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No-code Revolution. Why Now? <https://medium.com/f...
# thinking-together
m
r
It would be interesting to hear some perspectives on the advantages of No Code. Especially as compared to existing specialized software. E.g., why use Notion over Jira or Airtable over Google Sheets?
There's the obvious reason: With No Code you can get exactly what you want. But it seems to come with some downsides, e.g., a No Code solutions tend not be quite as refined as dedicated solutions.
We can contrast this with another trend: Overtime more and more specialized software is being released. E.g., fifteen years ago FogBugz and Jira were the main project management software, now there's Asana, Trello, PivotalTracker that represent different workflows. It seems that the no code solutions are going to have to compete with increasingly specialized dedicated software popping up too.
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m
No Code solutions tend not be quite as refined as dedicated solutions.
I think in near future this will not be the case. So far it is indeed
I agree with processes/tools explosion, but no-code should win due to faster experiment and faster iterations.
r
So in your view it's less about having a solution that perfectly fits your own needs, and more about having a platform that can move faster than dedicated solutions?
m
Yes, I think that is the main point. However such platform is EXTREMELY hard to create
r
Yeah, totally but per the examples in your piece: "Airtable, Coda, Notion, Webflow, Retool, Bubble.is, Zapier, Zoho, Shopify, Readymag, Fibery." There's definitely something happening right now in this space.
m
Yes, I think we see vertical no-code solutions are rising
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t
so the answer is web tech evolved?
m
Yes, but there are other reasons as well, like information/processes/changes acceleration and connectivity of the world
e
No code projects are just application software bundles that combine popular, almost essential data processing components into a framework. These companies tend to be building their own components that fit into a chassis. None of the chassis are compatible, and frankly these products remind me of Rober Carr's brilliant and rather ahead of its time PC product called "framework". Lotus also worked on product suites like this. One could even argue that VB6 was the first no code system, where it had a marketplace of components for sale from 1000's of developers that allowed you to generate pie charts with zero coding, you just filled in the blanks in the little parameter table associated with each control. The truth is that businesses do the same kinds of things all day long: they sum sales by regions, and want breakdowns by different time periods and geographical levels, and want to make pretty pictures and graphs of what might be a very boring Excel sheet. So we are going to see 1000 of these companies, as the web is now good enough graphically to match what we did in the desktop, but with Software as a service you can mostly skip the previous worries about installation and piracy. Its a very low friction space the web app. But just the very term " no code" is a fraudulent statement. If you ask for an arbitrary product, like i want 3 clocks on the screen showing the time in LA, London and Tokyo, that is going to take some code. You either use code someone write ahead of time, or you write it yourself, but code is there, and the lack of generality in these products and the general chaos of 1000 incompatible module systems will be annoying at some point. I think what is powering all this, is the massive success of SalesForce, which has a huge market cap, and has successfully built their own cadre of captive developers that they entice with badges and wonderfully presented training sessions. Salesforce has built up a programmer army faster than any other company in history that I can think of save for the Apple 2, which was an incredible breakthrough in simplicity. With hundreds, soon to be a 1000 companies trying for the brass ring in this space, we are going to see a lot of dead bodies. There is no way the marketplace can sustain this many alternatives. This is the natural evolution of Excel, which has been stagnant for a while, and represents the drive for a more sophisticated system that doesn't dump you into raw Javascript. Javascript is so awful and it being the #1 programming language above Excel/VBA, there is a gigantic chasm between those two points.
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a
how is "no code" different than 4gl of yore?
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m
"You either use code someone write ahead of time, or you write it yourself, but code is there" I think "no code" means that the end user doesn't write code as text, it can express logic, rules, constraints and mappings but not via a "traditional" programming language
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many of the solutions branded "no code" are just "parameterizable apps" and that's fine, most startups adapt to the buzzword de jour to ease marketing and catch more eyeballs
BI became Big Data which became ML with the same players and some adaptations.
@Alex Miller I think the spirit is similar, new waves reinvent/rediscover past attempts with new tools and/or new approaches, sometimes it works, sometimes it would be better if we knew our history better 🙂
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c
Its not easy to to include multiple things into a coherent perspective, but I think a very important perspective is the one of the concept of ownership
How did the Interlectual Property concept in the US/Europe develop?
Why and how did the concept of open source rise and continues to evovle?
Software is a tool of expression of thought. What do we value and how is our relationship to society/the group.
All of these reflect into the creation of software
s
Great analogy (thread): code : no code :: DSLRs : smartphone cameras https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1170258907232493574
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