I'm Liviu, a Solutions Architect at Endtest
Let's take a look at this whole "no code" / "low code" movement.
Is this the next big thing? 🤔
Even UIPath, the juggernaut of RPA, has released UIPath Apps, a low-code app builder.
Microsoft also launched Microsoft Power Apps.
And who hasn't heard of Zapier?
But you've probably met at least one "no code" skeptic:
1. The Democratization
Democratization empowers individuals.
This movement is helping non-technical founders launch internet companies.
It's no longer a privilege only for those who have vast financial resources or the opportunity to learn programming.
How are we even supposed to call someone who uses Google Sheets and Trello to build an app?
Can we call them Developers? I don't know, maybe.
But we seem to be reaching a point where we don't need to hire a Developer for every web project that we want to build.
By the way, there's a website called Makerpad that teaches you to make projects and automate at work, without having to write code.
2. The Disruption
Technically, you can slap together some of those microservices, and you're able to put together entire web products or web services.
And it would be a complete service, end-to-end, because there are even things such as Email Marketing and Automation.
When I look at this, I sense DISRUPTION.
Do you remember, some time ago, we had these roles called Server Admin and Database Admin?
These people would just maintain the databases and the servers, helping with the scaling.
These days, we can see that no one that does that stuff anymore.
Or not as many, because people are using these prebuilt platforms, by AWS and Google.
That means you can get scale out of the box, simply by using these services, provided by those cloud platforms.
We don't need those roles anymore, their jobs were just automated out of existence.
Is this really the future of software development?
3. The Skepticism
And just like with any disruption, you'll encounter some skepticism.
Historic examples include Amazon Web Services (AWS).
If you search for posts and comments related to AWS on Reddit from 2011, you'll find plenty of opinions on why it will never work.
And the same applies if you search for discussions related to Airtable from 2015. And look at them now.
4. What about the Developers?
Here's a funny thing, I haven't heard anything about any of this while reading HackerNews.
When I go to HackerNews, this is what I see:
It feels like that programmer community has their head in the sand.
They seem to be completely ignoring the market, which is supplanting what these programmers are doing.
At some point, it almost feels like all some programmers want to do is hit keys on a dark mode terminal, compare editors and see who can come up with the most concise and cryptic Linux command.
5. Who is winning?
When disruption happens, the affected activities become easier and more affordable.
Do you know how expensive it was to build a startup 20 years ago?
You needed at least $2M funding just to buy the servers.
Thanks to AWS and other cloud platforms, anyone can purchase cloud computing resources now.
And now, anyone should be able to build a web or mobile app, without having to hire expensive developers.
I'm not talking about just a basic website, you can ship complete products very quickly.
This includes email marketing, landing pages, CRMs, domain names, even checkout pages (see Gumroad).
These services have experienced explosive growth.
And even our very own Endtest is growing much faster than we expected.
Typical reaction when someone tries our platform:
Coming up with the code all by yourself becomes a meaningless struggle.
This doesn't mean that we can all stop coding and throw code out the window.
We just need to understand in what areas do we need to deploy code, and in what areas we can leverage these services in order to ship our products faster.
6. Who is losing?
The ones who will take a hit from this disruption are the ones who make a living out of keeping things complicated.
Some of these folks would do anything to discourage this movement:
Imagine being a web agency that does small projects for all sorts of businesses.
And suddenly, some of these businesses no longer require your services.
I've seen something similar because of Endtest and other no code test automation tools.
The only adversaries of these testing tools seem to be the ones who've made a career out of pasting together an incredibly overcomplicated Selenium framework, or out of teaching others how to do that.
7. What problem is it solving?
A solution is successful only if it's solving a problem.
Software Development is slow and expensive
Software Developers have been in a privileged position, due to the high demand.
But several factors in the last few years made Software Development even more expensive for companies.
And we're seeing companies moving away from relying on coders to build everything.
Context
It's not just the small businesses.
Most huge companies have an unhealthy obsession with saving money.
There are countless horror stories of highly profitable corporations, that scramble to save every penny.
Relevant example
If you look at the homepage from Airtable, you'll see that Netflix is one of their customers.
As you can imagine, Netflix has all the engineering resources to code everything by themselves, and yet, they're using Airtable for some processes.
We'll most likely see the big companies pushing the pedal on this movement, since it will result in massive savings, and higher profits.
What about you?
I'd love to hear your opinions on this.
Top comments (48)
No offence but just because you work in one of no the code companies it deasnt make the whole thing "real".
Your article has many bended facts and not-entire-truths that it is hard to address all of them but i understand that is usually the main purpose of a marketing isnt it
Hi @Zikitel22
None taken.
I clearly mention in the article that I work at Endtest.
But the article mostly refers to No Code / Low Code tools that are designed to create web applications, glue services together and automate flows.
The company where I work is in a very specific niche: Test Automation.
The facts that are added are collected from independent sources, you can verify them, and you can do your own research to confirm.
For example, something I mentioned:
UIPath had a revenue of $607M last year, and Google is one of their customers.
They're a publicly listed company, you can easily verify that the revenue number is correct.
In this article, I mostly tried to get the pulse of the market right now.
If I wanted to market or sell a No Code tool, this DEV Community isn't the best place to do that.
Software Developers aren't really the ideal customer for such tools, for obvious reasons.
My purpose here is simply to show facts and educate.
As usual, economics and 'convenience' win over quality and performance.
More "No Code" will also inevitably further reduce the quality of new developers (something I've seen happening over years of interviewing candidates). The whole thing is a vicious circle - convenience and shortcuts win, people get lazy, lazy becomes the norm, quality goes down, new developers go straight to the lazy stuff (because it's cool, and that's where the $$$ are).
Sure, hardware gets better and we can use it as a crutch to support all these layers of laziness... but eventually - in the extreme case - the lower layers become too 'difficult' for everyone except the ancient system priests, and the whole edifice is in danger of collapse.
I hope this makes sense... admittedly it reads a little like an unedited stream of consciousness. Hopefully someone is on my wavelength though
One of the few downsides of living in a capitalist system, it's all about the profits.
But I don't know if No Code / Low Code will reduce the quality of developers.
For example, driving the Ford Model T was insanely difficult compared to driving modern vehicles (even with stick).
But are all current drivers worse because of that?
Making a car that is easier to drive allowed drivers to focus on more essential things.
Going back to No Code / Low Code, I feel we wouldn't have reached this point so fast if Software Development didn't overcomplicate itself in the last 10 years, this person on Reddit said it well:
Yeah - totally agree with you about the last 10 years. I've watched it unfold - aghast.
It does feel like a lot of the recent interest in "no code" is somewhat of a reaction to this problem, rather than any kind of attempt at a solution - as some of these no-code platforms are probably built upon the very foundations and complications they purport to want to fix - adding yet another layer of complexity - sweeping the problem under the carpet rather than addressing it head on
I agree with your point of view.
If modern web development was as simple as jQuery, maybe the Low Code / No Code alternatives for creating web apps wouldn't have been so popular.
Hi @lukeshiru, thank you for reading the entire article.
There are already tons of no code solutions being used successfully by large enterprises and small companies.
Here's a list of some of these no code tools:
Airtable
Zapier
Postman
Endtest
Bubble
UIPath
We're talking about creating secure enterprise apps, automating complex flows, and other tasks that would have required writing code in the past.
We're not talking about creating some silly little website with Wix.
It's not a question if this will happen, it's already happening.
If Microsoft got into this with Microsoft Power Apps, it means No Code is already mainstream, it's no longer a niche.
There's a huge demand for these tools. Companies are delivering results with these tools, without spending a fortune on R&D departments and without waiting 2 years for a product to be ready.
But don't believe me, look at the numbers:
UIPath had a revenue of $607M last year, and Google is one of their customers.
You can imagine that Google can hire all the Engineering talent that they want, and yet they picked UIPath (a no code tool) for certain processes.
At the end of the day, Google and other companies care about making as much profit as possible.
Knowing how to write code is a privilege. There are people in their 30s or 40s who didn't have the financial resources to own a computer in their teen years.
And maybe they're too busy with their current job and family and they don't have time to learn how to code, even if they would make it a priority.
And maybe those people have good ideas, and they want to start an online business, but they can't. I don't think that's fair.
As for your question, I think companies will always choose the candidate that asks for the smaller paycheck, as long as they meet the bare minimum requirements.
But it's not like they'll tell you that they picked you only because the other folks wanted more cash and more benefits.
That's available for most jobs out there, for developers and non-developers.
You forgot to mention that a main driver behind procuring tools that allow administrators to design software procedures is that they're easier to come by and often cheaper than engineers.
If a big corporation could find enough software engineers they'd hire those rather than buy some 'no code' tool, in part because those engineers could design 'no code' or code generation tools for internal use that are exceptionally well tailored to what the company does.
I did mention in my article that big companies will push the pedal on this movement, because it will allow them to save time and money.
And most Low Code / No Code tools are affordable.
As for internal tools, it depends.
Internal tools usually have a terrible ROI (Return On Investment).
And you rarely see innovative companies building an internal tool, when there is an affordable commercial alternative.
For example, I've never heard of a company building their own internal video calling solution, even if they can do it with open source technologies such as WebRTC.
They all just prefer to use Zoom or Google Meet.
And I've never heard of an innovative company trying to build their own Email Software, they just use Microsoft Outlook.
This is also how Endtest is a game changer, companies no longer need to build their own internal overcomplicated Selenium framework.
I get a feeling you don't have much experience as a developer. Typically internal tooling isn't something that is budgeted and replacing other tasks, it's something that happens alongside main duties.
Zoom, GMeet and Outlook aren't app builder or business automation applications. In enterprise settings those tools in the Microsoft offering are quite popular, which I assume is the reason you don't mention those.
Typically Selenium is used together with tooling that records user behaviour and/or generates configuration automatically based on some data source. Could you elaborate on why you think this is "overcomplicated"?
Your assumption is incorrect.
I do have lots of experience writing code:
JavaScript, React, PHP, Python, Shell Scripts, Apple Scripts and a bit of Java.
I'd say my favourite one is Python.
But our discussion shouldn't be about what I think vs. what you think.
In the article, I'm mostly presenting the facts and the direction in which the market is moving, based on research from independent sources.
If you had news articles like this:
UIPath is closing down, because no company wants to do low-code automation
Airtable is not expanding, because companies don't want to build apps with their platform
I would have said that your opinion is correct.
If you have any data or valid resources to back up your claims, that would make the discussion more interesting.
You'd like me to explain why using Selenium leads to overcomplications?
I actually made a video about that last year:
youtube.com/watch?v=uJSC_YwXYZw
Junior developers worry about syntax and languages, experienced developers worry about data structures.
I'd appreciate if you linked a transcript instead.
Some projects/tasks are more suited for no-code solutions than others. Google will never power its search engine or cloud solution with no-code tools, that's nonsense.
Also, take Postman, once you fully understand its interface, it would take 20 mins to translate that knowledge to code. The concepts around making HTTP requests are the same, no matter if you code them or select them in a list. Ultimately, the true effort is poured into learning the protocol.
Huge corporations has wanted app-builder software for non-technical employees since the iron age of computing. It's been done, over and over and over, and is very well understood.
Excel is the most sauccessful one still in use today, back in the day MS Access was used for this and there have been many very ambitious attempts at applying Prolog, Lisp and SmallTalk to solve this problem.
SAP, Salesforce, e-commerce site builders and the like belongs to this software category, and while some are commercially successful none have managed to replace engineers. If they could, they'd immediately move into industrial manufacturing and solve the same problem there first.
Sure, invent your nice DSL and slap on a nice GUI editor and sell it, that's fine, but it will be very hard to convince professional software developers that this will make them obsolete.
Hi @cess11
No one will have to convince professional software developers to use No Code / Low Code tools.
Just like no had to convince Elevator Operators from the 50s to use Automated Elevators.
I'm not saying that Windows 12 will be created with No Code / Low Code technologies.
But a signficant percentage of the web apps won't require hiring a professional software dev.
Yeah, I know, I'm well aware of WordPress, Wix and so on.
WordPress and Wix aren't good examples.
Those tools only allow you to create relatively basic web sites.
And they can only serve a small percentage of the market.
Check out the tools I mentioned in the article and in the comments, those are extremely powerul, they allow you to connect different services, access databases, send automatic emails, automate flows, etc.
WordPress is used for all the tasks you mention and more, without hiring software engineers. It's also been exceptionally popular for this reason, and hence became a crippled COBOL of the Internet economy.
Claiming that WP "can only serve a small percentage of the market" either means you're refering to some niche market or know very little about this subject.
Allow me to elaborate:
WordPress is mostly used by folks who want to build websites.
Building websites is a small portion of the market that is being disrupted by Low Code / No Code tools.
For example, things you cannot do with WordPress:
If I may ask, why are you making so many assumptions about me?
Yet building web sites was the example you chose, so WP, Wix, SquareSpace and so on are well known products you claim will be 'disrupted' by people like your employer. Salesforce, SAP and more as well, since they also offer GUI app editors.
I see the no-code as a chance which let the developers enter a new level, where we will work on better projects: requiring more thoughts, better algorithms, …
Honestly, for me, those guys who makes app with authentications, crud operations, reportings,... everyday, are not too different with those guys who uses google sheets & trello as you said. Those works are very simple, maybe someone has some “proudly” micro-optimizations (then turned out it brings more problems than benefits), but we could simply have tools to make those apps, for end-users. Because, to make those things, there are frameworks and libraries which already built. Then it’s not too different between using frameworks/libraries + some configurations + some small changes vs using no-code tools.
End-users will choose what easier for them. Why paying lot of money for software companies to create a custom software, which they can make it themselves with tools?
Don’t get me wrong, we as the developers, we should take this chance to make better softwares, doing the things which machines couldn’t. There are always spaces where we could fill with our skills. Trust me, you don’t want to be a conservative developer, who will become obsolete after some years.
Example: making a shopping website:
I completely agree.
Thank you for sharing your opinion.
Maybe we'll even see a golden era, where being a Software Engineer will mean working on some complex engineering challenges, and not just building some basic CRUD interface.
Yes, that’s the point. I don’t see any loser or job losing here. Not only the developers, everyone should always keep updates with new era.
I was seeing our sysadmins moved next steps to work with servers on the cloud, they’re happier because they won’t have to drive hours to datacenter when shit h*ppens, they won’t have to worry about ram/disk checks annually. They developed new skillset with clouds which allows them to work everywhere.
Things change, it’s normal. And in our industry, thing change even faster. Why would we waste our brain for those simple apps?
Exactly. This isn't the first disruption we're seeing.
By the way, I remember when I first heard of Amazon Web Services, and it sounded confusing.
It's like someone would tell me today "Let's put our app on the Walmart Cloud".
That's why it's always worth doing a POC, you never what you might miss, until you try it.
Some developers get offended with this, just because they don’t accept a guy using tools to make app, while they are the same: using libraries with some config to make app. It just means they learnt very little about software development: watching some tutorials, googling some stackoverflow answers, copynpaste solution without knowing what it actually does. They just never want to leave their safe-zone (what they’ve learnt easily).
That’s fine, totally fine, but why don’t let people with zero-programming experience make those simple apps? I saw guys hated “degree”, or “experience”, or whatever, was saying anyone can learn to code, but don’t want to let anyone to make app without code. It’s simply hypocrisy.
No code tools are great, and very often they will be used to build software that would never have been built without them, like internal business apps customised for a department's specific workflows built by someone with some tech literacy from the actual department. I don't believe they will even significantly reduce the increase in demand for devs over time. For example if performance is a significant issue in the product you're building, I've never heard of a no code tool that will let you improve performance by engineering better.
An interesting problem they do have is that the more powerful these tools get in what they can tackle, the harder it is to learn to use them well. While they may be easier to use in many cases than writing code, the trouble is the knowledge you get is specific to the tool and locks you into it, because in the coding ecosystem, transferability of skills is critical and this leads to a lot of standardisation over languages, how things are done, data representations etc. You don't get this in the no code world so your skills although easier to acquire are much less transferable.
Interesting point of view.
I feel like these Low Code / No Code tools do help non-developers understand the architecture of systems better, and how all the components connect.
It actually helps folks understand the logic of programming in general, because you still use If Statements, Else Statements, Loops, Variables, Reusable Components in these Low Code / No Code tools.
At the end of the day, an If Statement is still an If Statement, regardless if it's in a programming language or a No Code tool.
So, I do believe the acquired skills are transferable.
Hi @lukeshiru
I don't know if it's fair to compare to strategies of Google and Microsoft with the comments written by some Java developers on HackerNews.
And it's perfectly fine if you don't change your opinion.
We need different opinions in general, that's what makes democracy great.
Thank you once again for taking the time to write those comments.
Software unfortunately also follows classical economics cycle so automation will undergo... automation itself this means coders will have to be able to reason at a more abstract level and become more productive to be able to still have value because 50% even more software will be doable with lowcode/nocode. The tool I'm building will allow coders to be as productive with code as with lowcode/nocode tools.
@lepinekong
That sounds really interesting.
It would be awesome if you could share some details about the tool you're building, once you're ready to do that.
Best of luck to you!
The next Windows won't be built with No Code / Low Code tools.
I wouldn't worry about that.
As for your Postman example, think of it from a team perspective.
If you create a collection of tests in Postman, it can be easily understood by everyone from your team, even if they don't have advanced coding skills.
But if you write your own code to test the API requests, it might not be so easy to understand by some of your existing or new colleagues.
And those colleagues will also have to contribute to those tests.
And you don't want to waste precious time and resources on figuring out if the API endpoint has a bug, or if that bug is in the code you wrote to test it.
And by the way, I actually wrote code for the Send API Request action from Endtest, which is similar to Postman.
Good article, i get your point, and me and me friendo talk a little about it on our podcast (Spanish).
What we talked about is that, yes this no code movement can bring more companies up and running, even facilitate and speed testing processes and the development effort will move to improve this nocode solutions.
In the other hand, quality software and standards will get more important, as this solutions need to be really tested, and secure because imaging that there is a bug in a a no code solution, this will be easily replicated to hundred of clients and people creating stuff with them.
It is a really interesting movement, and a lot of effort and new companies are going to move through that.
I agree with your point of view.
And thank you for mentioning your podcast, it sounds really interesting.
15 years ago, to release a new version, we were having to do multiple steps, involving many people. From source control server to build server then production server.
5 years ago, we automated many steps. Testers dont have to doing boring repeat UI tests, they will write testcase so it will be tested automatically on different platforms. Sysadmins don’t have to stay 24/7 to deploy changes manually.
Last year, we automated more CI/CD steps, things went smoothly, less human faults, release faster & safer.
With Github actions, we just need to put steps in the the workflow, configure it. We deploy without a single bash code.
So yes, no-code not only helps end-users, it helps also developers.
I wish I had all these modern tools when I was doing automated testing 7 years ago.
Now, I can just create and run an automated test on any browser in the cloud, even Safari:
Of course, we just usually start them with the API or with the GitHub Action.
That's just one area where it's more pleasant to be a developer today than it was 7-10 years ago.
Nice article!
No-code is great and I don't think web developers should be worried about this, since the first CMS and frameworks we hear people saying things like "that's it, you only need wordpress to make a website, no developer needed". I mean today you can make an e-commerce platform without writing any code.
Wordpress made anyone able to build a website, an online business, which turned out to create even more online opportunities for developers in the end.
I believe the same will happen with no-code, the mundane tasks will be done in no code, and all those tiny businesses will grow and require more specific developments at some point, that's where developers are.
Thank you for taking the time to write that comment.
I mostly agree with your point of view.
After all, there is no way to know what the future will hold for us, no one can predict that.
All of you taking this article seriously didn't notice that it's just low-key advertising for a "NO-CODE" company/product? Come on, people. Wake up and smell the coffee. The author probably doesn't even believe what they're saying. IT'S. JUST. ADVERTISING.
Hi Joshua, this isn't advertising or marketing.
I do work at Endtest, which is a company that offers a No Code / Low Code platform for creating and executing automated tests.
That's literally the first thing I mentioned in the article.
And that's why I collect data about the market and the trends.
You can easily verify all the information and data that I provided:
My goal here on Dev Community is to educate.
Now, let's stop and think for a second.
If I wanted to advertise a No Code / Low Code platform, would I really be writing on a website that is literally full of Software Developers?
That would be a waste of my time.
What would really be a waste of time would be for me to engage with you further. You're a completely inauthentic individual. It's unfortunate that we live in a society that drives you to act this way.
I think the main advantage of low-code is to enable more people to develop. I personally only have experience with Mendix, so taking that one as example.
Having an ui to configure screens and some logic enables non tech people to do part of the changes needed. All while with high code you can include anything you like quite easily.
Personally I always kept an open mind towards low code and no code. But I know a lot of high code developers are thinking it's rubbish, without properly giving it a try once. I think that's a shame. And of course not any piece of software makes sense as low code, but I see that similar as that there is no programming language that's good for all software programs.
That's an excellent point.
Yes, the main advantage of No Code / Low Code is the Democratization.
It was never fair that only folks with tons of money or coding skills could launch an internet startup.
As for your point about developers, I get that.
I also know Java developers who claim that Java is the best language, but they don't know any other languages.
But most developers are awesome and really nice.
To me, no code and AI that codes are both steps towards unemployment
Yes the few who maintain those tools and the few that need to work to fill the jobs of 10 people with AI and the non technical people who can now do those jobs with no code. The math is clear and that's why I'm a consultant and not a developer anymore
I agree with your point of view.
Any disruption brings new opportunities, but it will still negatively affect the ones that made a living out of keeping things complicated.
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