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If your answer to a problem is "I'll just write the solution myself", this isn't for you. But if you don't have the time or programming skills to create someth

If your answer to a problem is "I'll just write the solution myself", this isn't for you. But if you don't have the time or programming skills to create something from scratch, Airtable is a very compelling alternative to "I'll just throw it in a spreadsheet."

haswell 6y ago
I could not agree more. I fit very much in the "I'll just write the solution myself" camp, but as a product manager at a company that sells enterprise low-code software, you've hit the nail on the head for why people buy these solutions. Orgs don't buy these solutions because they believe the end result is somehow better than a pro dev team and a proper software project. They buy these solutions because they can't afford to put their pro devs on some use cases, or just simply don't have that kind of staffing on hand. As an organization grows, the more "spreadsheet apps" there are, the messier things get. It's harder for teams to collaborate with each other. It's harder to replicate success across teams. Pretty soon, everything is SharePoint+Spreadsheet hell. Even if these low code platforms only provide one thing: a central data store - they've helped immensely. But interestingly (and again, I'm a bit biased due to my role/employer), people can actually make some pretty useful/functional apps. Often these are apps that would have never been turned into an app otherwise. But the underlying business process benefits greatly. I've also seen (a small percentage) of these simple apps become full-blown apps managed by dedicated dev teams over time. The problem was validated, and the value realized was so great, that the problem finally got the time of day and a "proper" solution was implemented. These things can't/won't replace "real" developers any time soon. But they do provide a path to a very under-served segment of knowledge workers. Personally, I think Microsoft could KILL if they made Excel more robust. I'm not talking MS Access here - I'm talking about a modern, cloud-native app dev platform that is centered on Excel. They already enjoy ubiquity, and they could change the game. There's a reason that the onboarding experience for most low-code platforms is "Choose a spreadsheet to get started".
- chenster 6y ago
  The low code platforms give raise the so-called citizen developers for biz analies, PM alike. There are so much value because they don't need to squat additional IT resource for simple internal apps to boost dept productivities, when they grow beyond Excel.

haswell 6y ago

I could not agree more. I fit very much in the "I'll just write the solution myself" camp, but as a product manager at a company that sells enterprise low-code software, you've hit the nail on the head for why people buy these solutions. Orgs don't buy these solutions because they believe the end result is somehow better than a pro dev team and a proper software project. They buy these solutions because they can't afford to put their pro devs on some use cases, or just simply don't have that kind of staffing on hand. As an organization grows, the more "spreadsheet apps" there are, the messier things get. It's harder for teams to collaborate with each other. It's harder to replicate success across teams. Pretty soon, everything is SharePoint+Spreadsheet hell. Even if these low code platforms only provide one thing: a central data store - they've helped immensely. But interestingly (and again, I'm a bit biased due to my role/employer), people can actually make some pretty useful/functional apps. Often these are apps that would have never been turned into an app otherwise. But the underlying business process benefits greatly. I've also seen (a small percentage) of these simple apps become full-blown apps managed by dedicated dev teams over time. The problem was validated, and the value realized was so great, that the problem finally got the time of day and a "proper" solution was implemented. These things can't/won't replace "real" developers any time soon. But they do provide a path to a very under-served segment of knowledge workers. Personally, I think Microsoft could KILL if they made Excel more robust. I'm not talking MS Access here - I'm talking about a modern, cloud-native app dev platform that is centered on Excel. They already enjoy ubiquity, and they could change the game. There's a reason that the onboarding experience for most low-code platforms is "Choose a spreadsheet to get started".

chenster 6y ago
The low code platforms give raise the so-called citizen developers for biz analies, PM alike. There are so much value because they don't need to squat additional IT resource for simple internal apps to boost dept productivities, when they grow beyond Excel.