The Future of Coding is 'No Code'

Lowcode/Nocode will open the floodgates to a wealth of new talents interested in programming, even though the tools itself will get refine and more sophisticated over time.
Just as the popularity of mainstream gaming has birthed countless new engineers, both network and software, developers, programmers, data science, cyber securities. Particularly the rise of new markets such as streaming and all the supporting elements and specialists.
For those feeling threatened by lowcode/nocode, they shouldn't be. Thats like saying high end/triple AAA games, in fact the best games will be replaced entirely by Godot and Unity Playmaker. Its not going to happen, probably not even close. But it will be a waste of opportunity for professional developers to not take advantage of lowcode/nocode apps to increase their overall efficiency.

Nocode is far away

Two things:

1. These tools are popular because too many startups are churning out very similar, unoriginal apps - for which these tools are perfect.

2. The market is already flooded with these apps - pretty soon, it will be so saturated that users are likely to stop caring about new apps at all.

I'm actually surprised we didn't get there already, the way to market works - it's a wonder users haven't seen through this yet, but the large majority of new apps are just clones of one or more existing apps, maybe tailored for a niche, if even that, and then you top it off with an expensive marketing campaign.

Well, now they can spend almost nothing developing their useless products and invest everything in marketing instead. How long before users wake up and smell the coffee? 🤔

Yes, Thanks. I will try.☺️❤️👍

I haven't used no code tools before but how do ensure, in an automated way, that a change doesn't break something in your site/app? Do we still need ui tests and integration tests for example when integrating your app with external services or are these things a non-issue with no code tools?

No Code / Low code is a great "portal" to introduce more people to programming. It helps flood a wave of creativity, some of who start using it in ways the creators of the tools did not anticipate. These power users then try to extend the tools using APIs or SDKs and are gradually introduced to mainstream programming

for domain in DOMAINS:
    tool = introduce_no_code_tool()
    wait_for_adoption(tool)
    for u in power_users(tool):
        PROGRAMMERS.add(u)

Who will be developing these tools and what will they be using? 🤔 I do not agree that the future will be no-code, maybe more ai generated code.

I do agree though that for a standard site, maybe a startup selling a product or a service (not programming obviously 😁), no-code is the best option, but you still need to have someone with a bit of technical knowledge on board.

Code (as in "formal text") is just a representation, a means to show things in a way that is easy to edit. I don't care if you use a graph editor or a workflow engine or whatever tools there are out there, you're still formalizing the thoughts in your head. You still need the core skills of a developer. Except that you're actually at a disadvantage now because nothing we've seen so far beats plain old text in terms of editing, at least for general purpose tasks. So what did you really gain in exchange?

So yeah, I'm open to new ideas, but I haven't seen anything really convincing in this direction so far.

My biggest problem with all the "no code" platforms I have looked at is the lack of robust CI/CD features. Some things that I would expect like automated testing, "no code" reviews, and somethings even environments and rollback weren't there. These platforms always seemed like a huge risk for companies. Especially when you start looking at the cost.

Of course it is true. Every kind of soft and complexity can/will be created with nocode tools. May be not with the current, but the future one tools, but still needs some programmes to support these tools

Funny enough, no-code made me go back to start learning to code again.

I mastered basic webflow, airtable, zapier just to realise these costs aggregate and the whole system is rather in-flexible.

Its great for prototyping and mockups, landing pages but where it fails is when complexity kicks in and you need to be more flexible on various solutions such as dynamic apps and even data retrieval.

Not even mentioning the platform lock-in.

So the answer is easy, pick the right tool for the job...

I appreciate the sentiment but I worked as an automation specialist before working as a software engineer. It was cool, I used a lot of Zapier, Integromat, Airtable, and other no-code tools.

But no matter how robust these tools are, and many of them are incredible - nothing will convince me that no-code will replace code in any 'real' way.

For starters, you still need technical people to use these tools and there are plenty of times where you can't do exactly what you want to do.

Also, Webflow is cool but it's far from cheap when you can host an app on Firebase for free. It's possible that these tools will become customizable enough that they can support more use cases but it seems like we're very far from that being the case.

I agree. Fast food isn't the best quality haha

I agree with some or most of the people replying. They're not much of a help using this no-code builders. It's difficult to try and code over, rewrite the code etc. It will only make your code uglier. Now image Sass and no- code, does it make sense to work twice to reorganize everything 🤔. Plus if you know how to use flexbox and grid, JavaScript honestly you don't need a page builder because you can work as fast as you would using a page builder and have your file organized and be more efficient.

To create NoCode app you will need code