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Have you lived with it over longer period of time? What happens when stuff evolves and becomes integrated? I’ve, several times, seen the result of tangled lc/

Have you lived with it over longer period of time? What happens when stuff evolves and becomes integrated? I’ve, several times, seen the result of tangled lc/nc stuff gone production critical and… it becomes an unmaintainable mess that no one wants to touch. This becomes a massive roadblock for agility and change down the line. A simple, discrete, crud app that could have been an xls - sure. Great for PoC and demos; horrible in a live business setting. IME.

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
Lots of code gets rewritten as it evolves. Even the best developer can't predict the future. And very few can write code so fluid that it adapts to future use. Also, there are apps that are useful but don't need to be used enterprise wide. No code will change the work environment similar to the way the the spreadsheet changed it.
- jordanbeiber 4y ago
  The problem with software is infinitely larger when rewriting, refactoring and maintaining ”not code”. I’m in such a situation as we speak, and I’ve worked with low/no code workflow tools for more than a decade. I’ve been part in building two: one BPM(N) workflow based and one graph-based data-modeling, form-building, event-sourced nightmare (like Alan or structr [1], both probably 10 years old by now, btw) - it goes for a great sales pitch but never touches on the finer points of maintaining and iterating on systems over time; a.k.a ownership! Coding is usually not the issue, especially in business settings. Rather it’s about accumulating domain knowledge and expertise and figuring out boundaries. It’s perhaps even more about owning the end results over time. There’s a sort of quasi-competency built up around tools like this - you still need to understand how to build and govern systems, which is the hard part. You end up with non-system thinkers that can build opaque stuff in a DSL. This ends badly. Yeah, I’ve been around. Also blockchain will change everything. ;) [0] https://alan-platform.com/ https://alan-platform.com/ [1] https://structr.com/ https://structr.com/

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago

Lots of code gets rewritten as it evolves. Even the best developer can't predict the future. And very few can write code so fluid that it adapts to future use. Also, there are apps that are useful but don't need to be used enterprise wide. No code will change the work environment similar to the way the the spreadsheet changed it.

jordanbeiber 4y ago
The problem with software is infinitely larger when rewriting, refactoring and maintaining ”not code”. I’m in such a situation as we speak, and I’ve worked with low/no code workflow tools for more than a decade. I’ve been part in building two: one BPM(N) workflow based and one graph-based data-modeling, form-building, event-sourced nightmare (like Alan or structr [1], both probably 10 years old by now, btw) - it goes for a great sales pitch but never touches on the finer points of maintaining and iterating on systems over time; a.k.a ownership! Coding is usually not the issue, especially in business settings. Rather it’s about accumulating domain knowledge and expertise and figuring out boundaries. It’s perhaps even more about owning the end results over time. There’s a sort of quasi-competency built up around tools like this - you still need to understand how to build and govern systems, which is the hard part. You end up with non-system thinkers that can build opaque stuff in a DSL. This ends badly. Yeah, I’ve been around. Also blockchain will change everything. ;) [0] https://alan-platform.com/ https://alan-platform.com/ [1] https://structr.com/ https://structr.com/