What is Low-Code Development?

Did you think you could label 'low code' as 'I will look at it another time?'

Just got a parcel at home ? Low code was probably part of your delivery. Gartner predicts that by 2024, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity. In case you are still not sure what it's all about. Let me guide you around.

What is low-code development?

Low code is a visual approach to software development. You are literally going to try to build as much as possible without writing a single letter of code.

In a classic development cycle you have the customer who has a question, that question is then recorded by an analyst. He will translate this into requirements, which will then be sent to a project manager who has to brief the developers in order to eventually end up with the developer to start coding it in a specific language. This ensures that you have a relatively large distance between the initial question and the person who has to carry it out. Think a bit of a row of people where each person has to pass a sentence on to the next person ...

By working with a low code platform, we can actually move from the request to the builder, who can build the application directly. Rather than waiting for IT, business users prefer to build their own apps. Obviously, profiles such as a project manager are also involved, but they can then mainly focus on managing the project, and less on passing on the correct information.

Why is low-code gaining so much traction?

My personal opinion on this is that it's more of a HR problem then a technical problem. Low-Code is nothing new, we have been able to do this for many moons. The main driver of low code is that it requires in total a lower number of (hard to find) profiles, as well as less types of specific profiles. It removes the need of (major) coding in a specific development language. As far as the development environments, deploys and continuous integration are concerned, the low code platform also takes care of this.

Does Low-Code have any disadvantages?

The biggest advantage of low-code is that you can bring applications to the market at a super fast pace with less people, this is beyond question. As for the cons, the first thing I would think of might be licensing. If you develop an application in the traditional way, it is completely yours. Whether you have 1 million or 1 million users, or 5 or 10 administrators, the cost is always the same. A low code platform must of course be able to recover its costs, and for this it has a number of pricing models (eg X euros per X users, or X number of screens or X gigs of whatever).

Please note, everything depends on the application and its use. Depending on which application you want to build, it could still be cheaper to work with low code.

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