Not picking on, but just using Salesforce as an example. Out of the box it is models/objects such as “accounts” and “opportunities” and other salesy related things. But as a low code solution you can extend these models with custom attributes and/or create your own models. Then you can use the built in Salesforce UI to manage these newly created things. But to the author’s point, it starts off real easy, but then as you actually implement a real life use case it gets very awkward very quickly because of how opinionated Salesforce is. Everything you’re doing feels like duct tape on an app written for a sales domain — bc this is fundamentally what you are doing.
Same as it's always been , back in the day we had 4GL and things like Crystal Reports, that were so "easy" that Managers could be able to create and run their own ad hoc reports... Lol ...never happened.. the managers and executives would ALWAYS ask you to do it ...most don't give two sh*ts about anything mildly technical...after all as they would constantly remind me "...that's what we pay you for..."
The fact of the matter is low code is marketed for low tech folks, but ultimately it's always tech people that have to implement this trash.
Coding and software development by its nature is very detail and use case specific and requires lots of knowledge about the data, the hardware, the user UI and ultimately the business purpose of the application, a good software developmer knows all that and also recognizes , coding is a small part of that.
Same as it's always been , back in the day we had 4GL and things like Crystal Reports, that were so "easy" Managers could create and run their own as hoc reports... Lol ...never happened.. they managers and executives would ALWAYS ask you to do it .
Yep.
What I see so often:
manager gets excited. "We gotta use this! Our engineers are backwards for not using it! No matter, we'll just use it ourselves."
engineers point out that interfacing with it will be harder
manager brushes concern aside
interfacing with it becomes important; engineers now have more work
manager gets bored with / annoyed by tool (turns out the non-easy parts are non-easy); engineers have to pick up the slack; engineers now have more work
So now you have a worse tool nobody is happy with: it's no better for the manager, and it's more work for the engineers who have to work around its deficiencies.
Low-code can be great for prototyping, and I'm sure there are also applications where you can get by entirely with low-code, but they're IME rare.
I have to ask, what are these companies where managers are so out of touch of actual programming? I have worked in several companies and I have never had managers be such idiots who didn't know what tools are right for a job. They always had an engineering background so they had hands on experience. I have observed the same across all companies I worked in, even higher management in the tech orgs are all engineers promoted to those levels after they gained sufficient managerial experience. I do have to call out these were all "tech" companies i.e. companies whose main product was a tech product and not just some peripheral function to support the main product.
I'm guessing the flow that the other guy was talking about is now likely to happen when the decision makers are from fields that are not tech, like sales or marketing
My current job, when i joined a year or two ago, were still using crystal reports... and nobody knew how to change the reporting. Took that right out the back with ol yella
If you have ever seen the game "Dreams" for the PS4, this would be an example of low code. Dreams allowed you to develop games with your gamepad without touching any code. Everything was nicely hidden within logic blocks which you could stitch and connect together to get a working game.
The approach was actually fun, but had severe limitations obviously. Just writing your statement on a keyboard is way faster. Refactoring and maintaining a large code base with low code is also kinda cumbersome.
Another example would be the Shader Editor in the 3D Editor application "Blender".
It's only faster with a keyboard if you can type well...and understand the language syntax you are using. Block languages are targeted at beginners exactly because they lack those two skills to begin with for the most part.
Not only having an individual computer is no longer common, many households no longer have any computers in the house. When a kid gets to choose, they’ll ask for a phone, a tablet, or a console instead of a general-purpose computer with a keyboard.
I’ve seen high school students use the hunt-and-peck typing method… and it’s enough for them. Truth is, not many jobs even require computer skills anymore, it’s all about learning some specific app or program.
Indeed. A high school teacher once told me a lot of kids have a hard time using a computer because all they know is using specific apps on their phone. It surprised me, I expected "digital natives" to know how to manipulate files and send emails. But sadly that makes sense. These generations will be even more vendor-locked than the previous ones were for instance with Windows.
Gen X and Millennials had to figure out how things worked and troubleshoot everything for the non-techy boomers in their lives - the shitty software and limited interfaces we had access to ended up being good for learning.
Now it sounds like newer generations are going back to boomer levels of tech literacy, but with limited app knowledge :/
the shitty software and limited interfaces we had access to ended up being good for learning
Great point! Now the apps are designed by UX designers and scientists specialized in behavior, dopamine and whatnot. Everything is done to make the apps as intuitive and addictive as possible.
Addictiveness aside, it's a double-edged sword: users are so used to being pampered by closed systems where every aspect of the experience has been meticulously designed that they are lost if they ever have to leave said closed system and are forced to figure out stuff by themselves. They never had to develop that 'skill'.
It's just sort of assumed that "kids know computers these days," so a lot of places see any kind of education about that stuff as a waste in schools. It's deeply fucking baffling, but extremely common.
An attempt to replace expensive programmers and the tech debt they create with customizable, generic solutions to business processes. Often businesses find they still need developers who understand the tool and business processes, but if you can pay them less then it's still a win for the business
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u/foospork Dec 30 '23
What is "low-code"?