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Comment by catmanjan | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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.

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.

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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