Will Low Code/No Code Kill Programming Jobs?

.NET with Entity Framework and Linq practically IS low code/no code. And it produces terribly slow, inefficient bloated software just like you would expect. I avoid blackbox programming (ie, EF, Linq, and several other .NET modules) for that very reason. Learn to use the language, and the big benefit is that when something breaks, it doesn't break inside a black box that you can't examine. It breaks in YOUR code, where you can put a debugger on it and examine what's going on.

Node Red has projects which are git repos

In general, I agree with most of what you say. However, it depends on what platform you are using. I have been using Microsoft Dynamics for 10 years now, and it supports multiple environments ie Development, Test, UAT and production a type of version control by choosing what elements to include in a deployment, saving of deployments elements and roll back, it also allows logging errors and history of values which is all useful for debugging.

More recently I have been working with Liberty Create by Netcall which also supports these functions as well as automated testing.
Different platforms have different ways of doing things and it takes time to learn what a platform can do, what it is good at, and ways to get over the limitations of the system. Software development is always tricky especially if the problem domain is not clear or if different people building the software have different ideas of what the problem they are trying to address is or how the solution should look.

Having 2 degrees in IT which covered different aspects of development and 20 years of experience in software development, I’m still learning as technology and techniques change the tools I have used change.

With low code/no code platforms as my physics teacher used to say over 30 years ago you pay your money you take your choice.

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Low /No programmers can continue dreaming about low / no code replacing programming jobs.

Dave, you are great. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and view on things. I learn a lot from your videos.

The book is awesome, btw, it helped me to understand the scientific method more and to use it better at work, but not only at work))) it is kind of an ultimate tool

Thanks for your hard work!

People say 'They've been saying this for years' or 'it wont ever happen". However we should all know that tech advances day by day and at this point anything is very much possible. They have tried to implement low code solutions many times and yes they have failed. However there is someone out there looking at those failures who is smarter than both me and you who will make a technological leap and end up figuring it out. We can say it wont happen but if you honestly think like that I would ask you to look at the technological advances already made 2 months into this year. The truth is we do not know. Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant.

Use node-red, it's the ultimate low code tool.

First, let me say I love your t-shirts. Yet again, this is a great one.

This isn't a comment on this specific video, rather a comment on the ideas you promote in general.

My problem isn't any one specific idea, it's that most of the things you promote depend on doing them perfectly 100% of the time, and more importantly, building on other things also being done perfectly. Ironically, you always talk about reducing coupling, but the very ideas you promote are tightly coupled. What do I mean by this?

* In order to do CD you need to do CI, have reliable unit tests, have high assurance of correct code, use trunk-based development, do pair programming, do tdd, etc...
* In order to do CI you need to have reliable unit tests (I won't say coverage, because we both know that's a useless benchmark)
* In order to do CI you need to be able to constant commits and use techniques like feature flags (which are not useful for many kinds of changes, such as database changes that break the alternate paths)
* In order to have high assurance of correct code you need to use pair programming (because you can no longer do pull requests due to trunk-based development)
* In order to have reliable unit tests, you need to do TDD (otherwise you have tons of issues with useless tests that test implementation)
* In order to do TDD you need to write it from scratch as testable (yes, there are techniques to improve code and add tests to legacy code, but that's not really TDD and it takes a very long to for those tests to be useful much less reliable at indicating broken code).

And so on, and so on...

This seems like there's a huge coupling between all these techniques, take one out and the entire process fails. Which makes it much much harder to incrementally achieve CD, especially if you have a lot of legacy code (like most organizations) that doesn't use those techniques and isn't very testable.

My experience, and I have no hard data to support his, is that doing TDD adds about 15-30% more effort up front, but reduces rework by up to 90% on the back end. This is great. But trying to add unit tests after the fact (again, in my experience with no data) is that it can take 50-250% of the original effort for a fraction of the tdd based benefit (unless you end up essentially rewriting the code in a tdd way as part of the refactoring, then you get the full benefit but still at huge cost (closer to that 250% when all is said and done)).

I'm not disagreeing that everything you promote, when used together, results in significantly better software. I'm simply wondering if it's truly practical to expect this perfection, and if you're not perfect, everything falls apart anyways. (all too often when someone comments about how this process or another fails it's "You weren't doing it right", which implies not doing it perfectly leads to failure)

Sure, perfect is the enemy of good and all that, but why is tight coupling bad for software, but good for software methodology?

250% more effort is a hard sell to management. At that point, you might as well throw the code away and rewrite it from scratch, but that's also a very hard sell, so you end up with only lukewarm support for your entire process, and if you don't get full buy-in what's the point?

My problem with low code / no code is that even if it seems like it solves your problem you are then setting the client up for failure in the future. Most of these solutions are small companies that might not last long, and usually they want to host the solution in someway. Plus by the time you bump into the edges of the system the client is already deeply invested in it. So it would have to provide such great value in the short term that it wouldn't be all cancelled out with the costs of migrating away from it after a certain point.

I don't usually test my code, but when I do, I do it in production!

I hope so! Programming languages are a dime a dozen and there's no value in having a million ways of doing the same thing.

The more afraid of programming we get the slower, more bloated and less reliable our industry becomes.

sirven para cosas sencillas, ya cuando necesitas validaciones complejas, procesos pesados de datos, ademas de reutilizacion de codigo (olvidalo)

I am currently working on a project where we had a low code/'no code' environment. Now I have to port everything into a mixture of C++ and Python because the 'no code' version was way too slow, resource-heavy and some features would spontaneously stop working. I don't think that programming jobs will be affected that badly. Because libraries literally do the same thing as 'low code' environments. You do not have to code them yourself and we all still have our jobs.

Someone has to code the low-code system.

No.

Ever time he said low code I kept thinking of the Spanish word loco. Maybe there is a connection.

As an SDET who worked with the so called low code solutions I can attest that they require more coding/tweaking in order to work than a proper scratch built test harness.

I agree with pretty much every point made. Here are a few related personal opinions -

Sometimes the most practical approach to testing something is to just test it in production, because the functionality being produced is critically needed and the time it would take to produce it effectively otherwise is prohibitive.

Biological neuroscience shows fairly conclusively that human cognition is the result of a mechanistic process, so AI cognition can and probably will eventually catch up with and even surpass human cognition. At that point, AI programmers might replace human programmers. But I don't think low code/no code systems ever will, for exactly the reasons presented.

I think most people think low/no code solutions will replace programmers on a large scale believe that most significantly different problem domains that are possible or likely to ever exist have been or will someday be thoroughly explored enough to be condensed into no/low code solutions. I sort of think that's a ridiculous idea, because even if all significant problem domains were so thoroughly explored (which by itself seems ridiculous to me) drilling down into the level of "configuration" details that would be required in many, many specific real world instances would more-or-less amount to programming.

you could try Oracle Apex, I think it's a very good alternative, I've been testing it for the last two years, starting for free and staying free for now, if the application continues to grow I'll have to switch to a monthly payment method, but in exchange I have a cloud experience from end to end and very satisfactory, greetings from Argentina

Love the shirt!

This was experience with a machine vision ide by cognex called cognex designer. It was sold as making it easier to write machine vision systems so you don’t need software developers. It had a flow chart style programming interface. It was great for simple throw away experiments and demos but when it came to real applications managing a spider web of connections between different functions in the graphical interface became overwhelming.

Of course it allowed you to write custom code in c# but it didn’t let you write classes, not in the ide you could make these in visual studio but you had to close and reopen cognex designer every time you recompiled.

It also packaged all the files up in a zip file they called a cdp. I did use git but it was difficult to understand what change you made caused the issue that you needed to role back for.

In the end software developer wrote all the software and the non developers didn’t want to touch it.

Management didn’t really seem to understand this.

I cannot agree more with this premise. I interview and lead many developers and i have said to them so many times they probably roll their eyes when I say it that software development is not about coding. Coding is not software development. Coding is a part of it, what makes you a sw developer is your ability to determine what code to write and how to write it to solve a problem and provide a value.

Does this all apply to BPM and Salesforce development? Some of the BPM tools I have seen have no automated testing, no source control and a dynamic, but inefficiently created database.

Dave are you willing to share the names of these low code products you use ?

Hey! I have that shirt! It’s my favorite!

No-code solutions scared me when I was earlier in my career because I thought that they would make me replaceable. I now understand that software engineering is about managing complexity and enabling change over time. Low code tools don't really introduce any new or compelling solutions to either of those problems.

All of that said: writing code isn't intrinsically valuable, it's just one approach to solving problems. If you can solve problems with less code then that's probably a win.

So this is similar to flutter ? Like Google made it to make one app for both Android and iOS but it was rarely use in scaled business

We do not think it will kill jobs - if anything, it will amplify it. As of today, you can only create faster prototypes with nocode, but you cannot completely replace code. We build prototypes all the time.

After falling for the "nocode/lowcode lie", that you can "building anything you can imagine without writing code", I abandoned programming and started to look into nocode tools, at first I was amazed and extremely happy that I'll finally be able to launch products without having to spend months bashing my head against the keyboard, trying to find why it doesn't work the way it should. Fast forward 3 months I'm back to coding, I have a slight disgust every time I hear about nocode/lowcode, and it's going to take A LOT for a nocode/lowcode platform to convince me to give it a try in the future. Long story short, of course it was all a lie, I couldn't "build anything you can imagine", I could barely build anything in fact. I built on 6 nocode platforms (glide, bubble, adalo, appgyver, flutterflow, backendless), and looked into many more, none of them were able to build a serious high quality, complex software product. Some of them came with a predefined user interface and didn't allow you to edit it (wtf?!), some of them straight up lacked basic functionality (seriously how tf am I supposed to "build the next airbnb" if can't even make an element invisible...), some of them were so complicated and hard to use that it would've been easier just to write code (oh, the irony) and some of them straight up didn't even work ("where was an error processing your request please try again later" yeah thanks bro) . So in conclusion, don't do the same mistakes I did, lowcode/nocode is okay if you want a small little app for an MVP or to impress your mom and you have no intention of learning to code. But if you already know how to code and/or want to build a serious software project, stay as far away from nocode as possible.

Make people believe that magic wand exists. Solving problems with vocabulary . With fewer edcated prople though , there is a brilliant business for magic. Nature could not code humans with 'low brain' . Try to understand that the amount of code is positively correlated with the amount of data to encode it. For images for instance . So by nature ,code weights is going to increase.
For devs , low code use mean adequate library , for others , it means hire a good developper. Use can't even script a small formulae in the UI of an application , they are not educatd to testing as well so they just dont want to code AT ALL
Finally, conneting functional blocks has always proven to be unscalable and exploding in complexity ( like the messagin paradigm which is a joke ) so i would call it 'spaguetti code )

NO, your STILL coding it's just visual you need to understand logic. Also it will only make more jobs for us, folks people can't even use WIX and Wordpress without someone doing it for them. My only thing is nocode folks don't understand they don't own the code. What they make does not work outside of the platforms. Coding is more than about making software for big corperations. Please folks can we keep some deeper meanings to things instead of being shallow about everything.

I've been working with a startup for 2 years now. We had our ups and downs but things were going pretty well until recently when he's decided to switch our code base with use PHP, Symfony and mysql to no code/low code. I've told him that it's quite risky what he's trying to do but he didn't want to listen so i've agreed but the more i use the tool ( bubble ) the harder i find to go from a programmer mindset to no code and so i've called him and told him that it would be hard for me with the deadline they are asking when i'm pretty bad with these types of things and since they're still in early stage (startup), i don't want to waste their time (a.k.a money) and i've told him to find someone that is more comfortable with bubble. He felt disappointed somehow. What did i do wrong! (i'm 23 by the way)

No code/Low code has already taken over. If you are a java developer, you are highly likely to use the Spring Framework, which has taken over lots of boiler plate aspects and you are just hooking up your custom code. This means it take a fewer developer to code up a java project than it used to be in the pre-Spring Framework days. Coding will not be lost, but the problem domain will shift to a higher level. Probably, machine learning.

Outsystems as a low code development platforms enables developers to build enterprise level full stack applications. It provides end to end development features including Devops, Production and Quality assurance. We can now build complex applications within very short time span.

It's the same as renaming programming=coding. They need more people to work with computers and they don't want to scare off the snowflakes. The bottom line is, if you don't know, you should learn to program first, then feel free to use something to move faster or more efficiently.

ChatGPT....

Great talk and communication too. And an open-mindedness I would never have.

You are pointing the real great problem of no-code: no-code means no code lifecycle management. And that's a source of disaster. I always find my team importing stuff from Production to realign things in Development, or redeveloping things after being released to adjust small bits here and there.

Also, the no mistakes allowed philosophy really bugges me. If I develop an unnecessary component and release it by mistake, some no-code tools under certain conditions will never allow me to remove it.

During my work days I find myself saying "Were it code, this wouldn't happen" too often.

you are misinformed Dave, do a bit more research

The thing is people who execute low code or no code platform are mostly( but not entirely) developers. They who use completely understand what the video is trying to make a point and kinda know the limitations of the low code idea. The people saying this gonna replace the traditional coding is the one who never into coding seriously

I thought lowcode meant reusing exising tools and not just writing code unecessarily, not the good old "one app to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them" -lol.

More people need to be making videos about this. There is way too much hype out there and too few videos of people critical about no/low-code

Brilliant take.

Why are we so obsessed with replacing the Software Developers? ...using software.

I've worked intensely with Azure Logic Apps for a year and a half now. It's basically Microsofts low code integration platform. It is by far the worst utter piece of trash Microsoft has ever launched on Azure. Total cost of ownership compared to even mediocre C# code is easily 10x. It is buggy, unreliable, extremely slow, doesn't scale at all, cannot be tested locally, and has no reliable CI/CD tooling. Also, they brag about all their "connectors" to various other systems, but all connectors I've tried suck. Even their SFTP connector is bad, and I don't understand how you can fail at supplying a connector for what is basically ancient technology at this point.

Dave, you are applying no code solution limitations to low code. Solutions like Mendix and Outsystems have functionality (version control, testing, deployment...). So, your experience is not representative of the full solution space.

Lowcode reminds me of the so called 4th generation languages that existed in the nineties.
And I guess the nasty parts, that the lowcode system itself does not cover, must be added with hand written "plugins".