I work using something like Appian but even more enterprisey. I've watched non-technical users try and build something in it and they basically can't. What yo

I work using something like Appian but even more enterprisey. I've watched non-technical users try and build something in it and they basically can't. What you end up with is the worst of both worlds. Non-technical users can't build in it and the features that are meant for them to use just end up slowing down developers. Effectively, whatever you build to replace a programming language eventually will be as complex as the programming language. The learning curve of programming is steep. It's like a sheer wall and then a steady increasing line. It takes a beginner a ton of effort to produce anything in something like Rails. But once they get passed that initial hurdle over time they will be able to build more and more complex apps. Something like Appian, that initial sheer wall is far less steep, but still formidable. After you get passed that, however, you will fairly quickly find some thing Appian doesn't provide an easy way to do. At that point, you hit the sheer wall again and can even find yourself with something that isn't possible to do. I think everyone identifies that replacing excel with web apps is a huge need with a lot of potential for monetization. The issue is that the biggest reason that non-technical users can do stuff in excel is that they have spent years to decades learning how. It's a tough sell for them to do the same in your app unless it is an industry standard.