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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?

#71

Post by quantummkv »

gumby wrote: post #5

I don’t really understand what “no code” is. You can put up a storefront and conduct business without writing a line of code, simply by adding plug ins to Wordpress, calling out to stripe etc. The result is somewhat templatized and slightly generic looking but that’s great: your value comes from the content, as the author correctly describes, and the visitor will presumably understand navigation etc. This kind of pro…

I think of it as the final evolution of the Uber/Airbnb/Any process with a website is a tech startup thinking process.

This whole no-code thing is basically a bunch of terms that allow people with valid, legitimate but boring old businesses to feel like they are Microsoft or Google. While extracting a whole lot of money of course off the fluff around it.

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

#73

Post by wccrawford »

ozim wrote: post #58
celloductor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yea building complex, polished apps using no-code tools is arguably more harder than just writing code and using frameworks. it's a different set of skills, albeit still a skill so i don't get why programmers are feeling threatened by it.

I feel threatened by it in a very specific way. There are pointy haired bosses who will order that: "now we will do low code". When they bump into obstacle that is not doable in low-code they will be angry at the developers that cannot deliver what customer wants. Where with just normal development you would not run into such issues. As a developer I have some power to say no to such thing but marketing people at low…

A "low code" or "no code" office would never hire me in the first place, so I'm not really scared of this. My talent lies in making hard things possible, not in the low-hanging fruit that can be done with "low code".

That said, as senior developer I've been very happy lately to get the company to use more off-the-shelf libraries (like Material UI for React) rather than coding our own stuff, lessening our development and maintenance time and letting us work on more stuff that matters instead. Of course, we can also create custom components instead if we have to.

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

#75

Post by danenania »

jstanley wrote: post #56
ryanSrich wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can tell yes. It’s intended to imply something more. See bubble for example - https://bubble.io . It’s basically “visual” Rails. The intention is to allow users to build complex, interactive software visually, without having to write code. Webflow has a ton of plugins that can get you something similar. You can have a user model (memberstack.io) with authentication and even the ability to create user spec…

> I’m still bullish on the idea of no code though. The tools are there. They just need more functionality. Maybe, but I think the idea of setting up a SaaS business without writing any code just won't work. If the tooling is simple enough that a non-coder can get it to work, then the no-code SaaS business is providing very little of value. The user could just do the job themselves using the same no-code tools.

I think you’re right that having some sort of moat is very important to a business, but I don’t think that moat has to necessarily be the software. It could be operational expertise or fame or capital or connections or anything else that’s hard to replicate.

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

#76

Post by wolfgke »

mettamage wrote: post #64
wolfgke wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See bubble for example - https://bubble.io . It’s basically “visual” Rails. The intention is to allow users to build complex, interactive software visually, without having to write code. Why the "hate" for code? I immediately understand the problems that typical programming languages have for people who are not trained in programming. But there exist good reasons why other approaches like "visual programming" have…

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 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?!

> - It's easier to see the difference between arguments and parameters

What is actually the difference?

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

#77

Post by jfoster »

wolfgke wrote: post #62
ryanSrich wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can tell yes. It’s intended to imply something more. See bubble for example - https://bubble.io . It’s basically “visual” Rails. The intention is to allow users to build complex, interactive software visually, without having to write code. Webflow has a ton of plugins that can get you something similar. You can have a user model (memberstack.io) with authentication and even the ability to create user spec…

> See bubble for example - https://bubble.io . It’s basically “visual” Rails. The intention is to allow users to build complex, interactive software visually, without having to write code. Why the "hate" for code? I immediately understand the problems that typical programming languages have for people who are not trained in programming. But there exist good reasons why other approaches like "visual programming" have…

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.

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

#78

Post by JoeAltmaier »

wolfgke wrote: post #62
ryanSrich wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can tell yes. It’s intended to imply something more. See bubble for example - https://bubble.io . It’s basically “visual” Rails. The intention is to allow users to build complex, interactive software visually, without having to write code. Webflow has a ton of plugins that can get you something similar. You can have a user model (memberstack.io) with authentication and even the ability to create user spec…

> See bubble for example - https://bubble.io . It’s basically “visual” Rails. The intention is to allow users to build complex, interactive software visually, without having to write code. Why the "hate" for code? I immediately understand the problems that typical programming languages have for people who are not trained in programming. But there exist good reasons why other approaches like "visual programming" have…

Isn't this tool, exactly one of those languages? And their marketing, a filter for the folks that will find it useful?

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

#79

Post by GVIrish »

ozim wrote: post #58
celloductor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yea building complex, polished apps using no-code tools is arguably more harder than just writing code and using frameworks. it's a different set of skills, albeit still a skill so i don't get why programmers are feeling threatened by it.

I feel threatened by it in a very specific way. There are pointy haired bosses who will order that: "now we will do low code". When they bump into obstacle that is not doable in low-code they will be angry at the developers that cannot deliver what customer wants. Where with just normal development you would not run into such issues. As a developer I have some power to say no to such thing but marketing people at low…

I ran into this in my last federal contracting job. Customer was being sold on using ServiceNow as a low code solution to replace a custom .net application with something like 2 million LOC.

No-code and low-code solutions are seductive to many because they can get easy wins fast, but those easy wins mask the fact that more complex functionality is either more difficult, or outright impossible. Not to mention that once you heavily customize those products, upgrades can become very painful and very costly.

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

#80

Post by wolfgke »

jfoster wrote: post #77
wolfgke wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See bubble for example - https://bubble.io . It’s basically “visual” Rails. The intention is to allow users to build complex, interactive software visually, without having to write code. Why the "hate" for code? I immediately understand the problems that typical programming languages have for people who are not trained in programming. But there exist good reasons why other approaches like "visual programming" have…

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.

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