No professional is an expert because of the tools they use, they are an expert due to experience, knowledge and skills
“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.” ― Michelangelo Buonarroti
Giving non-developers a tool to create software doesn’t make them software developers in the same way giving me a wrench doesn’t make me a car mechanic. Experienced software developers have an in-depth knowledge of a development that non professionals won’t have ever heard of.
Low code software development has incredible potential, fast delivery of software by non-developers. Companies suddenly imagine they could reduce their expenditure on IT and the cost of creating new software. The dream scenario is to train up employees on the basics of low code development and start creating software.
The possibility of lowering the cost of software development has seen hyper-growth in the low code tools. Gartner predicts that by 2023, over 50% of medium to large enterprises will have adopted an Low code application as one of their strategic application platforms. Forrester states that low code application development is growing 50 percent per year.
Dynamics 365 partners are experiencing massive growth and creating their own Power Platform teams, Why low code software development is eating the world.
So how is this going to work? I predict its going to go through the stages below
Stage 1 — Explosion (current stage)
We are currently in stage 1, Low code software development is exploding and every company is giving it a go and for small projects with a few developers, everything is working well.
You will hear lots of success stories about how an application was built and deployed in days and solved a small business problem. Low code software increases in popularity and be used to create lots of small solutions. Citizen developers will learn to write low code applications.
Low code software is perfect for small simple, isolated functionality. In the short-term, it will work great and generate successful examples of solutions deployed into production quickly.
Stage 2 — cracks appear
Creating software is the simple part, maintaining software is more costly. Companies realise that whether you create software with code or no code it still has to be supported, maintained and upgraded regularly.
In the same way business realised that having lots of business critical Excel spreadsheets and Access databases wasn’t easy to support, having lots of Low code applications isn’t easy to support.
New questions appear
- Who is going to support all these low code applications, is it citizen developers or IT teams?
- Did anyone stop to ask if Low code applications are easy to maintain, deploy, test?
- What you mean you didn’t rapidly create documentation, how is anyone meant to understand these six months later?
low code software creates a maintenance nightmare? when companies see the downside of supporting hundreds of small applications. Citizen developers make mistakes because they are inexperienced junior developers with few standards or best practices put in place to ensure quality.
Low code applications individually won’t be a problem but 100’s of low code applications written by non-developers will create a complex whole solution.
There will be failed projects when the low code developers try to tackle more complex projects which will take longer than expected or you can’t meet the complex requirements without code.
Stage 3 — Professional stage
Companies realise they need professional developers to set up standards, best practices, automated deployments and developers experience in creating software development team (even for low code). These will be called centers of excellence.
Microsoft and other Low code vendor will now have moved 50 percent of companies onto a low code platform and can raise prices because who wants to move hundreds of small business critical applications to a cheaper low code provider.
Companies will find it difficult to support hundreds of small applications and because of the poor quality of development, supporting the applications will be difficult. IT departments will struggle to understand how many small applications work together to create a complex whole.
The steps followed in this article — How to stop developers creating legacy code and professionals developers to set up centres of excellence and sort of the mess created in stage 1 and 2.
Stage 4 — Code is still needed
Companies see there is a need for professional developers and there is still requirements for code. Low code application is suitable for simple requirements but companies will still have complex requirements and need custom applications.
For larger solutions it’s easier to create with the complete solution in mind and easier to support one large solution,
The low code applications will get requests to extend the simple low code applications with functionality that can only be delivered by code.
Conclusion
Experienced software developers skill is more than writing code, it’s their approach, experience and their ability to create simple code that is easily maintainable. Giving citizen developer low code tools doesn’t mean they will create quality applications in to the same standard as experienced developers.
Home DIY shows that people having tools doesn’t mean they know how to use them.
There will always be the need and demand for complex applications that need to be built to work exactly to the specific requirements. Professional developers will use low code development tools to create applications and help in training citizen developers on how to become software developers (without writing code).
Low code development will hit the ceiling, make a big mess and then with the help of developers approach low code development professionally, lead by software developers.