Re:Why Codeless Software Is Doomed to Fail
by maerF0x0 on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @12:08PM
(#20041915)
In my years in the industry I've noticed 2 things.
1) People is what makes coding hard. If the People involved (designers, execs, users) could fit themselves into the simple box of what more or less comes for "free" these days then they could do so many things via GUI. Look at cloudpipes, Zapier, If this then that, and segment.io. Each more or less integrate 100s (1000s?) of tools to eachother. People like to think their business needs are unique, but most of the time it's just JSON being piped from one bucket to another.
2) Lots of companies w/ engineers and a big tech budget are not what I'd classify as a "Tech company", instead they're more of a "Product company". I often use this distinction -- is the thing that makes this company valuable the fact that their tech is better than what others have ever done? This looks like 10-100x more capable in a certain aspect. For example Wix is not a tech company -- it creates a mundane thing in a slightly more accessible way. Compare that with something like Tesla -- they applied technology to the automotive space to create many multiples of more efficient transport to unlock a whole new paradigm in their domain. Most of these "product" companies should be using boring tech and adapting themselves to the tech's edges so they can rapidly and inexpensively build products.
1) People is what makes coding hard. If the People involved (designers, execs, users) could fit themselves into the simple box of what more or less comes for "free" these days then they could do so many things via GUI. Look at cloudpipes, Zapier, If this then that, and segment.io. Each more or less integrate 100s (1000s?) of tools to eachother. People like to think their business needs are unique, but most of the time it's just JSON being piped from one bucket to another.
2) Lots of companies w/ engineers and a big tech budget are not what I'd classify as a "Tech company", instead they're more of a "Product company". I often use this distinction -- is the thing that makes this company valuable the fact that their tech is better than what others have ever done? This looks like 10-100x more capable in a certain aspect. For example Wix is not a tech company -- it creates a mundane thing in a slightly more accessible way. Compare that with something like Tesla -- they applied technology to the automotive space to create many multiples of more efficient transport to unlock a whole new paradigm in their domain. Most of these "product" companies should be using boring tech and adapting themselves to the tech's edges so they can rapidly and inexpensively build products.