Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

Re:Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath a... by jlarocco on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @12:58PM (#27371059)

"Low Code" is a new (to me) buzzword, but Microsoft has targeted that niche for a long time. Specifically I'm thinking of the older Visual Basics (3-6) and the advanced scripting and database features in Office.

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Re:Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath a... by pjmlp on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @02:52PM (#27372496)

I have seen first hand on some lifescience consulting gigs how VB.NET takes away people from R, Python and similar tools.

It is the Excel experts that have outgrown the macros and VBA capabilities, and get IT to install Visual Studio with VB.NET on their computers.

They then double down on their VBA skills and somehow get to produce something in Windows Forms, or an Excel AddIn for the task at hand and then get going with the actual work.

Then one lands on the lab and it is full of such small utilities.

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Re:Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath a... by jjkaczor on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @03:29PM (#27372943)

Neither VB, VBA, VBScript nor VB.NET are "low-code" or "no-code", they all were rather code heavy... Some VBA 'apps' relied heavily on their hosted application object-model (Excel, Word, Visio, etc) - but there was still quite a bit of code that the average corporate Excel-wizard was never truly comfortable with.

In the Microsoft space, historically the true "no-code" solutions were Access Web Databases (no VBA allowed - of course they axed that whole service in 365, as they could not monetize it as well as SQL Azure), or web-capable Excel workbooks that rely exclusively on PowerPivot/functions (no VBA allowed), or web-enabled InfoPath Forms (also... no VBA allowed).

In their modern universe their equivalents are; PowerApps, PowerAutomate/Flow, LogicApps and PowerBI - just as the article states.

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