The ‘Problem’ With Low-Code (And How To Fix It)

Cloud The ‘Problem’ With Low-Code (And How To Fix It) Adrian Bridgwater Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I track enterprise software application development & data management. New! Follow this author to improve your content experience.

Got it! Jul 22, 2022, 01:50am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin LONDON – FEBRUARY 04: A low emission zone sign is pictured on February 4, 2008 in London, England. . .

. [+] The start of the legislation will charge operators of affected lorries, buses and coaches that do not meet the Low Emission Zone standards (unless exempt or entitled to a 100% discount) ?200 for each charging day they are driven in the zone. The scheme will eventually see drivers of the highest greenhouse gas emitting cars paying ?25 for entry.

(Photo by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images) Getty Images In technology, perceptions change. Usually (although not exclusively) as a result of some major new platform, device form-factor or a change in some major industry-wide protocol or process, we humans form our ideas about technology by directly consuming it as we see it evolve. Back in 2010, not too many people outside of the hard core programming community really used the term ‘app’, denoting ‘software application’ as it does, obviously.

The birth of the iPad in 2011 and the ensuing world of smartphones has of course changed that perception level so that everybody and their grandmother now uses the term. Go back perhaps half a decade and the same was true for low-code & no-code (LC/NC) software tooling. Although still not necessarily known to the consumer masses, this is a term that most businesspeople have now come across, even if they don’t work in the IT function itself.

But as with all technologies, there’s always a hype cycle, so should we stand back and take a more considered view at this point? Given that many platforms and tools in the low-code and especially no-code space are marketing as so-called citizen users (citizen developers even), just how safe it is for us to start pushing for even more of these functionalities? Development is not just construction Some say that these new toolsets represent too narrow a focus on construction. Ask anyone with a professional software engineering certification about real world deployment and they’ll tell you that developing the code for an application only a fraction of the story. There are requirements-gathering, design, modelling, security, deployment, version management, change management, metrics, monitoring, auditing, compliance, maintenance procedures, user adoption & engagement, feedback collection and a lot more.

MORE FOR YOU Western Digital’s Journey To Build Business Resiliency Through Cloud And ERP Transformation Amazon Climate Pledge: Two Years In And Going Strong Microsoft Takes First Steps To Finally Kill The Password This is the firm opinion of Webcon’s VP of North America and chief evangelist Mike Fitzmaurice . Webcon develops a low-code Business Process Automation (BPA) platform that enables the delivery & continuous improvement of enterprise-grade business applications. “It’s also not clear whether someone who gravitates toward low code/no code wants to care about anything beyond building a simple application that scratches a personal itch,” worries Fitzmaurice, who insists that he would rather (for the most part at least) see LC/NC tools placed in the hands of professional developers, who really know how to use these tools.

The Webcon team are used to handling this type of technology and says that it’s the professionals who realize that there’s more to delivery than construction, who can focus on the big picture… and who can leverage design patterns (and in fact know what design patterns are in the first place). Citizen- assisted development But there is room admits Fitzmaurice for low-code to be adopted by citizens and professionals alike. He says that it’s not impossible that a single platform is flexible enough to address the needs of both constituencies.

We even have room to address a hybrid model, citizen- assisted development, in which citizens own the design, professionals own the development and a fusion team of peers shares responsibility for delivery. “It all comes down to too little focus on collaboration and communication,” said Fitzmaurice. “The mental image many have of low-code development is one person dragging-and-dropping together some clever thing in their spare time.

They don’t need to figure out how to explain requirements or onboard users because (at least at first) the client, designer, developer and user are all the same person. That can be accurate, especially in citizen developer scenarios, but it’s not universal — and it certainly doesn’t scale. ” It’s true to say that any solution that reaches critical mass (which in this means utilization beyond those who build it) will need to be explained to other people.

Since low-code projects tend to involve small (often one-person) teams, they carry with them a greater risk of the developer being unavailable due to something as drastic as leaving the company or something as mainstream as a vacation. Illustration, explanation, communication “If it’s citizen-developed, meaning the developer doesn’t create applications every day, it’s even possible that months can elapse in between periods of time being spent on an application — and in such cases, the challenge is for the developer to proactively communicate with their forgetful future self,” explained Fitzmaurice. “There needs to be a focus on clarity.

On illustration. On explanation. On communication.

Ease of construction does not guarantee ease of understanding. ” There are wider issues to consider here; in some ways, low-code projects can be harder to communicate than code, as a number of analysis and meta tools exist for comparing, profiling, outlining and explaining what code is doing. That said, such value-added tools depend on the use of discipline and procedure to get any value from them.

But Fitzmaurice surfaces another problem; he suggests that in the world of low-code, there’s too narrow a focus on one application at a time. We’re not saying that we need to sound off some corporate alarm so that we can watch out for anarchistic one-off citizen-developed applications, but we are saying that there is a potential risk of less consistency among low-code applications. This is perhaps the easiest of the ‘problems’ tabled here to allay.

Technology platforms that can deliver multiple consistent applications to one common centrally located ‘place’ (which in this could be a single data store, single code repository or single cloud instance) and that follow common practices make everyone’s life easier. Fortunately, low code is already associated with tradeoff (lose a little flexibility to gain a lot of productivity), so this ought not be met with too much resistance. Inevitable… and also desirable too When we take stock of this discussion and look at where we are in the world of applications, we have too much user demand being addressed by too small a talent pool.

For that reason alone, Fitzmaurice agrees that low-code & no-code is not only inevitable, but it’s also desirable too. But a lot is riding on the quality of the tools & platforms being selected, the methods being used and the organizational will to take the effort seriously. “These are issues that have been faced by code-based professional development for what feels like forever.

We in the world of low-code/no-code have an obligation to learn from them and adapt their techniques to our new reality. In various corners of our sector, this work has already started,” concluded Fitzmaurice. It’s not a question of whether we’ll work through these issues, but rather a question of how long it will take and how good the result will be.

Paradoxically perhaps, what we really need in low-code next is the low-down. Webcon’s VP of North America and chief evangelist Mike Fitzmaurice Webcon Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Adrian Bridgwater Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.