One of the biggest problems when it comes to software development is that it is not easily penetrated by the average person. One of the best things to help these people is the advent of low-code and no-code platforms. But what are they, and how do they make things easier?
What are low-code and no-code platforms?
Before you can understand how these two things impact software development, we first have to go over what exactly they entail. Thankfully, neither are terribly complicated. The two platform types are distinguished from traditional coding platform types by their relative ease of access.
As the name implies, low-code platforms have relatively minimal coding involved, while no-code platforms require no coding whatsoever to use for what you need. Both are good approaches if you have neither the time or the money to be able to afford to invest in a more complicated coding platform.
Both platforms come with a visual interface, making it more readily apparent what your changes are doing to affect the program as it goes along. These platforms also enable you to make programs that you might not be able to create from scratch without some serious expertise on board.
What do they do to revolutionize software development?
They allow inexperienced people to become programmers
As discussed, this is where these platforms really shine. Coding can be pretty complicated and frustrating even if you have experience, so those without are likely going to struggle to wrap their heads around it. As a result, they may never even make an effort to try programming in the first place. This may be useful for people who just want to set things up as a hobby, but it can be incredibly useful for businesses and nonprofit organizations.
In a perfect world, you would want to simply hire a programmer. After all, you want to get the best person for the job. Unfortunately, that may be unaffordable for a lot of organizations and businesses, so being able to use a platform that regular employees can manage more easily does a world of good. With a no-code platform, you can have employees build valuable programs who don’t have rich experience with it.
Low-code platforms require some more experience than otherwise, but compared to traditional coding, it’s a lot more accessible. Heck, you could even make a program designed to help hire programmers in the future if it calls for it. Programs can be used to look for prospective applicants, and we’ve even seen AI chat bots creating prompts, such as Python coding interview questions (if that was something that you wanted to see in an employed or contracted programmer).
They help even experienced programmers
While both of these platform types can help people with relatively little technical experience engage in software development, they’re not the only people who benefit from them. Even an experienced programmer may find value in these kinds of platforms, as they can make things a lot more expedient to complete. Neither one may be the best platform 100 percent of the time, but even the best programmers can benefit from being able to expedite these kinds of things.
Avoids arbitrary code stuffing
There is also the issue that coding can, at times, be needlessly complicated. There has been some talk of measuring a coder’s performance less by what they contribute with their code and more about how many lines of code they use. One example was from an insider leak of Elon Musk proposing judging performance by lines of code.
The major problem with this idea is that it essentially incentivizes performing arbitrary labor to create the impression of value. Ideally, you should use as little code as possible to accomplish what you intend to accomplish. Low-code or no-code platforms focus their attention on reducing labor and avoiding arbitrary measures of programming contributions.
Keeps momentum going
When dealing with both no-code and low-code platforms, you have less to worry about with respect to having to stop and restart programming when you run into a barrier that you need to overcome. Due to the relative simplicity of both of these options, you are that much less likely to struggle, and thus, your workers can focus on other things besides trying to figure out what went wrong with a program’s code.
These platforms facilitate cooperation and collaboration
In many cases, both no-code and low-code platforms include built-in systems that allow you to more easily cooperate and communicate with others using the platform. This makes things so much easier, as you don’t have to worry as much about potential miscommunication issues, which can lead to issues with redundancy or worse.
Are low-code and no-code platforms always preferable?
While these platforms do seem to carry a lot of benefits, they are not perfect, and as much you might want to hire a full stack developer in 2023. They are designed to be understood more easily by non-coders, but a big disadvantage of that is that they have a ceiling as well. So, for example, if you’re an ace programmer, you’re likely going to feel fairly limited about what you can do with these platforms. In that case, you’d be better off just going the traditional coding route.
Cost is a factor that comes into play, but it’s not always in favor of these platforms. Neither platform is particularly beneficial if you expect that you are not going to be updating things on the regular. In this case, consider whether it’s worth the investment.
Another issue that may even come up regardless of the level of experience a programmer has is that you don’t have nearly as much control over it as you do in traditional code. Thus, tweaking and updating may prove to be more difficult than you’d like. This is exacerbated even further by the fact that you may have to depend on a third party to get your program updated as needed. Be sure to fully understand what your needs may be, as they may not be well handled with either of these platforms.
