We've always been advocates of writing less code. Simplicity is one of the core values underlying our sensible defaults for software development. For example, we try not to anticipate needs and only introduce code that satisfies immediate business requirements and nothing else. One way to achieve this is to create engineering platforms that make this possible on an organizational basis.
This is also the stated aim of many low-code platforms surging in popularity right now. Platforms like Mendix or Microsoft Power Apps can expose common business processes for reuse and simplify the problems of getting new functionality deployed and in the hands of users. These platforms have made great strides in recent years with testability and support for good engineering practices. They're particularly useful for simple tasks or event-triggered apps. However, asking them to adapt to a nearly infinite range of business requirements brings complexity. Although developers might be writing less (or zero) code, they must also become experts in an all-encompassing commercial platform. We would advise businesses to consider if they need all the functionality these products bring or if they're better off pursuing bounded low-code platforms, either by developing their own platform as an internal product or by carefully constraining the use of commercial low-code products to those simple tasks at which they excel.
One of the most nuanced decisions facing companies at the moment is the adoption of low-code or no-code platforms, that is, platforms that solve very specific problems in very limited domains. Many vendors are pushing aggressively into this space. The problems we see with these platforms typically relate to an inability to apply good engineering practices such as versioning. Testing too is typically really hard. However, we noticed some interesting new entrants to the market — including Amazon Honeycode, which makes it easy to create simple task or event management apps, and Parabola for IFTTT-like cloud workflows — which is why we're once again including bounded low-code platforms in this volume. Nevertheless, we remain deeply skeptical about their wider applicability since these tools, like Japanese Knotweed, have a knack of escaping their bounds and tangling everything together. That's why we still strongly advise caution in their adoption.
One of the most nuanced decisions facing companies at the moment is the adoption of low-code or no-code platforms, that is, platforms that solve very specific problems in very limited domains. Many vendors are pushing aggressively into this space. The problems we see with these platforms typically relate to an inability to apply good engineering practices such as versioning. Testing too is typically really hard. However, we noticed some interesting new entrants to the market — including Amazon Honeycode, which makes it easy to create simple task or event management apps, and Parabola for IFTTT-like cloud workflows — which is why we're including bounded low-code platforms in this volume. Nevertheless, we remain deeply skeptical about their wider applicability since these tools, like Japanese Knotweed, have a knack of escaping their bounds and tangling everything together. That's why we still strongly advise caution in their adoption.
