People Underestimate No-Code. Here's Why They Shouldn't.
There's a lot of hype behind no-code. But there's plenty of hate too. Especially from developers who say that no-code doesn't scale. But these naysayers are thinking about it all wrong.
Here's the issue. Many people assess the disruptive potential of no-code by only evaluating whether no-code apps can offer the same advanced functionality as traditionally coded apps. (They can't. At least for now.)
The main problem with this? The core value proposition of no-code isn't the same as for mainstream coding languages, and it's a mistake to use the same assumptions. No-code's promise isn't in its ability to offer the exact same functionality as normal code, but rather in its ability to enable way more people to build applications in the first place.
This is a twofold disruption: not only will it open the door for far more founders to enter the market, but it will also open the door to products that address a broader audience. Why? Because many of the innovators leveraging no-code tools will come from non-tech industry backgrounds.
Tara Reed of Apps Without Code gets it, and explains this well. She began using no-code tools in 2014, before they were even called "no-code." Apps Without Code, an online school for learning no-code, just crossed the $5-million-a-year mark. But to see the evidence for disruption, you have to dig past her company's revenue numbers and look instead at the customers she's serving.
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Here's Tara:
The most exciting part about no-code is that it opens up the doors... not just for the traditional makers, but for people with expertise in industries like education, health care, or manufacturing. They see a really clear gap in the market that Silicon Valley is probably not that excited about, or doesn't know how to fill.
Many of these people wouldn't have considered entrepreneurism without no-code. And now, because of these tools and educators like Tara, people get to worry less about the solving complex software problems and more on solving business problems: profit, strategy, audience growth, and more. A great example: James Traf, the designer who's made over $280k using no-code to sell Apple icons.
Bottom line: There's a whole world of smart and ambitious entrepreneurs out there who aren't engineers, and an even larger number of non-tech industries and companies that need new solutions. No-code tools might just be exactly what solo founders need to test and launch the next lifestyle-friendly, multi-million-dollar business.
There's the side of no-code for entrepreneurs like you mentioned, and there's also enterprise no-code.
I watched the OutSystems video of their conference last night, and their product is pretty amazing, allows to build banking apps/whatever apps In days. They also have the architecture panel which presents all issues in a green-to-red cards, allowing application developers to present that to management and security ops. They also have AI for micro-interactions making their developers extremely productive. And you know, prices start at the good range of 5k or something like that, can't be bothered to check sorry.
Their video really started pressing on me in the end because essentially I follow them as competitors, but personally, I'm going to be working in professional no-code space targeting super-experienced coders, for whom no-code isn't a drag-and-drop toy, but the next step at automating their job. Their time costs well over $100 per hour, and they still need to write code.
But the tools they have is inadequate, like VSCode. It's good for an average developer, who's keen to play with technology, but when you're a serious man you don't want that and just want something outstanding to help you get your job done with least effort. This is kind-of no code, but not really, more of a dev tool, and the niece that I want to fill.
In short, I see no code as many things - enterprise solutions for app building, a DIY sass offerings for entrepreneurs who want to hack something on their own, and a dev tool with maximum productivity for experienced (and not so much) developers. But to be honest, I think that you might first need to learn code, before growing enough to move on to no code, having done all that hard work through your career on debugging etc, building up your skill, but I might be wrong.
Still thanks for sharing, whatever haters say, it's just because they're used to their ways of working which isn't bad, it's a different viewpoint. But most importantly, the businesses doesn't care what they say. If they can't complete a project and explain it to management, while no-code can, the advantage is not theirs. And you're exactly right that the business needs come much more first than the opinion of some developers, who usually would pick on anything that doesn't fit their habituated set up.
Finally, I think that no-code providers themselves should be experienced system engineers, addressing both business and developer needs at the same time, so that they can assert their emerged approach and acquired intuition via a great product. That's what I'm going to be doing for sure hopefully I can find people who can find value in my solutions.
Amen!!
Thanks for the affirmation!
As someone who's been around for a while (tangential to the tech industry but not directly in it), I've had at least 3 different careers already collapse under me due to disruptive innovations. So this one really caught my interest!