If you’ve recently used a website builder, B2C mobile app, or web customer portal, you’ve probably interacted with a low- or no-code product.

Over the past decade, it has become more common for solutions aimed at customers or the public to use low-code development – ​​a technology that allows users to build products with little or no coding capability. This doesn’t mean development teams snap their fingers and products magically develop on their own, but it does allow for a lot less hard coding to implement new systems or for customers to customize their software.

What does this look like in practice? Philadelphia technologists told us.

No code vs low code

There’s still a lot of technological prowess in building lower-code platforms, but it’s done upstream and by in-house developers. The effort here is taken away from the customers of these platforms. Those who use these products and implement them in their own systems do not need a lot of technical skills to implement low-code products or platforms in their own systems.

“What they mean is that you as a user don’t have a code,” said Eric Heydenbergco-founder and CTO of Philly and Austin QuotaPath, which makes payment software for sales teams. In his business,[QuotaPath’s developers] write the code in the product and that’s the distinction.

Don’t have any coding experience? No-code platforms could meet your software development needs.

No-code or low-code products can range from building an entire website in a day to a platform that helps you build your own app, said Bryan Rishforthexecutive chairman of Bryn Mawr-based software company graphite CG.

Low-code app development is model-driven, which means those interacting with the software simply drag and drop the features or changes they want into the platform they want. they use. It is a software development strategy that allows users to build applications using pre-built components, rather than building everything from scratch.

Software modeling is also set to be a bit more intuitive, meaning users with all different levels of development experience are set to be able to work with one platform. This allows changes to be implemented more quickly, which means products using low-code methods are often built faster.

True no-code platforms are for those with no coding knowledge or experience, and are usually a bit more basic. It uses similar drag-and-drop methods to build apps, but users won’t reinvent the wheel. Simple website building tools like Wixwhich is considered quite low code, recently deployed Brand applicationa tool allowing users to develop native applications without writing code. air table, Shopify and Zapier also offer products without code.

Benefits of Weak or No Code

Heydenberk, who previously worked on low-code solutions for an e-marketing company Monetizesaid he felt the tides were starting to turn toward low-code when QuotaPath started around 2018, but it wasn’t as popular as it was in 2022.

“If we were doing early-stage pitches to investors now, low-code would have been in this pitch deck,” said the 2019 RealLIST Engineers honored.

He prefers the low-code method currently used by QuotaPath, which involves engineers building the product, but not needing to be super involved in customer onboarding or developing custom solutions, because the product that QuotaPath offers now should be intuitive and customizable for customers without a heavy technical lift. Low code often allows companies to do twice as much with the same number of people, Heydenberk said.

“The idea is that it’s the right code for the right time for the right reason,” he said.

Rishforth said Graphite GTC went all out on low code when it debuted about five years ago. Graphite creates a no-code development platform that allows users to build “enterprise-class” web applications visually, without writing code. Large enterprises use four platforms on average, from building pages to API-based integration to building apps; Graphite’s low-code platform reduces that, he said.

Because low-code technology allows customers to build something faster than if they were building it from scratch, it often results in cost savings for the business as well.

The benefits of low code are pretty clear to Rishforth and the company’s vice president of marketing and sales, Byron Drus. Because low-code technology allows customers to build something faster than if they were building it from scratch, it often results in cost savings for the business as well. Companies that deploy low-code solutions generally don’t need to have the same size technical team on staff because they’re not building from scratch.

“Companies want to digitize, reach new environments and reduce overhead,” Druss said. “And the savings from low-code certainly helps with overhead.”

Rishforth said the idealized “better, faster and cheaper” idea first coined by Ford – now used as Graphite’s tagline – was previously inaccessible. You had to pick two out of three, he said: better, faster labor wasn’t cheap, and cheap, faster labor usually wasn’t better.

The company is also passing on its knowledge to the next generation of technologists: it recently worked with Drexel University Close School of entrepreneurship on his Startup Fest, Future Fest with students in a class called Idea Accelerator. In 10 weeks, they developed a business, app, or idea using Graphite’s no-code platform, and three apps were chosen as winners.

“As enterprise technical debt increases…and new startups explode in number, the demand for tech talent has increased, paving the way for wide adoption of low-code/no-code platforms that can be used by tech and non-tech talent,” Druss said in an email. “This should increase the number of employees engaged in building applications with little or no code.”

Who is it for?

While low- or no-code methods are used in a variety of business sizes and types, startups have a particular advantage to gain.

Rishforth said he only sees benefits for startups, which have a lot to gain by keeping teams and costs down.

“They run lean and mean, and they haven’t made their wagon wheel tracks in the mud yet,” he said.

But larger institutions might struggle more with managing change, streamlining processes, and introducing agile technologies. It’s harder for established companies to integrate new systems and switch customers, he said, but most companies that make the switch are seeing the returns.

Heydenberk agreed, saying start-ups have an easier time getting started in space.

“I think it’s important that it’s in your DNA, I’ve seen companies try to move away from heavy integrations, when you’re used to providing a lower quality of service to more people,” said the CTO. “It is difficult for companies to become co-dependent on how they serve customers to become more independent. It goes against their nature. Cultural and organizational changes are more difficult to reverse. »

Will low-code and no-code development kill tech jobs?

While technologists hesitant about low- or no-code methods say it has the potential to kill tech jobs, our Philadelphia sources disagree.

There aren’t fewer tech jobs — the jobs themselves are a bit different than any software company coded from scratch, Heydenberk said.

“Will this kill tech jobs? It’s a resounding ‘no’,” Rishforth sad. “What he’s going to do is expand it.”

Rishforth pointed out some Gartner research that indicated the industry was poised to grow 30% year-over-year, to reach a value of $180 billion by the end of the decade. And while this will change what developers work on, there is a natural progression of languages ​​and systems that all developers should follow as programming languages ​​age and new ones are introduced. It will also bring people who aren’t highly skilled in the tech field with a lower barrier to entry into the development space, Rishforth said.

“Supply and demand will be served by the low-code, no-code development movement,” he said.

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