Comment by sixdimensional | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sixdimensional | Hacker News Reader

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Just to be fair, Microsoft also recently re-launched a tuned-up version of Sharepoint Lists, now just called "Lists" [1] which is in the same space.

It took something like AirTable to wake the sleeping giants, that people wanted a low-code tabular data editor and storage engine, that wasn't really a spreadsheet. You know.. like FileMaker or MS Access.

I guess this goes to show something - I have thought for many, many, many years of building such an application in the cloud (having built "application generator" type applications in the past) - but, it may not have mattered if I had - because the big players might just come in and clone/copy it. It will be interesting to see how companies like AirTable can compete (and really hope they can).

I think we are crawling towards a future of low/no-code - or the dream of the world of 4GL [2] (or perhaps even beyond that) is coming closer and closer. Regarding 4GL, "those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it". Not saying it's a bad thing to be revisiting this, but it has been low-hanging fruit for so long now, you wonder why it took so long for the big companies to engage with it seriously.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-list...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...

> It took something like AirTable to wake the sleeping giants

My employer gives me Lists as part of Office 365. It's one of those things that sounds good as long as you're reading about it and not using it. It's just not a competitor to AirTable. Not that I use AT either, because I'm not going to pay that much for what I'd use it, but Lists is pretty bad. The look and feel makes me think Lists is a Perl CGI app from 2001.

LOL. Well, Microsoft's "Lists" are Sharepoint Lists underneath. Sharepoint Lists are pretty old, so your comment about Perl/CGI.. well, you're not far off!

I have it too at my workplace, and other than a coat of paint on Sharepoint Lists, I concur, it is not amazing.

I guess I brought it up because it shows Microsoft being driven to do something, but much like Google, falling short of the target. Still, before AirTable and similar things, the giants were generally ignoring this area.

>I think we are crawling towards a future of low/no-code

Friendly reminder that low/no-code is just newspeak for "COTS"

Other than the major ERP/CRMs there was very little COTS that was as extensible and programmable as these low-code solutions. I think low-code term may have some mileage as its easier to say than "extensible like an ERP, but without the ERP".

You're thinking of things in terms of how they function rather than the value they provide - from a business value perspective COTS and low-code are identical, its just that low-code used to be GUI desktop apps, now they're GUI web apps.

It's much more than gui web apps, it also includes native mobile apps, headless services, integrations, etc.

And from a business value they're very different: COTS you do not want to modify/adapt to your busines, otherwise you get problems upgrading, etc. Low-code is often used to innovate and differentiate, as a programming layer to quickly change COTS to your business needs.

Disclaimer: working for a low-code vendor.

>COTS you do not want to modify/adapt to your busines

This is redefining a term after the fact to suit marketing needs of the new term - with the except of bespoke solutions, it has always been possible to adapt COTS products - have you not seen SAP? Dynamics? Even Excel is COTS

Yes you can modify SAP, but upgrading then becomes very hard. Many companies are stuck at old versions of SAP because upgrading it, including migrating all the customizations, is very expensive and takes a lot of time.

I would consider Excel a no-code/low-code (pretty complex macros in there + vba) platform.

Wait until people have to upgrade "low-code" apps in 10 years time... will be the same problem.

It isn't at all. Salesforce and Netsuite for example don't offer you the option of getting left behind. They might break you, and you can postpone some upgrades/migrations, but not forever.

Probably less problematic, as you dont have to merge your changes with a new release from SAP, it's justy your code that needs to be maintained.

With low code you're still programming, just not by writing code but visually defining your program. it's more like 4GL and RAD of the 90's.

I'm in agreement - low code these days seems to be somewhat 4GL and somewhat beyond - "visual programming" or "visual development". Kind of drag-and-drop with some light scripting mixed in possibly.

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