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I doubt anyone here on hn will be impacted in any way by such tools. If anything it would be a positive impact as these tools aren't trivial to build. However

I doubt anyone here on hn will be impacted in any way by such tools. If anything it would be a positive impact as these tools aren't trivial to build. However it will impact wordpress developer types. I imagine a graph like tool where you drag and drop nodes and link inputs and outputs will make quite a few redundant. Stuff like signup -> confirmation email -> send spam every X days, or order -> get customer data -> get stock availability -> ship -> notify are such common workflows among small shops that i find it hilarious people still pay developers to implement them. Each node can be a call to an internal or external api, a db query or whatnot. Perhaps a good opportunity for brilliant minds to take on this and _do it right_.

PinkPigeon 5y ago
The funny thing is that bubble.io (as one example) does this already. And it does it really well. And now I look on freelancer.com and there's still people wanting to hire "bubble developers". I have been talking to my tech illiterate friends what they think about "easy" no-code solutions like WordPress or squarespace. The answer is always the same. It's all far too complicated and confusing. If I presented someone like that with bubble.io and said "here is this node graph tool to connect..." I'd have lost them at node graph and they would never, ever learn, let alone like that thing. Apple famously drive engineers crazy with their UI philosophy of hiding everything at the cost of control or customisation. But I have a feeling it works. I feel that for many people, tech is this confusing thing that will never not be confusing because they've learned to expect that. At least my friends in their late 20s to 30s have fought with technology all their lives to the point where I don't know if anything can remedy that preset expectation. So long as these people exist, we as engineers and developers can keep looking at these no-code tools and marvel at how simple things have been made, but I think we have to change our expectations and realise that even the simplest still has to become simpler. The battle of trying to teach that generation technical concepts is a very hard one, when there are companies falling over each other trying to simplify everything to the point of almost, well, zero-effort? Maybe that's the next step: low-code, then no-code (but some effort involved) and then no-code, no-effort (aka you just sit there passively while a computer reads your brain and works out everything you want) I say all of this while I'm building a no-code website builder that's looking more and more like it'll be targeting kids, the elderly and luddites, so I've had to do some thinking around this problem space recently.

PinkPigeon 5y ago

The funny thing is that bubble.io (as one example) does this already. And it does it really well. And now I look on freelancer.com and there's still people wanting to hire "bubble developers". I have been talking to my tech illiterate friends what they think about "easy" no-code solutions like WordPress or squarespace. The answer is always the same. It's all far too complicated and confusing. If I presented someone like that with bubble.io and said "here is this node graph tool to connect..." I'd have lost them at node graph and they would never, ever learn, let alone like that thing. Apple famously drive engineers crazy with their UI philosophy of hiding everything at the cost of control or customisation. But I have a feeling it works. I feel that for many people, tech is this confusing thing that will never not be confusing because they've learned to expect that. At least my friends in their late 20s to 30s have fought with technology all their lives to the point where I don't know if anything can remedy that preset expectation. So long as these people exist, we as engineers and developers can keep looking at these no-code tools and marvel at how simple things have been made, but I think we have to change our expectations and realise that even the simplest still has to become simpler. The battle of trying to teach that generation technical concepts is a very hard one, when there are companies falling over each other trying to simplify everything to the point of almost, well, zero-effort? Maybe that's the next step: low-code, then no-code (but some effort involved) and then no-code, no-effort (aka you just sit there passively while a computer reads your brain and works out everything you want) I say all of this while I'm building a no-code website builder that's looking more and more like it'll be targeting kids, the elderly and luddites, so I've had to do some thinking around this problem space recently.