In Opposition of Low Code Development

Over the last few years, low code software development has risen in prominence. Forbes published an article detailing the virtues of low code systems. Major money has been invested in low code platforms by investors. Large corporations are embracing low code systems. CTO’s and managers are adding “Low Code” to their buzzword vocabulary lists. It's right next to terms like “Agile” and “Digital Enablement”. It's all the rage, but does it live up to the hype?

Let’s start with the basic forensic principal of following the money. Who stands to gain the most from low code development? The purveyors of low code development systems. If you want to see how many different systems are available go, do a Google search. I don’t want to give the charlatans free advertising. How much does a company pushing a low code platform care about your bottom line? Are they invested in the success of your company?

Let’s consider two companies wanting to buy low code systems.

(A) A company with an existing development team that wants faster project turnaround. And development teams are expensive. They see this as a way to lower cost and go fast. Perhaps less developers using low code systems.

(B) A company without internal development capability. They see that their business needs custom software. They don't want to hire developers because of the cost. They want IT and all the other techy people in the organization to build the applications.

Technical sales will market low code systems to the upper echelon of an organization. This is a smart move on the part of sales people, target the uninformed. However, remember this.

The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject. -Marcus Aurelius

Low code systems aren’t of much interest to skilled professional developers. Unless of course you're a developer working for a company that sells a low code platform. Let’s take a look at how these systems are marketed.

Low code systems marketing points:

Let’s now look a little closer at the bullet points keeping company (A) and (B) in mind.

Faster development: We live in a time when our applications update continuously. Our applications are changing rapidly and continuously. Many things have enabled software to develop at a rapid pace. I’ll draw your attention to just a few.

Regardless of the size of your development team, they can take advantage of any of the above technologies to increase their velocity. If you’re development team isn’t moving fast enough, perhaps they need training. Or you need to replace a few developers.

Citizen developers: This term means redirecting productive employees to coding. They will need to spend time learning how to code in a low code environment. They may not be typing code, but they’ll still have to learn many programming concepts. There is a hitch though. Not everyone can code. But a coder can come from anywhere.

‘In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.’ – Anton Ego – Ratatouille

A company is rolling the dice when it comes to citizen developers. You don't know what you're getting. There are a few other issues too. How do you keep your citizen developers from deleting every record in the database? Etc. Eventually a company will realize that citizen development isn't working. At that point they'll start looking for a low code contractor. Yes, buy a low code system, then go look for very small pool of developers who specialize in that system. Scarcity will drive price.

One of the traits that makes a good developer valuable is that they are looking for the best ways to solve a problem. Many solutions aren’t technical, but rather business process. Often the collaboration of a subject matter expert and developer yields great results. The type of thinking required to make good software can also be used to improve other areas of the business. Do citizen developers have these skills? Maybe?

Lower Cost: The immediate questions is lower cost over what timespan? Lower initial cost? Perhaps, but what about the long term cost? Once code gets locked into a proprietary system, you have other things to think about. What if the low code platform provider goes out of business? What is the initial cost? What about yearly service fees? What's the cost to find that small pool of specialized contractors who know how to use the low code system. Remember the old adage. You get what you pay for.

Low code systems have more layers of abstraction. This can result in slower code. Perhaps small inefficiencies, but if you’re a large business slow apps can burn time and time is money.

Reusable Code: I’m not sure why this is even touted as a feature. Pretty much all coding paradigms build on reusability.

Drag and Drop Coding: Drag and drop coding is an interesting feature. Drag and drop code interfaces are being used to teach children the fundamentals of logic. This is a great use case, and as of right now the only valid one.

Extensibility: Not everything will fit into the well-defined box of low code widgets. When you can't build what you need to in your low code environment, you have to write code. This is where things get ugly. You have to write code that conforms to the interfaces of the low code platform. Hopefully you can do what you need to without jumping through dozens of layers. Most low code developers will likely be pretty lost at this point. Get out your checkbook again.

Summary Let’s get back to the two companies that I mentioned earlier. What will happen if company (A) buys a low code environment? It’s likely that any decent developer will leave. Development resumes don’t thrive on low code. The developers left at the company (the ones who made things slow) will continue to go slow with low code. Thus company (A) will have achieved one of its goals, less developers.

If company (B) purchases a low code system they’ll soon find themselves dealing with an uprising in IT. To combat the uprising they’ll be forced into finding contractors to code things for them. They’ll have the disadvantage of locked in technologies. Their dreams will never be realized.

Alternative to Low Code: The alternative to low code systems is to embrace the development process. If you can hire internal developers. If that’s not an option, look to any number of reputable code consulting companies.

A company’s problem solving ability may well define its future value. If you are looking for some stocks to short, look on the web at any low code provider’s testimonials section. That’s a good list to bet against.