Writing code is a tiny part of the problem. Operating the resulting system is also a huge value provided by low code companies. If LLMs have eliminated ops I haven't heard about it yet.
RIP Low-Code 2014-2025
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Re: RIP Low-Code 2014-2025
#92Interesting article -- my take on low-code has always been less about how much initial development time the application takes to code, and more about how it can ease the long term maintenance of an application. With AI tooling it is going to be easy for companies to spin up hundreds of internal applications, but how are they accounting for the maintenance and support of those applications? Think about the low-code pl…
Auth is a pretty classic case where it’s not hard to make your own account create/login form but it’s really hard to make a good one that does all the “right things”.
I'd say it's relatively easy to make one that “does the right while also also the wrong things”. By wrong things I mean things that make it complicated enough to turn it insecure.
The advantage of third-party tools is that it's hard to get new features in there, so they retain their simplicity. You don't get some rando C-Level or IT guy demanding new auth features to make it messy.
Re: RIP Low-Code 2014-2025
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its is not low code, its open-source, modular application development framework built on .net. You can use it as Headless backend with your own UI. We use it like that with our own Next JS front end. You can drop down to raw EF, SQL, custom auth flows (We had written a custom invite based user signup and custom Openiddict app for plan based claims for JWT based feature management) or rip out entire modules if needed.…
If the tool aims to reduce the amount of code required to build features, then it's low-code. IMO, any modular library or reusable mechanism which abstracts away implementation details follows the low-code philosophy. Low-code is just what it says. It's not associated with any specific tech stack or mechanism.
I will say Low code is something like Outsystems.
Re: RIP Low-Code 2014-2025
#94Fuck all this pointless noise, verbose analysis, LLMs and other associated crap. Just someone give me MS Access for the web with an SSO module and let me drive it. That'd cover 99% of LOB app needs and allow me to actually get shit done without tools that dissolve in my hands or require hordes of engineers to keep running or have to negotiate with a bullshit generator to puke out tens of thousands of lines of unmaint…
look at grist! I played around with it and it seemed quite awesome.
Re: RIP Low-Code 2014-2025
#95Disagree with the premises that the cost of shipping code approaches zero.
Re: RIP Low-Code 2014-2025
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
A proper REST API would also work without all the extra overhead of GraphQL. People may dislike XML, but it is easy to make a REST API with and it works well as an interface between computer systems where a human doesn't have to see the syntax.
REST + Swagger I'd say
Swagger is critical. The graphql schema.json is very very good at helping ai's figure out how to use the service. Swagger evens that advantage.
Re: RIP Low-Code 2014-2025
#97I have to smile a little at the graphic with the headline “LOW-CODE VALUE PROP.” Judging by the few low-code applications I've seen so far, the images should be arranged in exactly the opposite order.
Re: RIP Low-Code 2014-2025
#98I am the founder of Dronahq - bootstrapped Low code platform. I fully concur with how AI is eating low code platforms for breakfast.
However underlying principles haven’t changed.
-Engineering bandwidth is minimally available for Internal tools. -Enterprise controls/guardrails are important needs - bringing in data to your app is a must have - maintaining code vs low code apps — low code has been a lot easier
In a conversation with a CTO at VC fund - he predicts that 4-6 quarters and you shall see demand back to peak in low code segment!
In a customer conversation— customer made one tool with cursor and he was very successful but by the time he started adding features for 2.0 everything started breaking and he wanted to move back to lowcode.
As a low code vendor- we just added internal tool building agent that underneath writes react code and leverages the other core capability of the platform thereby giving users best of both the worlds.
But surely interesting times ahead for the category. Let’s see if it survives or dies!
My personal take— it will survive and converge with agentic ai!
Re: RIP Low-Code 2014-2025
#99I'm a co-founder of Calcapp, an app builder for formula-driven apps, and I recently received an email from a customer ending their subscription. They said they appreciated being able to kick the tires with Calcapp, but had now fully moved to an AI-based platform. So we're seeing this reality play out in real time. The next generation of Calcapp probably won't ship with a built-in LLM agent. Instead, it will expose al…
I highly suggest you expose functionality through Graphql. It lets users send out an agent with a goal like: "Figure out how to do X" and because graphql has introspection, it can find stuff pretty reliably! It's really lovely as an end user. Best of luck!
I tried this recently and found the token overhead makes it prohibitive for any non-trivial schema. Dumping the full introspection result into the context window gets expensive fast and seems to increase hallucination rates compared to just providing specific, narrow tool definitions.
Re: RIP Low-Code 2014-2025
#100Fuck all this pointless noise, verbose analysis, LLMs and other associated crap. Just someone give me MS Access for the web with an SSO module and let me drive it. That'd cover 99% of LOB app needs and allow me to actually get shit done without tools that dissolve in my hands or require hordes of engineers to keep running or have to negotiate with a bullshit generator to puke out tens of thousands of lines of unmaint…
I'll admit to having joined the industry after 2005. Can you say more about how easy it was to get stuff done back then? What was actually easier? Was Access just good and you didn't need to deal with building web apps?
Best thing is have a look at a short tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubmwp8kbfPc
It has problems, as the other reply suggests, but most of those are easily surmountable in 2026.