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I find it interesting that coders seemingly are fascinated by no-code tools. I mean these things have been around forever, iterating in development. I've recen

by sva_ 4y ago

I find it interesting that coders seemingly are fascinated by no-code tools. I mean these things have been around forever, iterating in development. I've recently had the idea that the real problem isn't ease of use and effectivity of these tools, but rather that people who don't code just aren't too interested in developing things. After all, if they were, they'd probably also be interested in learning to code. So I'm not too sold on the idea that these kind of tools will one day make developers go out of business.

ngc248 4y ago
>>> I find it interesting that coders seemingly are fascinated by no-code tools. I think it would be mostly management who would be interested in no code tools. I understand, the allure of not needing a coder, anyone can create an application etc.
- jeltz 4y ago
  In my experience it is not really management but more various stakeholders and product developers who just want to implement ideas without having to ask for dev time and then wait for the project to be prioritized and hopefully eventually implemented. They do not like the dev team as bottle neck and gatekeeper. But what that basically means that everyone becomes a developer which often ends up in s huge mess. Using no code tools is not much different from writing code. And letting a bunch of unskilled devs loose on your code base is generally stupid.
- alexissantos 4y ago
  I'm management and the primary developer. (We've got a super small tech team.) I look forward to no-code tools so I can get designers and others tackling less complex problems/projects that would otherwise take up my development time. The hope is that I'd be able to focus on more challenging things, much like how open source relieves developers from building yet another [insert here].
danielvaughn 4y ago
My take on it is that no-code misunderstands the problem it’s trying to solve. The root assumption of any tool of this kind is that code is complex. Code isn’t complex, it’s simple. Because it’s simple, it’s flexible, and because it’s flexible, it’s often used to solve complex problems. Business people see these complex problems being solved by code and think that the code is what is complex. They don’t understand that the business logic at the heart of the product is what creates the complexity, and that this complexity is still going to be there even if they use a drag-and-drop interface.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  That’s exactly it.
- spikej 4y ago
  That's only half the story. Bigger hurdles are the framework fatigue and the constant of having to keep things up to date even after you've got a "complete" product. This is why you see shadow IT in the form of MS Access DBs and spreadsheets that (no matter how terribly implemented) won't die. With no-code, those at least go away. You're no longer having to deal with unnecessary complications of having to learn or deal with WebPack, etc, and you're no longer needing to stay in an endless cycle of dependency hell updates.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    > With no-code, those at least go away. Spreadsheets are no-code that works and has been for decades. No-code won’t kill spreadsheets.
    - kcplate 4y ago
      Half the time the feature requests I get for the product I manage can be summarized to “like…a spreadsheet”. I’m convinced that if the entire business world had its way, it would run entirely within an excel spreadsheet.
      - 4y ago
scarface74 4y ago
I’ve seen plenty of unmaintainable solutions written using Excel and VBA, FoxPro, Access etc. In my recent experience, the only “low code” solution that may be feasible to non developers will be something like ChatGPT. I am working on a project now and it does as well as junior developers writing well written, commented logical Python code when you give it your “business requirements” in plain English. While I wasn’t too surprised that it knew about standard Python libraries that work with xml, Yaml, json, etc., i was surprised that I could tell it: “Write a Python script that takes an xml file with key and value nodes (I gave it a sample) and given a DynamoDB table with key and value fields, if the key from the XML file has a corresponding key in the DDB table, replace the value node in the XML file with the value field in the DDB table”. The code worked perfectly. There is no reason that properly trained model couldn’t create a GUI.

by sva_ 4y ago

ngc248 4y ago

>>> I find it interesting that coders seemingly are fascinated by no-code tools. I think it would be mostly management who would be interested in no code tools. I understand, the allure of not needing a coder, anyone can create an application etc.

jeltz 4y ago
In my experience it is not really management but more various stakeholders and product developers who just want to implement ideas without having to ask for dev time and then wait for the project to be prioritized and hopefully eventually implemented. They do not like the dev team as bottle neck and gatekeeper. But what that basically means that everyone becomes a developer which often ends up in s huge mess. Using no code tools is not much different from writing code. And letting a bunch of unskilled devs loose on your code base is generally stupid.
alexissantos 4y ago
I'm management and the primary developer. (We've got a super small tech team.) I look forward to no-code tools so I can get designers and others tackling less complex problems/projects that would otherwise take up my development time. The hope is that I'd be able to focus on more challenging things, much like how open source relieves developers from building yet another [insert here].

danielvaughn 4y ago

My take on it is that no-code misunderstands the problem it’s trying to solve. The root assumption of any tool of this kind is that code is complex. Code isn’t complex, it’s simple. Because it’s simple, it’s flexible, and because it’s flexible, it’s often used to solve complex problems. Business people see these complex problems being solved by code and think that the code is what is complex. They don’t understand that the business logic at the heart of the product is what creates the complexity, and that this complexity is still going to be there even if they use a drag-and-drop interface.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago
That’s exactly it.
spikej 4y ago
That's only half the story. Bigger hurdles are the framework fatigue and the constant of having to keep things up to date even after you've got a "complete" product. This is why you see shadow IT in the form of MS Access DBs and spreadsheets that (no matter how terribly implemented) won't die. With no-code, those at least go away. You're no longer having to deal with unnecessary complications of having to learn or deal with WebPack, etc, and you're no longer needing to stay in an endless cycle of dependency hell updates.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  > With no-code, those at least go away. Spreadsheets are no-code that works and has been for decades. No-code won’t kill spreadsheets.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    Half the time the feature requests I get for the product I manage can be summarized to “like…a spreadsheet”. I’m convinced that if the entire business world had its way, it would run entirely within an excel spreadsheet.
    - 4y ago

scarface74 4y ago

I’ve seen plenty of unmaintainable solutions written using Excel and VBA, FoxPro, Access etc. In my recent experience, the only “low code” solution that may be feasible to non developers will be something like ChatGPT. I am working on a project now and it does as well as junior developers writing well written, commented logical Python code when you give it your “business requirements” in plain English. While I wasn’t too surprised that it knew about standard Python libraries that work with xml, Yaml, json, etc., i was surprised that I could tell it: “Write a Python script that takes an xml file with key and value nodes (I gave it a sample) and given a DynamoDB table with key and value fields, if the key from the XML file has a corresponding key in the DDB table, replace the value node in the XML file with the value field in the DDB table”. The code worked perfectly. There is no reason that properly trained model couldn’t create a GUI.