The no-code/low-code space has grown rapidly in recent years. As we learned from our latest survey of investors active in the space earlier this month, technology is democratizing access to modern software development, but there are still some issues that need to be ironed out. However, mass adoption is not forthcoming: many organizations prefer to build from scratch and complete end-to-end solutions are nowhere to be found.
To take a more in-depth look at the technicalities of space, we decided to talk to some of the technologists ushering in the no-code/low-code revolution.
For starters, it appears that no-code/low-code tools have not had much of an impact on the number of people working in IT. Deb Gildersleeve, CIO of Quickbase, said the spread of no-code/low-code will help IT focus on more demanding tasks.
“We believe that IT should spend more time thinking about the impact of technology on people. Tools that eliminate mundane and time-consuming tasks help save time and energy to focus on bigger problems that make people’s lives easier,” she said.
No-code/low-code creates technical debt to some extent, an aspect that has become a hot topic of conversation. David Hsu, founder and CEO of Retool, believes that right now it’s not so much about eliminating technical debt, but more about choosing where debt is an acceptable consequence.
“What you can do is decide which technical debt is worthy of the flexibility that low-code provides, and which technical debt does not meet that threshold. For example, if we give non-technical builders the ability to design and define their own interfaces, it’s very rewarding from our position,” he said. “On the other hand, we don’t think it’s worth the technical debt to let non-technical developers manage integrations, data flows, business logic and CRON tasks — without any level of technical oversight or guardrails.”
For this study, we spoke with executives about their favorite no-code/low-code tools, the different effects these development suites have had on the IT job market, and how we can ensure minimal technical debt, among other things.
We spoke with:
Patrick Jean, CTO, OutSystems Deb Gildersleeve, CIO, Quickbase Zoe Clelland, Vice President, Product and Experience, Nintex Bruno Vieira Costa, Founder and CEO, Abstra David Hsu, Founder and CEO, Retool Trisha Kothari, Co-Founder and CEO, Unit21Patrick Jean, CTO, OutSystems
How much of the work you manage is currently done through no-code/low-code? Will developers still need to learn to code in 2031?
As CTO of a low-code platform that pioneered this category 20 years ago, everything I do is about low-code and how the tool can help business leaders and developers build the serious applications they need. In fact, we build as much of our own stack as possible using our low-code platform – for our UI tools, we have a few basic, high-code components, and much of the remaining OutSystems UI platform is built in low -code. code.
Looking ahead, there will always be a need for developers with expertise in high code. Rather than thinking about these tools that remove the need to learn to code, they should be seen as a way to remove the burden of lengthy, undifferentiated maintenance work that comes with application development. Low-code application development platforms will handle this undifferentiated work and developers need not worry about it.
What are your favorite no-code/low-code tools?
A plethora of no-code/low-code tools are available to meet a range of developer needs. Many tools in this category solve a limited number of problems and often encounter obstacles as they scale or evolve over time.
In my experience, companies need a platform that combines agility, performance and scale, resulting in high-quality and secure applications. One that includes both high expressiveness and high developer productivity and offers full elite CI/CD capabilities.
As long as you have software, there will always be a need for people who can build software from scratch. Deb Gildersleeve, CIO, QuickbaseCompanies need to look for low-code, enterprise-level tools that help them build critical apps that solve serious business challenges, while optimizing security, compliance, and scale, and removing problems like legacy code and integrations.
Will the rise of no-code/low-code affect the number of people working in IT?
No-code/low-code tools do not affect the number of people working in IT. Instead, they optimize the role of IT, help modernize legacy systems, eliminate technical debt, and enable them to build applications at a rapid pace.
It helps IT professionals empower their own teams to build the applications they need instead of relying on off-the-shelf options, and empowers teams and developers to focus on more meaningful, creative work instead of legacy back-end systems or perform subordinate tasks. †
A differentiator for no-code/low-code tools is whether they can embody the CI/CD process with proper governance and compliance, ensuring that companies separate privileged access to different production and non-production environments.
As more companies adopt low-code platforms, IT departments will become more important as they add more value through custom applications with much greater speed and flexibility. This area is growing rapidly and is helping to close the huge gap in development talent we face.
What other services do you think could be offered along with no-code/low-code to make it a more attractive package for app development?
One of the biggest trends we see is the need to build serious apps that can quickly scale to hundreds of thousands and even millions of users. The problem for many developers is that they need to develop apps that can run in the cloud at internet scale, using best practices from modern cloud architectures and technologies, which can be incredibly complex and expensive.
This post 6 technologists discuss how no-code tools are changing software development – TechCrunch was original published at “https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/10/6-technologists-discuss-how-no-code-tools-are-changing-software-development/”
