I have been a professional programmer for forty years. In the eighties, there was a no-code desktop relational database application called Helix. I continue to think that it belongs on the same shelf as Excel in the UI hall of fame.
Like Excel, people made applications with it. Unlike Excel, it created a server product in the mid-eighties that allowed it to become an IT platform. Small business owners who had hacked up a Helix database to help with invoicing were able to extend the function to the entire organization without ever using a keyboard for anything except typing label names on reports. All drag-and-drop icon stuff.
Fast forward twenty-five years. Today the applications have grown and grown and grown. The owners who created them are old, prosperous and tired of screwing around with it. Also, Helix is no longer well supported. These people are screwed.
I consult for a few companies that use it. These apps are exact replicas of the brain process of the owner that made them without a single structured thought in sight. Even if Helix were a healthy platform, the apps are largely unmaintainable.
They are also so complicated and so deeply integrated into the companies that they represent a horrible threat. They can't easily adapt to the modern world and will cost millions to replace.
Which is to say, these no-code systems encourage amateurs to reach too far. I advise people against them.
I wonder if you could find any 'enterprise' system at a business of any size that's lasted 25 years, if it would have much the same problems. And if you can't find many enterprise systems that lasted 25 years, that says something to, in Helix's favor. (some of the ones you can are... COBOL I guess?)
Like Excel, people made applications with it. Unlike Excel, it created a server product in the mid-eighties that allowed it to become an IT platform. Small business owners who had hacked up a Helix database to help with invoicing were able to extend the function to the entire organization without ever using a keyboard for anything except typing label names on reports. All drag-and-drop icon stuff.
Fast forward twenty-five years. Today the applications have grown and grown and grown. The owners who created them are old, prosperous and tired of screwing around with it. Also, Helix is no longer well supported. These people are screwed.
I consult for a few companies that use it. These apps are exact replicas of the brain process of the owner that made them without a single structured thought in sight. Even if Helix were a healthy platform, the apps are largely unmaintainable.
They are also so complicated and so deeply integrated into the companies that they represent a horrible threat. They can't easily adapt to the modern world and will cost millions to replace.
Which is to say, these no-code systems encourage amateurs to reach too far. I advise people against them.