Responding to the promise of creating applications or websites with little or no code, low code and no code solutions are experiencing growing success. They make it possible to combat the shortage of developers, accelerate the release of projects and leave it to business experts to create applications and sites that meet their needs. But do they signal the end of developers?
Digital transformation increases pressure on the IT department. Overwhelmed and suffering from a shortage of developers, the IT department is struggling to meet the needs of business departments (finance, HR, purchasing, sales, marketing, etc.). The digitalization of our economy, however, calls for a shortening of the time it takes to bring innovative solutions to market, whether they are applications (mobile, web), sites, software, APIs or process automation systems.
For lack of anything better, professions are multiplying applications under the radar of the IT department. A “shadow IT” which exposes the company to cybersecurity risks and non-compliance with the rest of the information system (IS).
The low code/no code solution
The low code/no code movement is one of the answers to these needs. As its name suggests, it involves creating applications with as little code as possible (low code) or even without a line of code (no code). From a visual 100 % interface, they manipulate application components that they drag and drop to create the architecture of the future solution and trigger actions when predefined events occur.
On paper, everyone would be a winner. Developers increase their productivity by reusing a set of resources and template libraries. This code optimization is part of the natural evolution of software engineering workshops and rapid application development (RAD) tools.
Thanks to no code, business experts regain control
For their part, business experts, renamed “citizen developers”, create their own applications independently and without programming knowledge. The only prerequisites: a sense of logic and advanced mastery of office tools, particularly Microsoft Excel.
In a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) logic, the user visualizes the rendering of the future application and can carry out tests before arriving at the final version. This approach responds, for the moment, to simple and well-identified use cases such as a meeting room reservation application or a form for drawing up a field inventory. It also makes it possible to design a prototype that internal IT specialists will functionally enrich and then integrate into the IS.
A trend accentuated by the pandemic
According to Gartner, the health crisis only reinforces this trend with the need to automate workflows. The global low-code development technology market alone was expected to grow by 23 1TP3Q in 2021 to reach $5.8 billion. And the best is yet to come the study firm which plans that 80 % of technological products and services could be designed by non-computer scientists by 2024.
Beyond the pandemic, the market also benefits from the porting of so-called “low code application platform” (LCAP) solutions to the cloud, which contributes to its democratization. Finally, with such growth, it attracts the desire of a large number of players. Alongside the “pure players” of low code (OutSystems or Mendix acquired by Siemens) and no code (Weebly, Caspio, Bubble, Zapier), we find new entrants, from very diverse backgrounds.
The history of business process management (BPM) and case management such as Appian, Pega or Bonitasoft have naturally positioned themselves in this niche. Specialists in the automation of business processes and the management of business rules, they have every legitimacy to make this shift to low code.
This segment also includes ServiceNow, well known to IT departments as the specialist in IT service management (ITSM). The acquisition of SkyGiraffe in 2017 allows the American publisher to offer a low-code development studio dedicated to mobile applications. Another family: specialists in the automation of business processes or RPA (Robotic process automation) such as UiPath, Automation Anywhere or Blue Prism. Again, this is a natural evolution. Complementary to RPA, a low/no code environment makes it possible to manage workflows that are not eligible for processing by software bots by creating intelligent workflows.
Make way for hyperautomation of processes
In the combination of RPA, low/no code and artificial intelligence, we can even speak of so-called platforms hyperautomation, one of the technological trends of 2022 identified by Gartner. Another wave, more discreet, that of so-called “intelligent” spreadsheets which include a dose of low/code to create custom dashboards and automate workflows. Following the pioneer and leader, Airtable, Smartsheet or JotForm Tables are part of this niche.
Finally, GAFAM could not stay away from this fundamental movement. With Power Apps, Microsoft capitalizes on its ecosystem. Users find the familiar “look” of Microsoft 365 and benefit from the synergies with the other components of its collaborative suite and in particular Power BI, its data visualization solution. Another module from the Redmond firm, Power Virtual Agents allows you to create chatbots, again without code.
Same bet for Honeycode from Amazon Web Services (AWS). The hyperscaler relies on its portfolio of cloud solutions to enrich its low-code development platform. Amazon AppFlow thus makes it possible to manage, without code, data flows between in-house services such as Amazon S3 and Amazon Redshift and third-party applications such as SAP, Zendesk, Slack or ServiceNow.
Among the other digital giants, we will have to count on Google and SAP which respectively bought AppSheet and AppGyver, two no code platforms. Salesforce opened the way to the market by launching Lightning, an application development framework, in 2015. Since then, the issue has developed different code optimization solutions. The latest, Dynamic Interactions is aimed at non-developers. Salesforce is called a leader in Gartner's final magic quadrant alongside Mendix, Microsoft, OutSystems and ServiceNow.
The end of developers?
Won't the proliferation of these tools mean the end of code and, by extension, developers? Chris Wanstrath, the founder of GitHub, the famous software hosting and development service, already predicted in 2017: “The future of code is no code at all”.
However, if no code is aimed at non-computer scientists and low code at developers who want to quickly create projects, these tools have their limits. These solutions democratize digital production by making it possible to set up simple projects. Beyond that, developers will always have their place in more complex projects. Coder and non-coders will therefore continue to coexist.
