The Economist January 29th 2022 |Software development|”Going codeless” “Firms are letting all workers write software, not just the geek elite”
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Summary by 2244
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Dating back to the 1960s many have dreamed of “codelessness” or the idea of “automatic programming.” A first step forward really started in the 1990s when Microsoft introduced “Visual Basic” followed a decade later by firms such as “Appian, Caspio, Mendix and Salesforce” offering “products aimed expressly at line-of-business types.”
Most recently Microsoft’s “Power Apps,” is a hit particularly for non-IT geeks who are instead field workers that leverage their work-knowledge to create useful applications. Telstra, an Australian telecom, is cited as an example whereby “a field technician [w/o coding skills]…built an app that unified 70 messaging systems for reporting phone-line problems.” As it turns out the app is cluttered but works well for the targeted users.
These tools like Power Apps, Salesforce and Amazon’s “SageMaker Canvas” and “Honeycode (In Beta)” allow “anyone to write software using drag and drop visual interfaces alone (non code) or with a bit of code creep in (low code). Under the hood, this is translated into pre-written automatically generated code…”
As it is, the world is currently more than one million coders short of need and that is expected to surge to a four million shortage by 2025. Power Apps, according to Charles Lamanna (Microsoft), now has 10 million users and he “envisages a global population of a billion low/no coders.”
Too good to be true? It depends. Most of the usefulness and success will be in creating tools for business line applications. These non-coders can create and test applications rapidly to create tools that work and improve productivity for their line of business. Real coders, as well, are using these tools but specifically to automate routine and repetitive steps in the coding process but remain “resistant.” As they see it, low code or non code (LC/NC) will not displace ‘full’ coding…” Pro developers or “Pro devs will continue writing their firm’s core products and mission-critical enterprise systems.”
For employers the combination of Pro Dev and LC/NC “means greater productivity.” And for an individual employee, changing your role from hair stylist to a LC/NC software maker is possible and potentially life-changing.