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Let me chime in as someone developing a no-code website builder. Wix are in a similar space as us in fact, though that doesn't matter for the point I am about t

Let me chime in as someone developing a no-code website builder. Wix are in a similar space as us in fact, though that doesn't matter for the point I am about to make: No-code only works in a very limited context. Whether that will ever change, I do not know. But to make anything truly no-code, you immediately face a trade-off that's nearly impossible to overcome. You either: a) Make your no-code solution more flexible by adding a gazillion options to everything, steadily driving up complexity, until learning your no-code solution is about as difficult as just learning the underlying thing it tries to magic away b) Limit the remit of your application to the point where it does a few things relatively well, but admit that any customisation is unlikely to be possible and hope that your remit isn't too limited to impair usability Particularly in the website space I feel that 'the thing that just works' hasn't been found yet, despite hundreds of millions in investment and advertising being thrown at that exact problem space. Which tells me it's a tough nut to crack. And ultimately you will always need people maintaining the 'no code' solution. And those are more complex to maintain, meaning it takes more people to do it. You might one day be able to replace a few of the simpler coding jobs, by building tools where people just sort of visually plug one API into another, but so long as I still see people doing jobs that could be automated by some simple bash scripting EVERYWHERE, I can tell you, programmers aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

gregjor 5y ago
This is a great explanation, thanks. Any no/low code tool that has the features and power to address real-world problems will get just as complicated as “real” coding. WordPress is an example. Easy to put up a few blog pages, but anything else requires plugins and glue code and someone who knows how to make it work. SQL was at one time presented as a tool for non-technical people to run ad hoc queries, supposedly saving time not waiting for programmers to write code. It turns out that mastering SQL is moderately hard, but understanding the relational model and a non-trivial schema requires real skill and experience. Just look at the huge number of terrible spreadsheets in the wild — Excel is the most widely-used low/no code tool out there and almost no one can do anything but type into cells and maybe total a column. I taught my daughter advanced Excel and pivot tables for her job at a big non-profit, now she’s practically lay-off proof.

gregjor 5y ago

This is a great explanation, thanks. Any no/low code tool that has the features and power to address real-world problems will get just as complicated as “real” coding. WordPress is an example. Easy to put up a few blog pages, but anything else requires plugins and glue code and someone who knows how to make it work. SQL was at one time presented as a tool for non-technical people to run ad hoc queries, supposedly saving time not waiting for programmers to write code. It turns out that mastering SQL is moderately hard, but understanding the relational model and a non-trivial schema requires real skill and experience. Just look at the huge number of terrible spreadsheets in the wild — Excel is the most widely-used low/no code tool out there and almost no one can do anything but type into cells and maybe total a column. I taught my daughter advanced Excel and pivot tables for her job at a big non-profit, now she’s practically lay-off proof.