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A sister team at my company is quite proud of its rules engine that allows non-programmers to quickly implement business policies using its DSL in a web UI. Wi

A sister team at my company is quite proud of its rules engine that allows non-programmers to quickly implement business policies using its DSL in a web UI. With the years and postmortems gone by it has grown half-assed attempts at version control, code review, unit testing, deployment pipelines, etc. Now it’s very obviously just a shitty, hobbled software development environment. It’s used primarily because the team that owns it is aggressive about blocking design reviews for “duplication of effort” if you propose to use normal software development tools anywhere near its domain.

musingsole 6y ago
I was almost bitten by a project like this, despite ample protests the whole way long that "configuration" was just becoming a "crappy programming language". All too often I still have to deal with someone who thinks because logic hinges on a value in a JSON file, they've magically abstracted away the concern of what it is that the code should be doing.
- mmmm2 6y ago
  It reminds me of Ant configuration files. They have loops and if else: <for list="a,b,c,d,e" param="letter"> <sequential> <echo>Letter @{letter}</echo> </sequential> </for> I call it The Devil's Lisp :).
  - Pokepokalypse 6y ago
    oh, then you'll love terraform.
    - closeparen 6y ago
      At least what you're writing down in Terraform is not actually a procedure.
  - dahhakd 6y ago
    Man, I'm not from the Java world, but these days I had to deal with it for a project and had to mess with ant builds, which I have never dealt with before. I was totally baffled. I just do not understand why would anyone subject themselfs to such levels of pain.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      I take it you haven't seen EJB2. Let's just say that it was a more brutal age, and we were more accustomed to such horrors. :)
TheOperator 6y ago
>version control, code review, unit testing, deployment pipelines, etc. This is absolutely one of my biggest pain-points with "no-code" solutions. Even trying to track revisions to something relatively simple like a word document over time is a big pain compared to tracking revisions to source code or a configuration file. Trying to get a grip on how people are fiddling with a no-code product from the audit logs is incredibly difficult, never mind trying to track down a change from 1 year ago. Often changes won't appear on audit logs at all or they won't be explained in enough detail and the format of the logs will have little resemblance to how things are actually configured. You can use some no-code solution to modify a SQL query under the hood and the audit log will just say "THIS USER CHANGED THIS QUERY" and that's all the detail you get! It's frequently difficult to explain to your peers how you're going to change a system without showing them a bunch of screenshots and going "Well I'm going to tick this box and move the green rectangle over here and link it to the orange oval". Rolling back changes can often be impossible without rolling back EVERY change between now and when the first incorrect change was made. I use code, and these problems just don't happen! It's only when people are using some wonderful "user-friendly" solution that things get so jacked up.
- ptmcc 6y ago
  Whenever someone is championing a "no code" or "configuration driven" solution for business processes all of these things you just described are alarm bells ringing in my head. Especially when it is anything involving finances, even tangentially. Making it easy for non-engineers to change business rules on the fly without a code deploy sounds nice in theory, until you think about it for a few more minutes.
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    Configuration can be written in text format and check into version control, so I don't see a problem with "configuration driven".
- brundolf 6y ago
  What if a no-code system was built atop a text-based language that lived in a regular file-system workspace? The "no-code" part would just be a fancy IDE, but the code would still exist to be edited directly, tracked with git, whatever else.
Karellen 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect

musingsole 6y ago

I was almost bitten by a project like this, despite ample protests the whole way long that "configuration" was just becoming a "crappy programming language". All too often I still have to deal with someone who thinks because logic hinges on a value in a JSON file, they've magically abstracted away the concern of what it is that the code should be doing.

mmmm2 6y ago
It reminds me of Ant configuration files. They have loops and if else: <for list="a,b,c,d,e" param="letter"> <sequential> <echo>Letter @{letter}</echo> </sequential> </for> I call it The Devil's Lisp :).
- Pokepokalypse 6y ago
  oh, then you'll love terraform.
  - closeparen 6y ago
    At least what you're writing down in Terraform is not actually a procedure.
- dahhakd 6y ago
  Man, I'm not from the Java world, but these days I had to deal with it for a project and had to mess with ant builds, which I have never dealt with before. I was totally baffled. I just do not understand why would anyone subject themselfs to such levels of pain.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    I take it you haven't seen EJB2. Let's just say that it was a more brutal age, and we were more accustomed to such horrors. :)

TheOperator 6y ago

>version control, code review, unit testing, deployment pipelines, etc. This is absolutely one of my biggest pain-points with "no-code" solutions. Even trying to track revisions to something relatively simple like a word document over time is a big pain compared to tracking revisions to source code or a configuration file. Trying to get a grip on how people are fiddling with a no-code product from the audit logs is incredibly difficult, never mind trying to track down a change from 1 year ago. Often changes won't appear on audit logs at all or they won't be explained in enough detail and the format of the logs will have little resemblance to how things are actually configured. You can use some no-code solution to modify a SQL query under the hood and the audit log will just say "THIS USER CHANGED THIS QUERY" and that's all the detail you get! It's frequently difficult to explain to your peers how you're going to change a system without showing them a bunch of screenshots and going "Well I'm going to tick this box and move the green rectangle over here and link it to the orange oval". Rolling back changes can often be impossible without rolling back EVERY change between now and when the first incorrect change was made. I use code, and these problems just don't happen! It's only when people are using some wonderful "user-friendly" solution that things get so jacked up.

ptmcc 6y ago
Whenever someone is championing a "no code" or "configuration driven" solution for business processes all of these things you just described are alarm bells ringing in my head. Especially when it is anything involving finances, even tangentially. Making it easy for non-engineers to change business rules on the fly without a code deploy sounds nice in theory, until you think about it for a few more minutes.
- Thorrez 6y ago
  Configuration can be written in text format and check into version control, so I don't see a problem with "configuration driven".
brundolf 6y ago
What if a no-code system was built atop a text-based language that lived in a regular file-system workspace? The "no-code" part would just be a fancy IDE, but the code would still exist to be edited directly, tracked with git, whatever else.

Karellen 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect