No-code is more than a movement, it's a philosophy

The term no-code is fairly recent and like it is often the case in the tech industry it's the new buzz word.

Everybody and their brother want to make a new No-Code platform, an agency or whatnot. But beyond the buzz word that generated the movement following the trend, the philosophy of No-Code have been around for a very long time.

I fell in love with it back in 2008 when I was still a student. I have always been in love with startups and the possibility of turning my idea into a viable business. So back then with all the hype around creating apps I decided to create my owns. There was just one issue, I was and still am a lousy coder.

I was studying programming but I have never been able to be a really good programmer. I was passionate with tech and creating companies, I had so many ideas that I wanted to turn into something great but I struggled really learning how to code and I was to broke to hire somebody to do it for me.

So I looked for a turnaround. That's what I think No-Coding is all about, finding the shortest path between your idea and the thing you want to build but that shortest path can't be coding.

I had 2 ideas back then. The first one was creating a platform for MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games) players, this was supposed to be the Facebook for MMORPG players. They would create a page for their in-game character and share their in-game adventures with their followers.

The second idea was a platform for food lovers to be on and where they would be able to share everything related to the restaurant they went into and the meal they ordered.

The 2 ideas were titled goblinn and enjoyourmeal.

Since blogs where very popular in those days, I looked online and I discovered Wordpress and when I was impressed by the power of the tool, I wasn't satisfied. I needed to find a way for my users to create their own blog on my platform and that's where I found Wordpress MU (Multi Users) and after long hours of research I was able to build 2 communities by spending less than $100.

Mind you, it was nothing fancy but I was so proud of what I had done. None of them became a success of course but since then I never stoped to build stuff and look for the shortest path between the original idea and the result I wanted to achieve.

During all these years since then I tried everything. Building stuff by coding, hiring programmers to make stuff for me and also build stuff using No-Code and I can really tell you that the most enjoyable of them all has always been No-Code.

A month ago, I built an online translating dictionnary for kids that translate French to some African Languages.

This was a project brought to me by a friend of mine, that matters so much for that person that she gave me a good chunck of money to have it created. Seeing how much it mattered to her, I hired an indian programmer I had already worked with and who was able to deliver good results.

He started working on it and progressed fairly quickly until he hit a road block. His progresses became slow and far between. When I tried to reach out he always had a good excuse. He had already made something on his servers and we could access it so he sent a .csv file that my friend had to populate with the informations for the dictionnary and he was waiting for the file in order to finish with the whole thing. At least that what he told me.

Little did I know that it was only a ploy to gain some time. When I investigated this matter a bit further I discovered the website was no longer available. When I called him he ended up telling me the truth, he had lost his servers. They crashed with everything we had on it and he requested more money to work on the dictionnary and the games that came with it.

I was in a very bad place. How could I go to my friend and let her know I blew it? How could I ever tell her that her money was lost and that she had to spend even more to have it done?

Trying to find a solution I tried to gain time too. Everytime my friend called me to let me know they could no longer acess the website, I had some good excuse and I asked them for the file they were supposed to send back.

At some point I was tired of playing that game. I checked on google how to code an online dictionnary, I planned on coding the whole thing and find a way to build a nice design around it that would apeal to a younger audience. I gave up fast. I was bored reading coding tutorials and I just couldn't stand it anymore.

I then did what I do best, finding the shortest path between my friend idea and the result she wanted to obtain.

That's how I got back to Wordpress for the front end. I used the Divi theme which is a site builder made by Elegant Themes + I used Airtable to make the database. I used a Wordpress plugin to make the games and another plugin to deal with the signups, I got vectors that look like beautiful and colourful drawings and voila. My interactive dictionnary was ready and my friend was even more impressed with the result that she was with the idian programmer's stuff. And guess what, the whole think took me less than 25 days and I enjoyed every second of it.

What is the moral of this long post?

No-code is not a buzz word that gave birth to a movement and that will fad away with time.

No. No-Code is a philosophy that is here to stay as long as there would be people who will look for the shortest path between their idea and the result they are looking for.

I wish you a Happy New Year. May 2021be a year of blessing and success for you and your loved ones.

Look forward reading more from me. I will be building a lot of apps in 2021.