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Are there any products which have been successful and made with no-code tools? Seems like I'm always seeing no-code tools, but never any proper products made wi

Are there any products which have been successful and made with no-code tools? Seems like I'm always seeing no-code tools, but never any proper products made with them. Sure there are website builders like wix which are used for personal blogs and such - but that's not really what I'm asking about. Or else there's wordpress: but I'm loathe to call wordpress no-code because of the amount of complexity in managing plugins - we've got whole "engineering" roles dedicated to tweaking wp settings. Surely this whole idea of "You don't have to write code" quickly turns into "You can't change/fix the product" and that's a whole other problem.

creakingstairs 2y ago
I suspect most of the low code products are internal-only products and proof of concept apps. Like spreadsheets, other teams find it empowering to be able to make automations without getting the engineering team involved.
- aitchnyu 2y ago
  Umm, what automatations can be done without engineering team? Even a readonly BI access needed a few meetings with engineers
RyanHamilton 2y ago
I work in low-code and make a tool so I know this area fairly well. I can't think of any proper product made with no-code tools now but I can think of many that started with low-code and I imagine you can too. Think of every internal application that started as a spreadsheet, or a single web page, maybe even static. What I tell my potential customers is, that it's a pyramid of effort vs exploration. At the bottom you have a wide base of possibilities you want to explore, at the top of the pyramid you have a proper polished product. What low-code allows you to do is try many more experiments at the bottom and to maintain them at cheaper cost. Most will stay as internal tools and never become a real product but some will. For example my tool is letting data analysts in crypto firms built out internal trading controls, trade monitoring and alerts within days and weeks. The happiest customers I have are ones that were about to hire a UI guy. It let's them delay that hire. Then when they want to provide end client interfaces or seroiusly improve a low-code version to a separate polished app, they hire the UI expert and even better the UI person can see roughly what is needed. The alternative isn't always between polished app and low-code, it's between apps that may never get built and low-code.
invalidname 2y ago
This is for bootstrapping. After the code is generated you need to use it. We used JHipster (mentioned in the post) a few years back. It let us get started with a lot of boilerplate and best practices. I don't know if it was the best approach but we had a fantastic demo in no time and the basics were pretty good. We did fix a lot in the code after as the product kept growing.
imtringued 2y ago
The entire idea behind no code is that you develop a throwaway app in a few weeks. You could think of it as a spreadsheet with a more complicated UI.

creakingstairs 2y ago

I suspect most of the low code products are internal-only products and proof of concept apps. Like spreadsheets, other teams find it empowering to be able to make automations without getting the engineering team involved.

aitchnyu 2y ago
Umm, what automatations can be done without engineering team? Even a readonly BI access needed a few meetings with engineers

RyanHamilton 2y ago

I work in low-code and make a tool so I know this area fairly well. I can't think of any proper product made with no-code tools now but I can think of many that started with low-code and I imagine you can too. Think of every internal application that started as a spreadsheet, or a single web page, maybe even static. What I tell my potential customers is, that it's a pyramid of effort vs exploration. At the bottom you have a wide base of possibilities you want to explore, at the top of the pyramid you have a proper polished product. What low-code allows you to do is try many more experiments at the bottom and to maintain them at cheaper cost. Most will stay as internal tools and never become a real product but some will. For example my tool is letting data analysts in crypto firms built out internal trading controls, trade monitoring and alerts within days and weeks. The happiest customers I have are ones that were about to hire a UI guy. It let's them delay that hire. Then when they want to provide end client interfaces or seroiusly improve a low-code version to a separate polished app, they hire the UI expert and even better the UI person can see roughly what is needed. The alternative isn't always between polished app and low-code, it's between apps that may never get built and low-code.

invalidname 2y ago

This is for bootstrapping. After the code is generated you need to use it. We used JHipster (mentioned in the post) a few years back. It let us get started with a lot of boilerplate and best practices. I don't know if it was the best approach but we had a fantastic demo in no time and the basics were pretty good. We did fix a lot in the code after as the product kept growing.

imtringued 2y ago

The entire idea behind no code is that you develop a throwaway app in a few weeks. You could think of it as a spreadsheet with a more complicated UI.