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No-code in manufacturing: automation without programming

smartindustry.com

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Re: No-code in manufacturing: automation without programming

#51

Post by sokoloff »

perl4ever wrote: post #47
sokoloff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My line of thinking on this is “what makes Excel have the combination of simplicity to start and ability/power to scale to fairly complicated workbooks and how to bring that to other fields, including manufacturing?” We could do a lot worse than excel in a lot of areas I think.

Excel VBA and Power Query are regular programming languages. Nothing in particular has been solved by Excel, it's just that the languages that are built in are disdained by software engineers so people assume there's something special about them. It's cultural. You can write a Lisp in VBA if you want. Microsoft's attempt at low/no code appears to be Power Automate, and it's awful (imo).

I’d wager that 99% of all excel workbooks in the world contain no VBA.

Excel’s market power is in what you can do in the formulas, interactive exploration, and incremental progress not in the (fairly awful dev-experience) VBA.

Re: No-code in manufacturing: automation without programming

#52

Post by perl4ever »

sokoloff wrote: post #51
perl4ever wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel VBA and Power Query are regular programming languages. Nothing in particular has been solved by Excel, it's just that the languages that are built in are disdained by software engineers so people assume there's something special about them. It's cultural. You can write a Lisp in VBA if you want. Microsoft's attempt at low/no code appears to be Power Automate, and it's awful (imo).

I’d wager that 99% of all excel workbooks in the world contain no VBA. Excel’s market power is in what you can do in the formulas, interactive exploration, and incremental progress not in the (fairly awful dev-experience) VBA.

That's true, but the point is, they haven't created anything that bridges the two worlds. They are just there, in coexistence.

Well, then again, I also think you are also falling into the trap of underestimating the amount of VBA code, and businesses built on it, because of your cultural disdain for it.

Re: No-code in manufacturing: automation without programming

#53

Post by sokoloff »

perl4ever wrote: post #52
sokoloff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d wager that 99% of all excel workbooks in the world contain no VBA. Excel’s market power is in what you can do in the formulas, interactive exploration, and incremental progress not in the (fairly awful dev-experience) VBA.

That's true, but the point is, they haven't created anything that bridges the two worlds. They are just there, in coexistence. Well, then again, I also think you are also falling into the trap of underestimating the amount of VBA code, and businesses built on it, because of your cultural disdain for it.

I don’t have any disdain for Excel or VBA. It’s clearly hugely useful, successful, and valuable.

I’ve written some VBA; the DX is terrible, but I have massive respect for what they’ve accomplished and I readily reach for it when it’s the right tool. I wrote some powershell for a manufacturing site a few weeks ago. Didn’t enjoy doing it, but it was the right horse for that course.

Re: No-code in manufacturing: automation without programming

#54

Post by mc32 »

sumtechguy wrote: post #23
jjk166 wrote: post #19

As someone who does manufacturing automation for a living, I don't think this person has any experience in a manufacturing environment. Coding is really not a limiting factor in manufacturing automation. For decades everything has been built around being controlled by first relay logic and then PLCs, which implement multiple languages like ladder-logic which are basically already drag and drop. Most sensors are simpl…

I worked in this sort of space for awhile. You got it in your last paragraph. Downtime costs money. Not only does downtime cost money, service calls do too. You get a guy who knows exactly how to fix it out on site and he shows up and has the wrong part and he costs 200 bucks an hour. You can burn 4 hours just waiting for a part. We were having a lot of good luck adding some sensors, remote diagnostic, and pre-diagno…

Depending on the industry downtime doesn’t only mean widgets aren’t getting built but also the wip widgets we were making have to be thrown out.

Re: No-code in manufacturing: automation without programming

#55

Post by jjk166 »

bluGill wrote: post #26
jjk166 wrote: post #19

As someone who does manufacturing automation for a living, I don't think this person has any experience in a manufacturing environment. Coding is really not a limiting factor in manufacturing automation. For decades everything has been built around being controlled by first relay logic and then PLCs, which implement multiple languages like ladder-logic which are basically already drag and drop. Most sensors are simpl…

> generally coding skill is not particularly lacking In my experience it is. Sure there are people who can go in and hack some simple code, but they typically know nothing about the clean code style that you need to make millions of lines manageable. They do okay with 500 lines programs where it isn't hard to know the whole, but don't put them on anything more complex

But there is absolutely nothing in the manufacturing world that would ever require millions of lines of code. There's a big difference between software development, which they are not doing, and coding, which these no-code solutions seek to help them with.

For reference, I'm currently dealing with a customer whose most complex machine (which automates a job that used to take two people per shift) runs on 128 lines of code.

Re: No-code in manufacturing: automation without programming

#56

Post by CodeWriter23 »

nbzso wrote: post #8

I see a different future. As a side-effect of pushing "automation" agenda corporations will not have needed workforce to accomplish the task. The marketing delusions and wishful thinking are popular methods of self-destruction. Sadly in the corporate world, the more you climb the less oxygen you get. And with lack of oxygen human brain is prone to malfunction. You can have some form of automation, but the need of com…

>Is PHP worth learning in 2021?

I’m calling that out as a straw man. Who uses PHP to run gear / robots?

Re: No-code in manufacturing: automation without programming

#57

Post by nbzso »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #56
nbzso wrote: post #8

I see a different future. As a side-effect of pushing "automation" agenda corporations will not have needed workforce to accomplish the task. The marketing delusions and wishful thinking are popular methods of self-destruction. Sadly in the corporate world, the more you climb the less oxygen you get. And with lack of oxygen human brain is prone to malfunction. You can have some form of automation, but the need of com…

>Is PHP worth learning in 2021? I’m calling that out as a straw man. Who uses PHP to run gear / robots?

This is an example of old technology (programming language) pronounced dead numerous times.

I can give another example: COBOL. https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-cobol/

The idea behind this is that marketing and agenda driven "visions" often paint wrong picture towards an ideal future. And reality always finds a way to strike back.

Re: No-code in manufacturing: automation without programming

#59

Post by jjk166 »

speedybird wrote: post #27
jjk166 wrote: post #19

As someone who does manufacturing automation for a living, I don't think this person has any experience in a manufacturing environment. Coding is really not a limiting factor in manufacturing automation. For decades everything has been built around being controlled by first relay logic and then PLCs, which implement multiple languages like ladder-logic which are basically already drag and drop. Most sensors are simpl…

When you say G-Code is Assembly-like, you just mean superficially right? I would expect G-Code to be interpreted, not assembled.

Yeah, I say G-code is Assembly-like the same way I'd say a dolphin is fish-like: they resemble eachother in many ways and if you'd never seen one, you kinda get the idea, but they are not related and if you cut them open they are very different.

Re: No-code in manufacturing: automation without programming

#60

Post by bluGill »

jjk166 wrote: post #55
bluGill wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> generally coding skill is not particularly lacking In my experience it is. Sure there are people who can go in and hack some simple code, but they typically know nothing about the clean code style that you need to make millions of lines manageable. They do okay with 500 lines programs where it isn't hard to know the whole, but don't put them on anything more complex

But there is absolutely nothing in the manufacturing world that would ever require millions of lines of code. There's a big difference between software development, which they are not doing, and coding, which these no-code solutions seek to help them with. For reference, I'm currently dealing with a customer whose most complex machine (which automates a job that used to take two people per shift) runs on 128 lines of…

The problem is many of them think that they can handle larger problems
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