I used to think this as well, that No Code was not a real development to production level option. I have very much been proven wrong. I transition recently from 15+ years as a developer to contracting for a no code platform. Virtually everything a regular web dev can do in code can be done in no code. Sometimes its easier to do in code and sometimes it is much easier to do in no code so mileage may vary but no code is very much a mature technology now that can produce applications to the same scale as regular web 2.0 coded software.
I've been consulting in no-code platforms, in addition to writing actual code, for about 8 years. Producing something that works isn't the problem.
Maintaining it is.
The legacy codebases from this stuff are dumpster fires, because most of the tools are closed enough ecosystems that the companies supporting them have to reinvent every programming best practice from the last 30 years.
'Version control? Sure, that's a feature on our roadmap that we'll get to at some point...'
In addition to going back to the bad old days of limited-use, proprietary compiler problems. 'Oh, that bug? Yeah, just don't do that.'
Furthermore, unless you choose very carefully, you're playing right into vendor lock-in, and a lot of the people buying this stuff aren't technically proficient enough to realize that.
Once these companies hit the end of the easy growth ramp, and the industry turns into monetizing & squeezing existing customers, there's going to be migration pain on an Oracle scale.
Every general no code platform I've worked with has had an order of magnitude (sometimes, multiple) worse maintainability story than code alternatives.
And admittedly, maybe I've worked with a series of terrible ones, but I've also worked with a lot of popular ones that big enterprises are adopting.
As for open source, I'd say zero percent chance that happens, because no code solves problems developers don't have: (1) I want to write code, but I don't know how to code & (2) I need to integrate a lot of really boring, legacy, usually-Windows apps.
It's the "Why are there no polished open source desktop environments?" problem from the 90s, multiplied by ten.
Which I think is why you see what open source no-code tools do exist focus on web, because that's closer to what their developers are curious about.
Based on your experience would you be comfortable to list a few of the no-code tools to avoid when taking maintainability into account? Would be useful.
Names seems a bit specific, but it's easy enough to think in terms of basic software hygiene practices: things we expect our languages and their ecosystems to provide in traditional code these days.
Is the "code" serialized to a text readable format, for storage and parsing by other tools? Can I get a copy of that serialization? Can I regenerate the effective program from that serialization?
Are there methods for appropriate modularization and encapsulation?
Is there a coherent versioning strategy that allows for controlled updates, down through dependencies?
Can I check it into standard source control? And does it play nice with the expectations therein?
Basically: everything you were taught in undergrad for software engineering & at your first job
The biggest problem with the industry is that it's being sold to people who know none of that, or they're being told that doesn't really matter here, because this isn't code and thus doesn't need all that.
People who have maintained these systems know the level of pain is much worse than nearly any codebase. No code solutions that end up mission-critical can stay active for decades.
We have solutions from the 90s that, thank the heavens, I don’t have to work on them. If I did I would probably quit. But the business has to keep the thing chugging along, and it’s _very hard_ to get out of.
How is "no code" a technology? Aren't there a variety of "no code" technologies?
I'd be interested to hear which ones you are seeing that can produce applications similar to ordinary software development! Like... it's probably not WordPress or SharePoint.
