Is No-Code (or Low-Code) the Future of Development

You're wrong. if you are a coder, you are obsolete.

What happens when no code plug ins or whatever is being used just gets discontinued. Does that not just completely break whatever has been built?

Nope. No-Code is useless in developing complex apps for large enterprises. Just like many RAD tools.

The problem is no code tools are pretty niche uses, limitations, drawbacks and almost always over promise. Low code tools are often development productivity tools and need a highly technical person to skirt around the tool's limitations. And I agree it will just shift how developers are used. Some may even be used to help people write the code for the business users who are using low code tools. The best of these tools allow flexibility for the exception cases. Disasters can happen, but it is usually a sign the tool is poor. I saw one tool create a dynamic db except it put everything in two tables and performance was understandably horrid. Thankfully, the tool allowed you to define a schema, but some highly technical guy had to do that.

To build a no-code tool, you need to write code. Simple!

Very informative video! How about Outsystem vs Mendix? What are your thoughts, if any? Thanks

Low code-only valid use case is a fast prototype. Cannot be used for prod. Hard to debug, has no community compared to programming, is nonscalable, and is hard to customize and extend. Having a small community is the biggest hurdle as AI does not have a large enough dataset to train on, so exit copilot, chatgpt, and its predecessors.

Good video....

Good high level view!

Totally agree. It has it's disadvantages but alot of advantages

I've used no code tools for some time now with my own consulting/freelance builder.

I used to code websites but with all the tools available I decided to move more towards a "marketing person" than a "developer person".

While my developers are open minded and understand that our puropse is to solve business problems, there is some hesitation and comments "I'm not a SW Engineer to drag and drop boxes around". I cannot see my highly skilled and qualified SW Engineers to work with it, without feeling degraded. If business thinks they want to do it themselves, I'm happy to leave this field to them. Entirely! There is enough important work that requires skills and capabilites that business cannot provide.

One big con with low-code specifically, is the development environment. Usually no testing, no code navigation, no documentation quick-view, basic autocomplete, and few keyboard shortcusts. And then there‘s latency!

Great post…

I setup a company called TAAP to help organisations build apps faster using no code, however as a developer you’ll know it’s more complicated than that…

The adoption was mostly blocked by developers because they were worried about their careers.

We pivoted and sold to organisations rather than fight with IT. We just created solutions faster, more reliably, with smaller teams, with almost zero legacy maintenance costs.

These weren’t just simple apps, but enterprise scale solutions, even operating on a global basis. As we added video, augmented reality, multi-user collaboration, and more and more advanced capabilities organisations have recognised the power of no code, helping partition work between the business and IT.

No Code is driving demand for even more developers, to help organisations not just digitise the functions deemed important, but everything.

IT provides the governance, control, guard rails allowing the business to do its thing!

Don’t worry about being out of a job, No Code is just another framework abstraction, and not always visual drag and drop, but declarative in nature, with a WYSIWYG developer environment.

TAAP has become marriage guidance between IT & the Business, working faster, more effectively, and leveraging the most advanced of technologies to create applications the average developer would struggle to create.

I’m often told by developers they don’t need No Code, they can build it in their preferred programming language, but my response which helps contextualise the debate is, well why not code in assembler?? The answer perfectly describes no code, do more faster, quicker, with less effort, with more frameworks with pre-existing frameworks and libraries, no code and low code is just the next evolution.

No Code gets a bad wrap because there are a lot of tools not functionally capable or able to build rich powerful apps, and hence the frustration.

TAAP came from space & defence and was engineered to simplify applications development. It’s not much of a tool if at the first sign of complexity you have to resort to JavaScript or some other programming language. We have pushed the No code envelope to be able to do the job properly.

A good no code tool helps with architectural partitioning, data abstraction, integrated version management, and can scale.

I’m biased, but take a look at no code before you formulate an entrenched a position.

TAAP has been deployed globally and into almost every industry and vertical.

I created TAAP for developers to do more faster, it’s just with Citizen Developers we can further accelerate and partition of development between the domain experts and business analysts supported by IT, the guardians of the data.

How long would it take you to create a multi user Video Conferencing application, file collaboration, live video annotation, remote photo capture, multi user UI messaging, waiting room, and so on… and then link it to a database, etc… ? 30 mins!!

Take a look, great for B2B, but even B2C mobile apps, online and offline.

Have fun with No Code, and especially as a pro developer you’ll get engaged more closely with the business because you’ll help them become a truly agile enterprise, whatever size of organisation that they are.

Cheers, Steve

No code low code will surely affect developers... Not now but atleast in future... The rise of Al and ML .. is not a joke...

I've tried SO hard to learn coding but my brain is just not made for those levels of abstraction.
Yet I have the passion for app development, and no-code platfors have changed my life.
If I could code, I really would be elbow deep in it but oh man I just can't crack it.
Hopefully it just helps the coding environment evolve faster or something, I dunno.
I'm all for no-code though.

woah, fantastic discussion! Thanks for sharing

short answer: No

Great points! The evolution of WordPress always comes to my mind when I hear no-code-low-code. At some point 10-15 years ago I thought that will kill my simple web design business but actually it did help businesses as you mentioned proof the idea faster at lower cost and allowed a lower entry point for businesses to have a website (then). Moving forward now we have "WordPress Developers".

Alright, but, who, is going to make a no-code platform? CODERS!

I still find work with VBA/Access, especialy VBA, companies love their excel macros

Thank you Donn for a great explanation

Hi Donn, I was wanting to know what you think about Unqork? I would really love to see a video about it.

My worry is that managers are getting sold on the idea of using non developers for churning out critical production apps. I’m probably going to get roped into fixing the mess, much like what already happens with the ‘unofficial’ Access databases being written by end users.

They use low code where I work, but I personally I don't like it because it doesn't allow fine tuning that are required in doing certain tasks. Simple things such as getting the value from a drop down list is sooo needlessly convoluted, I find it way easier to do this through code.

I think the future should be a hybrid of both code and no code, a benefit of low code is that there is less risk of vulnerabilities because of poor code, and the backend is automatically connected and handled for you, you are also able to deploy applications instantly and run them on any device which is massively useful.

If low code is the future, we should embrace it, but there should be a way to allow developers to utilise their skills in code to fine tune things, there should always be room for fine tuning for those who already have experience with development, whereas those who aren't experienced are still able to benefit.

We still need coders to use no code solutions. There is no way for someone without any basic understanding of HTML structure to understand what is a Container in Webflow or Wix

So you are not really a software developer.

Hi Donn, you'd mentioned that you ran a Training site on no code for 6 years, may i know if it is a Website or a Webapp? Where did you host it on? On web-hosting services like BlueHost, Hostgator or one of those Cloud services like AWS or GCP? Thx for answering, as i am quite confused as to which way to pursue new business, as in, a website or webapp....Thx:)

You can make website with Wordpress but it doesn’t mean html css js are not used and payed

Time to move up the abstraction chain.

How can i get a quote?

It's just another tool which as a good developer one needs to know🙂

Low code is a crap, no code is a lie.

I'm web developer, front and Back!! Is this how it's going to be? 😳 Scary!!

I don't like the typing noise in the background. But everything else was wonderfully executed. Good job on the vid. It was very helpful to me :).

Thanks for the video. I might be biased, being the founder of one of the very first low-code no-code platform for Web applications. About the future of these platforms, I want to add a simple observation: starting from the 80s, we have seen a constant trend in software development: adding more and more levels of abstraction; the low-code no-code trend is adding yet another level of abstraction and I don't think we'll go back.

About integration and the limits of these platforms, you made good points; I would stress the fact that integration and possibilities to add features/customize with additional code change a lot from platform to platform. In dadabik for example you can add hooks in pure PHP, so any PHP programmer can do it without having to learn additional languages.


Where the final application must be hosted is another point to consider: does the platform provide an on-premises solution so you can host (and move) your app and db anywhere or you are forced to use their cloud? This can make a lot of difference e.g. if you have direct access to the database the platform is using you have much more options in terms of integration and tuning.

Loved your phrase on Access.

I was hired as a full stack developer to build solutions using low code tools....Even though I like the Business solutions being built but I feel my skills of being a Full stack developer is getting useless .....my love for programming is still there and I don't know how to get back into my interest.

This is the trend that keep inflating applications to the point where you need at least 1GB RAM to run them.

This is also so limited that it cannot go beyond the "mindless" applications that do no logic - in other words, static or extremely limited applications.

BTW, no-code is not correct, code is generated by the IDE, they should rename it to no-typing or no-code-writing or no-smart

What about native mobile applications. I'm an iOS developer writing programs and applications' structures in Swift. What are your thoughts on this Donn. Greatly appreciate the help. Will Support your Chanel greatly on this.

I almost quit my CS degree because they started the first semester with access.

Donn - good video. Being a professional software developer today is not about writing within a programming language, and writing code is not the most crucial part of the job. Software development is mostly about the stack, the platforms, data sources, databases, network layers, APIs, security mechanisms and procedures that you use to build software solutions. Meaning anything you can do faster is a win.