Build As You Go (BAYG)

My adventure in using No-Code and Low-Code tools (NoCLoC) has been a learning experience. The tools that are available to today have come a long way compared to 2-3 years ago. There are advantages and disadvantages to the available set of tools. I share my experiences, concerns, and thoughts on these tools.

EXPERIENCES

A bit of my background. I have been in Information Technology since the 1990's, writing production code and designing systems. The past 15-20 years I have been in the Sales Engineering profession. I have been privileged to meet amazing prospects and customers whose goals are to make their business better.

Every company is looking for an advantage; i.e. speed to market, robust infrastructure, user experience, compliance, security, etc. At the same time, companies today have limited resources; i.e. time and money. The creation and release of a new product requires many resources; i.e. frontend and backend engineers, infrastructure teams, integration teams, hardware (physical or virtual), etc. The cost of a project can be massive and take months or years to complete phase 1.

I started my expedition into No-Code/Low-Code (NoCLoC) through the Bubble No-Code Bootcamp in 2020. The bootcamp gave me the "fingers to the keyboard" experience and learning from a seasoned professional who had build multiple production applications.

A few lightning ??moments.

1. Bubble works. The UI in 2020 was beautiful and once you understood the flow it was a joy to work with.
2. The learning curve was high. I came from writing code in Java, Javascript, and Python. Plus deploying applications to production on Google and Amazon. I HAD to change my approach to building and releasing process.
3. Glitches happens. During the bootcamp, the platform was down for hours. I did not understand why and had no way of debugging the issues.
4. No version control like Git.
5. Usage and pricing model was very confusing.

I like the platform but it was not at a maturity level that I was comfortable with. For the right use case, the Bubble platform will get you from start to phase 1 in days to weeks.

Fast forward to 2023, there are many NoCLoC tools on the market. There are a few tools that I discover and used through the No-Code MVP Bootcamp. Tools such as

1. Zapier
2. Softr.io
3. Glide
4. Tally
5. Xano
6. Make
7. AirTable
8. Adalo

Other tools that would fall into the NoCLoc that I have tried.

1. Webflow
2. Twilio
3. SiteCore Send (I worked there)
4. ActiveCampaign

There are many more companies both young and established that have tools that are in the NoCLoC ecosystem. They come by many names. One for the enterprise is OutSystems.

The communities behind these products are growing. There is more demand for developers and agencies to build products.

I met non technical professionals during my the recent No-Code MVP Bootcamp. I got to see them ideate and build their first MVP in hours if not days using anyone of the tools that I mention. I have build several myself. With the right use case companies can leverage the NoCLoC to be their "Unfair Advantage" to be first to market and acquire market share.

Unfair Advantages include

1. Quick integration using Zapier
2. Quick database resource integration using AirTable and Google Sheets
3. Quick Payment processing integration
4. Quick integration with OpenAi with prebuilt connectors
5. Quick publishing to production
6. Integration with ....

Time equals money. The user experience for non-technical professionals to create products and services is amazing. If you have an idea and want to build it you can immediately.

SMALL BETS - OPPORTUNITIES TO BUY

I acquire a few projects during the NoCodeSale event at the end of each month. I know going in, the projects would require work. One project I purchased was Savage Cards. The transition was good. I got the pertinent details and accounts transition over. The project was running on Glide and it use Make. I got the project to work and sent an email to my wife.

We go to dinner and I am showing a friend the project that I acquire. The app decided to go on vacation. What I discovered was the logic in the custom action disappeared. I Google the issue. I was not the only one who experience such a lost. I decided to rebuild the entire custom action because GlideApp has a darn good UI. But it highlighted a concern that cannot be overlooked.

CONCERNS

I decided to move SavageCards.co to a technology stack that I was comfortable with. A stack that I could support and at a good price point. My recommendation is choose a mature platform that has the following:

1. Version Control (losing the assets you or your team created is costly)
2. Reliability - A stable platform that can meet your needs and stay running is critical. Hours down is costly.
3. Price - For small companies this can be a KILLER. Understand your consumption; i.e. web bandwidth, database usage, numbers of actions required to do something in a process. A 100000 actions over a few days can cost a hundreds of dollars. Some vendors charge per for usage differently.
4. Learning Curve - There is a learning curve for every NoCLoC product. There is plenty of freelancers and agencies that can help. Direct message me for questions.
5. Security - Understand your exposure. What does the platform provide and what you are responsible for? Is your data secure?

THOUGHTS

I am bullish on the future of the NoCLoC toolset/ecosystem. There are many companies out there that are bringing massive value to businesses. I see opportunities for entrepreneurs and businesses to leverage NoCLoC tools to build Minimum Value Product (MVP) and validate their ideas quickly. Furthermore, release a Phase 1 version.

Once the products achieve traction, I hope by that time the vendors will have new features such as version control and reduce the cost of transactions within their platforms.

Build As You Go (BAYG) is about using the best tools and processes ship products and meet your goals.

I will continue to build some applications using Next.js, Clerk, NextAuth, Prisma, PlanetScale, Redis, Google Cloud, Amazon, OpenAi, etc based on the use cases. I will use NoCLoC for use cases that will provide me and customers value. The tools are getting better every month that it a makes it easier for me to add tools like Zapier into my development processes.