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Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

bethanvincent.com

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Re: Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

#31

Post by filoleg »

psv1 wrote: post #21
blazespin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

she is right, but this a terrible example because her idea is weak but her marketing is strong.. the future will likely see apps being built in collaboration with AI.

> apps being built in collaboration with AI Oh please no, that's just so unnecessary.

Real life is imitating art at this point, truly. Saw that whole plot point in the final season of Silicon Valley that was released last month and thought it was one of the most farfetched unrealistic scenarios in the whole show. Looks like I was really wrong.

Re: Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

#32

Post by tguedes »

lalos wrote: post #11

Low code is definitely the future. Look at all the things you can do by calling the right APIs and/or all the scaffolding available. The clear trend changed after RoR and managed cloud services like Heroku popped up. Now the big players offer cloud services that would take months to code but if you pay up you have access (everything as a service). The lesson for developers is work on tools consumed by other developer…

This has literally always been the case for the history of software. Unless you're willing to tell me an operating system is a low-code solution, building software has always been about obfuscating the frustrating parts to focus on the stuff that actually matters. Infrastructure as a service is just the current iteration.

Re: Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

#33

Post by [deleted] »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #16
planetzero wrote: post #12

"I literally built a business in an afternoon and so can you." Are you charging money and have customers actually paying you? If not, it's not a business yet. It's a website. This barely functions as a website and looks like a few components thrown together using a bootstrap template.

If they were charging for it, they would have called it "revenue-earning" instead of "revenue-ready". What does "revenue-ready" even mean? They're willing to accept money for it? Really high bar to clear /s

[deleted]

Re: Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

#34

Post by oh_sigh »

The problem is this MVP doesn't even fit the objective that the author lists in the beginning. They stated:

> It’s also extremely important to me that an employer has a positive attitude towards diversity and actively encourages candidates from under-represented groups. This is a hard thing to tell from Indeed or a job aggregate site.

But their MVP does nothing at all relating to inclusiveness. It's just a job board CRUD app just like all the other job boards.

Re: Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

#35

Post by aguyfromnb »

1_over_n wrote: post #28
uoaei wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm revenue-ready because I'm capable of holding my pockets open.

I honestly feel like these comments are quite elitist. I can programme if i need to but will often use convenience tools to quickly test ideas. Thats kind of the spirit of (many not all) startups right now. Isn't the magic in figuring out what people are willing to pay for? That's definitely PGs message, along with speak to customers and do things that don't scale. And now someones getting flamed for attempting to do…

>I can programme if i need to but will often use convenience tools to quickly test ideas.

I don't think people are making fun of the "low-code" aspect as much as the "I literally built a business in an afternoon" part.

It's a job board, implemented 2 months ago, that has a handful of postings. How is that a business?

Re: Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

#36

Post by rdiddly »

meredydd wrote: post #25

So, this is where the founder of a "low-code" startup pops up to confirm it: "Low code" is mostly a false promise. We have been programming computers for most of a century: 71 years this year. And in all that time, nobody has come up with a better way of telling a computer what to do than writing text in a programming language. People keep trying, of course, with endless permutations of flow-charts and rules. But soo…

Today I'm working on a project in which I was brought in late to rescue it, where they're extracting data from BIM software (which fits the definition of a no-code database-backed GUI app) using (low-code) MS Access and pushing it into (low-code) QuickBase, and all 3 pieces were set up by people who (yay) didn't need to understand code but (boo) really could've used a few lessons in best practices.

So I agree with your rant, though in principle and in my most idealistic moments I'm still interested to see where the whole low-code "movement" goes.

Re: Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

#37

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

omarhaneef wrote: post #17

The criticism -- almost all the other comments at this point -- focuses on one aspect of the low-code app: It has to be re-written once it grows. * While this is true, I don't think Bethan or any other low code advocate would dispute that. The question is: can you get test an idea with low code. The answer to that might be a trivial yes, but if you had asked me what that means, I would guess a team of 3 people could…

If people got limited feedback, prior to wider distribution, they could re-work their articles so 95%+ of the discussion isn't centered around one superficial point, but rather the bread-and-butter of the article's point: as you mention, 1-person & 4 hours vs. 3-people & 1-week. Big difference between the two!

Re: Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

#38

Post by kyllo »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #29
omarhaneef wrote: post #17

The criticism -- almost all the other comments at this point -- focuses on one aspect of the low-code app: It has to be re-written once it grows. * While this is true, I don't think Bethan or any other low code advocate would dispute that. The question is: can you get test an idea with low code. The answer to that might be a trivial yes, but if you had asked me what that means, I would guess a team of 3 people could…

Low code already happens. Now I think it’s just getting popular . “Groupon was originally run on WordPress because they only needed to test one thing: will local small businesses provide discounts in exchange for being introduced to potential new customers.” And yes it is an example of that it has to be rewritten. From https://bigthinking.io/the-mindset-for-innovation-everything...

Yeah, it's not really new. A few years back, I interviewed at a startup that was close to two years in, and they described their app as "the most overloaded Drupal installation in existence," and were in the middle of migrating it to Rails.

Re: Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

#39

Post by uoaei »

1_over_n wrote: post #28
uoaei wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm revenue-ready because I'm capable of holding my pockets open.

I honestly feel like these comments are quite elitist. I can programme if i need to but will often use convenience tools to quickly test ideas. Thats kind of the spirit of (many not all) startups right now. Isn't the magic in figuring out what people are willing to pay for? That's definitely PGs message, along with speak to customers and do things that don't scale. And now someones getting flamed for attempting to do…

The challenge being levied here is against vacuous self-inflationary language that applies to nearly any person at any point in time.

Re: Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours

#40

Post by falcolas »

omarhaneef wrote: post #17

The criticism -- almost all the other comments at this point -- focuses on one aspect of the low-code app: It has to be re-written once it grows. * While this is true, I don't think Bethan or any other low code advocate would dispute that. The question is: can you get test an idea with low code. The answer to that might be a trivial yes, but if you had asked me what that means, I would guess a team of 3 people could…

> That is the real insight here.

To me, the insight is that the less you care about the future of your "product", the less time you have to put into it.

I look at the linked site, and all I see is "Minimal". I don't see any viability, I don't see a product (identifying what's being sold takes a few clicks). I also see a bevy of GDPR violations. I see an ADA (or the EU equivalent) liability. I, as a security conscious developer, forsee a disaster of a security story.

I see human scaling issues, as everything slightly out of the ordinary that happens requires an email to an address which is on the surface completely unrelated to the site itself. I also see 842 social media trackers blocked with standard FireFox settings (though I guess that falls in with GDPR violations).

I also see some potential legal liabilities, as all of the agreements are between the users and "Bethan Vincent". That lack of separation could put the owner in a lot of hot water should any of the above liabilities become a reality.

Most of these won't - can't - be solved with a technological re-write. A lot of them will require a fair bit of re-writing the entire business model.

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