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Code vs No-Code. Which one to use and when?

Code vs No-Code is a complex topic in current software development. And as usual, there are no simple answers. It all depends on the context.

🎬 Dive deeper into what we find out about the topic by doing 12 projects in 12 weeks in our discussion

We explored many different approaches to see when to use no-code tools. And also when not since the tradeoffs might be huge. We learned that no-code is a no-brainer for validation and MVP building if you are a solo non-technical founder. It's also handy when you want to do something outside of the core competency of your company and you don't want to spend your development budget on these efforts. Let's say connecting your product to some analytics or building an MVP to validate a new direction of your company.

But if your entire software business is based on no-code you need to make sure that it can be built with it. You'll have to adjust your product expectations to fit the 'green path' that the no-code tools provide.

On the other hand, we have heard many success stories from founders who got to tens of thousands of MRR with just no-code tools. If some of you are here let's open a discussion.

I am very interested in hearing your war stories. Were you able to develop features at the pace you wanted? Do you regret picking no-code? Do you still need a development team once you have some scale?

  1. 3

    NoCode is trong. But it's not the end goal.

    I really like HYBRID app where 80% of the job is done in NOCODE and 20% in code. Just like https://getwazabi.com that we built this way

    1. 1

      Yes! This has been my experience with most of the side-projects I have built.

      Ironically, this was the push for building https://getapistack.com. Here you can quickly integrate auxiliary workflows and infra components like OTP, Job Queues, Databases, Cron Jobs, Mailers within a few minutes.

      Secondly, I have kept it vendor-lock in free (unlike firebase), so once your rocket ship takes off, you can replace apistack hosted infra with your own infra without major rewrite in a matter of a day :).

    2. 1

      Exactly, the hybrid model can be powerful even for strong product teams that have the hard skills of dev and should be leveraged.

  2. 1

    I don't get why it should be one VS the other. I've seen website builder ads that go down that route. That for me as a dev means, I'd be less motivated to build an integration with their service. I'm however very motivated to build other no-code tools so people can fix problems themselves.

    For Dev-teams and business users to understand each other is hard, and nocode might help empathize here.

    In the end I think smooth transitions between no-code, low-code and code will be possible. That's just a question of how many problems are fired at the interfaces, how much they can standardise and commoditize. And with standards and interfaces I mean both technical and User interfaces . After all, we're all looking at a html5-page here, where a ^ icon means upvote... ;) and this text is in italics

  3. 1

    My major use-case for nocode is easy flows or early landing pages, coding that is mostly a waste of time.

    Think nocode is good because it lets you build products as a non coder but I gotta say that it's not at the stage yet where I'd use it for much else than the stuff I mentioned at the top, I think you just can't replicate the experience a custom coded version of something gives you. Yet.

  4. 1

    Firstly, it's all about the product. Use the simplest solution you can.
    The dilemma only applies when you have a complex product that can't be fully built with current nocode tools.
    In that case prototyping with nocode and then coding the real thing is a great use case. I tweeted about our experiences a couple weeks ago https://twitter.com/SchemaEco/status/1364627706806165504

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