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by kkilat 4445 days ago
Totally get your point, and we could have a fun philosophical discussion around whether or not people SHOULD want to learn how to code.

However, it's pretty clear that most of the people in the world who want to create/share content on the web are NOT interested in learning how to code at all, right? I mean, that's a big part of the reason why blogging platforms, and many other user-generated content sites are so huge (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. etc.).

Yeah, people could just stick with what they know if they don't want to code -- but then there would still be huge barriers between having an idea that you want to create and get out there, and actually having the ability to make it real.

For example, this Webflow Interactions site was entirely created by someone who isn't a coder (I know, I work with him). How long would it have taken him to learn all of the code he would have needed to know to create it all from scratch? Or how much would he have needed to pay a developer to build it for him? And how long would that back and forth taken to get it all right?

For a lot of people, those types barriers are insurmountable (they don't have the time/skill to learn themselves, or the money to pay someone else). So should their ideas just not ever have the chance to see the light of day?

If everyone who ever had a great idea could code it themselves that would be awesome. I just don't think it's feasible -- and tools like Webflow can bring a lot more people a lot closer.

1 comments

Nah man, you are contributing to the problem. Less training wheels, the world is a better place without them.

Drink your kool aid all you want, coding will never be replaced by a solution like this. It will simply allow someone to get closer to what they want before they grow frustrated by unforeseen limitations they will eventually run into; then they need to hire a real coder to fix everything, and likely replace it all, costing them more money and worse lost time.

"Nah man, you are contributing to the problem. Less training wheels, the world is a better place without them."

Tell that to all the Wordpress based projects out there or Dev Frameworks.

Some users just need an outlet to express fairly static data in engaging ways and don't need the overhead of learning a CRUD/REST stack in their way.

There will always be a need for experts who know who computer science actually works but harder things will continue to be further simplified.