> Clearly these apps/platforms enable non-developers to solve a bunch of problems which would otherwise need a software engineer.
I'm not sure that's as clear as it seems at first. Everywhere I've been involved with them, the flow is like this:
1) Org sold on idea of no/low code tool, "business analyst can build things!"
2) Business analyst tries, fails to build things, calls dev
3) Dev figures it out, could have done similar in a few lines of code. Either a) becomes "expert" in tool or b) goes back to code
I'm not ready to rule them all out, and maybe I just worked with some inept business analysts. These tools are by their nature usually closed source/proprietary, but maybe there's some great ones. But I also wonder if it's not partially fundamental: maybe text is just more concise and expressive than visual paradigms for some problems - there's a reason we still have textbooks for some things.
I'm not sure that's as clear as it seems at first. Everywhere I've been involved with them, the flow is like this:
1) Org sold on idea of no/low code tool, "business analyst can build things!" 2) Business analyst tries, fails to build things, calls dev 3) Dev figures it out, could have done similar in a few lines of code. Either a) becomes "expert" in tool or b) goes back to code
I'm not ready to rule them all out, and maybe I just worked with some inept business analysts. These tools are by their nature usually closed source/proprietary, but maybe there's some great ones. But I also wonder if it's not partially fundamental: maybe text is just more concise and expressive than visual paradigms for some problems - there's a reason we still have textbooks for some things.