Tech

Everything You Should Know About the No-Code Movement

If you can believe it, the future of programming is not coding. Everything tends to reduce the cost – the automation and simplification, including web and application development. But before you can learn to program without code, you must first understand how to do it using code. But this can be tricky, especially when you’ve just started to code. Here special services come to the rescue, which can be found simply by googling “do my coding homework.” This is a great opportunity to quickly sort out your coding weaknesses and move on to further study.

Programming without using code

About seven years ago, the trend in America was to “program” without using code. You’ve probably heard of it. You can easily create a finished product like a mobile application with little technical knowledge by simply dragging and dropping elements. The average users will not be able to distinguish it from the one made by the development team.

Since then, platforms like Tilda and Bubble have grown by leaps and bounds. A huge number of them have appeared for each type of user and project. Using a simple interface, even without using the keyboard, entrepreneurs can make their projects and check whether they become popular.

Such constructors as Sharetribe, Webflow, Bubble, Glide, and others allow you to launch your marketplace in a matter of hours. You need no development team and no investment. You can build a service that looks and works like Airbnb in 2-3 days with only Glide and Google Sheets at your fingertips. Designers have developed so much in the last couple of years that there is talk again that a good portion of programmers will soon have to look for a new job. Why should you hire people and spend money if you can quickly make an entire product (website, application) yourself and with zero programming knowledge?

People are even afraid that millions of programmers with the development of no-code and AI will soon go to the labor market. And they will be forced to retrain as cashiers, movers, or truckers.

In almost all cases, this will be more than enough to launch a new product MVP. Ben Tossell, founder of Marketpad, says that for 90% of small businesses (that get less than $10 million a year), no-code opportunities are more than enough. Instead of looking for mobile app developers, assembling a team for a project, and spending several months or even years on creating a product, just drag and drop a few elements and you’re done!

The main advantages of no-code tools

  • No-code is a good analyst tool to test a new concept or product quickly.
  • You can create a project once, drag and drop elements, and often it will adapt to all platforms (mobile, web, different browsers).
  • Almost no communication is needed. For development, at least several people are required: customer, project manager, developers, designer. However, with no-code, you need two people: the first provides the technical assignment, and the second one works with no-code tools, and it also periodically makes changes according to the requirements.

Disadvantages of no-code tools

  • It can be pretty easy to choose the wrong technology. However, technologies are developing. For example, Tilda is perfect for landing pages, and Webflow is perfect for branched portals with CMS and a bunch of pages. You can definitely create an MVP of a website (if you don’t need a complex, high-load backend). Plus there are over a thousand plugins to expand the functionality.
  • No-code tools are not well suited for large-scale projects. As the number of users increases, you have to pay higher rates.
  • Price. Not always is a no-code/low-code service cheap.

Is it worth learning no-code?

Are employees who specialize in no-code tools needed? Yes and no. If we study vacancies on LinkedIn and similar sites, you can notice that owning zero-code programs is like possessing digital literacy. You don’t need Word and Excel knowledge anymore – it is more important to know how to work with Notion, Webflow, or Airtable. Often, basic knowledge is enough, but if you go to the experienced user level, then your chances of success will be higher.

Knowing how to work with no-code tools is like being well-versed in new technologies – for example, you can become a voice bot customizer or a developer of embedded e-commerce solutions, since these areas are growing all over the world.

The plus is that to master zero-code you don’t need to spend several years and invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in education. For example, the Bubble platform can be mastered at an initial level in 4-5 hours, and you can get into the nuances in 10-15 hours. Of course, basic programming knowledge will still not be superfluous – for this, you can take a course on the basics of web development. 

By the way, having a mentor will help you quickly master no-code development – a specialist will tell you how to quickly upgrade your skills and advise interesting life hacks. No-code mentors already exist: they conduct webinars, conferences, and master classes for beginners.

No-code platforms

Zapier

Zapier describes their platform as the glue that binds thousands of web applications together. With the help of Zapier, you can integrate various services; for example, there is a feedback form on the online store of houseplants. After a user wrote a review, you had to manually add it to your file on Hubspot, where you store customer reviews, because it was not clear how to integrate it with your site. Zapier automates the integration and, accordingly, the expansion of the functionality of services.

Zapier now has over 2,000 integration capabilities, including web applications such as Google Sheets, Mailchimp, and Hubspot. Zapier costs about $20 per month.

Mendix

According to a study by Gartner, one of the most famous players in the low-code area is Mendix, which was recently bought by Siemens for a cosmic $730 million. With its help, ordinary users will be able to independently create business applications, create product prototypes, and automate workflows.

All workflows take place inside the Mendix platform, and not on the customer’s site or service. The visual editor allows you to describe data models, quickly create screens using a set of widgets, and even describe the logic of the processes.

For example, your online store selling houseplants needs to add an attribute to the business object card and indicate there, in addition to the date of the appearance of the ficus in the pot, the time of its sale – this will allow us to find out how long the ficus has been in the warehouse. While using a relational database, programmers will add an attribute and reconfigure the database in the development environment and block user access to the system while the changes are being transferred to the main environment. Moreover, if the amount of data is very large, then access will be blocked for a long time. In low-code systems, including Mendix, graph databases are used, which allows updating this data through visual systems without involving programmers and blocking user access to the system.

What will happen to no-code in the future?

It seems that the market for no-code services will actively continue to develop further. In addition to increasing the investment attractiveness of this area, more and more people will use the capabilities of these technologies against the background of a gradual decrease in the entry into the field of programming.

In general, the no-code sphere is actively developing as well as no-design, where more and more businesses are using services like Canva instead of professional designers.

No-code tools are great, but they can’t solve all programming problems nowadays. Even Mendix, the low-code platform sold to German giant Siemens for $730 million in 2018, recently had to admit that the world needs developers now more than ever before. Anything more complex than a simple interface and basic data manipulation will always require a professional developer, just like servicing a car requires a professional mechanic.

Ethan

Ethan is the founder, owner, and CEO of EntrepreneursBreak, a leading online resource for entrepreneurs and small business owners. With over a decade of experience in business and entrepreneurship, Ethan is passionate about helping others achieve their goals and reach their full potential.

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