Low Code / No Code vs Custom Software Development

Low Code (LC) and No Code (NC) software development are popular solutions for many businesses. They offer inexpensive platforms for building your own applications. And they are suitable for small, mostly temporary use cases.?

However, most organizations would be better off pursuing traditional custom software development. LC and NC suffer from several problems, including:

• promoting shadow IT
• vendor lock-in
• limited functionality
• ignoring underlying problems

Custom software development, on the other hand, avoids these limitations. A good software development team can create a custom application to fit your needs perfectly, freeing you to operate more smoothly. While Low Code / No Code applications do have some good use cases, they are not going to overtake custom software development any time soon.

What is Low Code and No Code development?

The terms Low Code (LC) and No Code (NC) refer to any development practice which allows people to create software applications with little to no programming knowledge. These are typically visual drag-and-drop style platforms, but LC systems can also include a small amount of textual code.

Many vendors now offer LC and NC platforms, typically as a cheap monthly platform. For example, Kintone has a $15 per month plan, and Microsoft PowerApps has a $7 a month plan.?

Vendors sell LC and NC platforms as a way for non-programmers to build their own applications. This is appealing for teams that might not have programming skills or the budget for custom software development. However, most organizations would be better served by hiring a professional software developer. Using LC/NC can work for certain very small applications, but in most cases, professional help will save you from headaches.

Promoting Shadow IT

LC/NC platforms are intended to be used by people without strong programming skills. Often, they are managers, accountants, or simply someone who has too much data on their hands. They create a little application to automate a repetitive aspect of their job. But because programming is not their main skill, this application doesn’t work properly or causes problems elsewhere. Worst of all, if the person who made the application leaves, then no one at the company knows how it works or how to fix it.

To solve this problem, businesses typically just give the application over to IT to fix. Over time, IT gets flooded with requests to fix little applications, in addition to their normal duties. This results in the company having to hire more and more IT workers, at which point it becomes more expensive than solving the original problem the right way the first time.

Vendor Lock-in

Most LC/NC applications run on paid, proprietary third party platforms. In order to run and update, you need to keep an account with the vendor. This can be a nuisance if you decide you want to change platforms or turn the application into something bigger. Worse, if the vendor goes out of business or stops offering updates, you can experience security issues and other disruptions.

With traditional software development, however, you don’t have this problem. You own the code, and if you need to switch development teams for a new update, you can do that. Traditional software development provides better scalability, since it does not lock you into a single platform.

Limited functionality

Because LC/NC programs are built on a simple drag-and-drop interface, there’s only so much you can do with them. It can also be difficult to fully connect them to external software. If you do, you will often wind up having to write real code anyway.

Sometimes teachers use visual coding platforms as a way to introduce basic programming ideas to students. This is great as a high-level educational tool, but students can’t just use visual coding skills in normal software development. The specific skills needed for most computer programming requires textual knowledge that visual programming does not provide.

This means that your workers won’t get very much programming experience by making their own applications in a LC/NC environment. They would be better off just making normal applications with a language like Java or Ruby. Those skills could pay off over time, if they continue to engage with the software side of the business. But if they only do LC/NC, they will remain limited.

Ignores underlying problems

Most often, workers use LC/NC to automate a repetitive aspect of their job. But this begs the question: why weren’t those tasks automated already??

Suppose you build a Low Code application to fill out payroll information from a spreadsheet. Before, you were manually copy and pasting every name and number into the payroll application. The new Low Code application just does the exact same thing, all on its own. But shouldn’t the payroll application be able to simply import spreadsheet info?

Companies are often better served by expanding their existing software, or getting new software. LC/NC applications tend to just band-aid the real problems.

Why LC/NC won’t replace custom software development anytime soon

Although Low Code / No Code development has problems, there are some valid use cases:

• helping to migrate from legacy systems
• automating simple manual processes
• quickly building a prototype or MVP

These are mostly temporary solutions for one-time problems. For high-level day-to-day operations, however, LC/NC simply cannot provide robust solutions.

Custom software development, on the other hand is great for making high quality, complex applications. A good developer will align your goals with theirs, helping you solve the individual problems your business or organization faces. Low Code or No Code solutions are not built with your overarching goals in mind. They are typically short-term fixes for less important problems.

If you are looking for custom software development, consider hiring a hybrid onshore / offshore team. With offices in Russia and the US, JetRockets has this model. It allows us to provide onshore experience at offshore costs. And instead of building limited LC/NC applications, we create tailor-made software to meet your needs.