Re:App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business a...
by panic on Friday June 15, 2018 @06:25AM
(#17318708)
> nobody but the original creator really knows what's going on
That’s true of most “serious” codebases too! Writing code that others can understand takes time and expertise (both expensive), and it’s often not worth it for one-off tools.
Re:App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business a...
by oldcynic on Friday June 15, 2018 @06:27AM
(#17318717)
A friend of mine spent a very lucrative few years in the late 90s, early 00s doing Excel contracting. Usually for banks who seemed to have quite a lot of these monstrous abominations and a wish to make them far more monstrous going by conversations back then.
Paid for their Porsche 911 until the .com bust broke contracting generally.
Re:App Maker, Google’s low-code tool for building business a...
by slantyyz on Friday June 15, 2018 @10:52AM
(#17320162)
>> Tools like that can be extremely productive, and easy for people of no or low programming ability to utilize.
Absolutely. BUT, in the early days, the value of return for end users is higher than the cost of development and maintenance. If the tool is useful and grows, it's going to flip where the cost of development and maintenance is higher the the return, and some tough decisions need to be made.
But just like excel, it's a double edged sword, as people "specialize" in it and create monstrous abomination applications way larger than the tool is fit to sustain. It becomes a rat maze of gotchas and obscure tricks, and nobody but the original creator really knows what's going on.