[kclay]

We have been evaluating how to scale our company (software agency) to be able to quickly build out mvps for some of our projects. The topic of no-code has come up and the one product named Unqork[1] has been mentioned to us. Has anyone had success with these solutions, if so what type of projects have this no-code paradigm excelled at?

[1] https://www.unqork.com/

[seibelj]

I don’t think no-code exists. It is a fools errand. No matter what the tools are for your profession - Photoshop, Unity, SolidWorks, Wordpress, or some new No or Low-code stack - you will quickly realize that having someone skilled in the tool is extremely desirous. For software development that person is a software engineer.

This no-code thing has existed forever. It’s a base set of software that is customizable as needed to fulfill the needs of your specific use-case. The rebranding to something that never requires custom work is once again a big lie.

Any sufficiently advanced tool eventually recreates the act of programming - putting pieces of building blocks together logically in advanced ways to fulfill a task. Dragging widgets around and typing conditionals in form elements is just another (slower, worse, more error-prone, restrictive) way of developing applications.

[toomuchtodo]

Having seen businesses refactor out from low/no code providers to their own code base once there is traction, the value is in the product market fit discovery without shelling out to build a full blown app stack before you have traction. Fundamentally, it’s about capital efficiency.

By all means, if you have the skill set and are confident to get there without a workflow tool, do so, otherwise (maybe you’re biz and product heavy vs tech capability heavy as a team) prove it out and then invest in your tech stack. As the saying goes, you’re not writing code, you’re solving business problems for money. If you don’t have to write code to solve the problem, don’t (or write as little code as possible).

TLDR your workflow tool is either the equivalent of scripts run by cron but more accessible to the team or a spike you intend to clean up and operationalize long term. Treat it as such.

[jc_811]

“Any sufficiently advanced tool eventually recreates the act of programming”

I think that quote in your last paragraph really hits the nail on the head.

I’ve become pretty adept at a few no/low-code tools and have thought after a particularly challenging project “wow, that was a doozy. There’s no way somebody new at this tool would have been able to work that out. The only reason I could is because I have months and months of daily hands on experience with the tool”… which at that point, I’ve realized the learning curve can be similar to just learning how to write all the code.

Always fun to learn new tools and methodologies though no matter what :)

[seibelj]

Always fun to learn new tools and methodologies though no matter what :)

I don't disagree, but to me you unlock your true potential by learning to code. Once you are proficient in the art, the framework / language / tools don't matter anymore as they are all the same. Once you understand computation from bottom to the top, you realize it's all the same thing re-done in endless variations.

[mbrodersen]

Run don’t walk away from no-code tools. Seriously. I have never seen or heard of a case where no-code tools increased productivity long term. Instead, hire good developers who knows how to be more productive with real production languages.

[mhitza]

Have you invested into building an internal starterkit that includes all the parts common among all webapps, on a stack you have expertise in?

Or pick an existing starter kit on the market and base all your MVP projects on that?

[kclay]

Yeah we have a few components we are using across projects and are going to start expanding that out throughout our stack.

[gervwyk]

Check out Lowdefy. https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy Co-Founder of Lowdefy here.

We're having great success with it as a software agency, it really scales well with projects because you can organise files and folders the way you like, and do code review because you are working with a app schema that is easy to read, write and understand. Which enables all the advantages of coding as well as low-code.

[kclay]

An open source solution, thanks will check this out.