - Outsystems training in particular is excellent in this regard.

There definitely is an appetite for these tools. There is a class of business/operations people who know how to manipulate flowcharts, Excel macros and some MS Access but struggle with source code. I have worked with several team that successfully automated some processes using these tools, and were often able to create a pretty good user experience as well.

There is also no risk of this displacing developers - in my experience these tools open the imagination of what is possible and even more backend support is needed over time. Developers work on core capabilities and systems (which change slowly) and users work on creating the custom business process (which change often). With the right management it works quite nicely.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#148

Post by solarkraft » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

tempacct3575 wrote: post #147

I've worked with several of these tools: Power Platform, Mendix, and Outsystems. I despise the terms no code-and low-code. A better term is "visual programming" (as an alternative to text based programming). You should still follow some basic software development principles - Outsystems training in particular is excellent in this regard. There definitely is an appetite for these tools. There is a class of business/op…

> A better term is "visual programming"

I tend to agree. "No code" seems to imply "no programming", but that's exactly what you do with these tools, just in a simplified way.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#149

Post by DarylZero » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #74

Business/career implications aside, normalizing people thinking about computers as tools that execute arbitrary instructions is an almost purely good thing. I can't think of many other social trends that would be more beneficial for increasing general support for user agency, data interoperability, sideloading/modding, etc... we should applaud every single attempt to democratize coding and lower barriers of entry. It…

"Computer Science was always supposed to be taught to everyone, and it wasn’t about getting a job: A historical perspective"

https://computinged.wordpress.com/2021/11/26/computer-scienc...

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#150

Post by solarkraft » Sat, Jan 29, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #72

orev wrote: post #64

One of the main differences I see on the road to learning to code has nothing to do with the tools; it’s the thought process. A major hurdle is trying to get the business people to coherently express what they want. They seem to have a general sense of how something should go, but can’t actually put it down on paper. Or when they do, it looks different than what they imagined (simply because the required logic doesn’…

I don’t think that having a knack for math necessarily matters for making a good programmer. I’ve known many good engineers who were drawn to programming because math was hard for them and they wanted to learn how to get the computer to do it for them. Ironically, coming to understand programming can be a way to understand math better. One of the best programmers I know is a philosophy major, who thinks of code like…

I think there's a difference between being good at math itself and having a mathematical mindset. You can be unfamiliar with the (largely arbitrary seeming) rules and operations of maths while still being able to appreciate and reason about other types of algorithms/relationships.