I think a lot of people who've commented clearly feel threatened by the concept of no-code and have default knee-jerk reaction anytime it's mentioned (how many comments are about the article vs the concept). Maybe there's also a theme of being troubled by the notion that the masses might cause a mess with these tools and shouldn't be trusted.
I think this kind of reaction is inevitable when people with power and privilege feel threatened by another group who are claiming some power for themselves.
Here's what the article was really about:
> The key here is that no-code tools aren’t successful just because they are easier to use — they are successful because they are connecting with a new generation that understands precisely the sort of logic required by these platforms to function.
It may be a poorly written click-baity article or you may think the conclusions are wrong but you can't dismiss the reality that a generation of people are being exposed to programming concepts in an entirely different way to our experiences. This is fascinating whatever you think about the tools themselves. Isn't the interesting discussion to be had here more about what this will mean for end-user software going forwards?
- Does this trend maybe mean that it's vitally important that we build some forms of open standards around this kind of technology?
- Should we rethink programming education for young people knowing that many are likely to have exposure to concepts no-code introduces?
- What does FOSS look like with no-code - do we need some serious FOSS tools in this space?
I think there are a lot more interesting avenues to explore beyond "I don't like this trend" and "we've seen abstractions get higher-level before and we haven't been put out of a job yet so what's all the fuss about".
> - What does FOSS look like with no-code - do we need some serious FOSS tools in this space?
FOSS traditionally has little interest in this because FOSS volunteers like to write code and, like HN, do not believe (to which I agree) that it is more efficient/flexible than writing code.
These tools have their purposes, but they are not new by any means and this 'generation is not coming', it was there since the 70s. Here is a package from the early 80s [0] which is still supported because people still use it; I for one know a large steel processing plant that runs on it since the beginning of the 80s until now; the guy who wrote the bespoke ERP system cannot actually code well; he stinks (he knows it; I knew him well when I still lived close to him), but it worked well for them with this 'low-code tool' for all these decades.
As I said somewhere; the problem is that FOSS is not interested and that the commercial tools belong either to tiny companies who can be wiped out tomorrow (by 'something') and huge companies who can cancel the product or only have cloud versions so you are locked-in completely. And a lot of people find that scary while almost all textual programming languages and frameworks are open source and free as in speech and beer.
I don't read the skepticism as "I don't like this trend," but rather "this trend is not new." And I agree with you that the relationship that people have with computers is fascinating. But as others have pointed out when you tell people "You can do all this stuff without coding," but when what you're really doing is making it easier for people to code while calling it "not code," you're forcing them to reinvent this history of computing, but now they don't have the language to connect what they're doing to what the industry has been doing since 1959.
But the article is just very self contradictory. It doesn't make sense to say "The No-Code Generation is arriving," while also saying that "Lua has never been more popular," or that we just had "the largest increase among all of the [Advanced Placement] organization’s dozens of tests" or "Meanwhile at top universities, computer science has emerged as the top or among the top majors, pulling in hundreds of new students per campus per year." Quite clearly, besides "no-code" platforms, there quite clearly is a growth in interest in traditional coding tools as well.
I think this kind of reaction is inevitable when people with power and privilege feel threatened by another group who are claiming some power for themselves.
Here's what the article was really about:
> The key here is that no-code tools aren’t successful just because they are easier to use — they are successful because they are connecting with a new generation that understands precisely the sort of logic required by these platforms to function.
It may be a poorly written click-baity article or you may think the conclusions are wrong but you can't dismiss the reality that a generation of people are being exposed to programming concepts in an entirely different way to our experiences. This is fascinating whatever you think about the tools themselves. Isn't the interesting discussion to be had here more about what this will mean for end-user software going forwards?
- Does this trend maybe mean that it's vitally important that we build some forms of open standards around this kind of technology?
- Should we rethink programming education for young people knowing that many are likely to have exposure to concepts no-code introduces?
- What does FOSS look like with no-code - do we need some serious FOSS tools in this space?
I think there are a lot more interesting avenues to explore beyond "I don't like this trend" and "we've seen abstractions get higher-level before and we haven't been put out of a job yet so what's all the fuss about".