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Comment by wvenable | Hacker News Reader

My last project with a no-code solution was a visual designer where you flow-chart all the logic for workflows. At a very small scale, it might make sense but even for our meager need it was blown out so big that no one could really understand or modify it. And, worst of all, we were locked into this proprietary solution.

In the end, I re-wrote the entire project in regular code and the end result works better and is easier to modify. We don't need to pay expensive consultants anymore. No extra licensing fee. No special software/server/hosting requirements. And any programmer can work on it -- I can even put new hires on it.

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Rewrite in code is way easier than developing in code from scratch. I think your scenario reflects the main benefit of no-code, to let business users fix their own requirements.

I don't know how my scenario reflects the main benefit of no-code... the visual designer "code" was so complicated that literally nobody could work on it. We were all trained to make changes -- both the business users and a small group of developers. In theory they could make changes but in practice it was just too complex. Some minor things were changeable by them but the big changes started to pile up.

When we converted to regular code, the business users loved it because all the changes that were too complex to do in that product suddenly became both possible and quick. They lost the ability to make small changes themselves but, given that we could do it almost instantly for them, they didn't care. We're all better off because nobody has to know the quirks of this priority system anymore or be limited by it.

So maybe “code” is already at the right level of abstraction and not everyone needs to be a doctor or lawyer or pro football player.

I made a similar point just a few weeks ago on a similar topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31682303#31684636

This is a good point. Most comments about the rewrite in code being easier might actually be because the functional requirements from the business users have already been made clear without the ambiguity that might have arisen when developing from scratch.

So maybe “no code” tools should be thought of as photoshop for software.

In this case, this is absolutely true. All the requirements were well established and converting it was very quick because of it. But ultimately that doesn't matter because the reason the re-write was done was because the no-code solution failed in it's goal.

The process of developing this solution was funny. We had an absolutely fantastic team doing the requirements and the process was all agile except when it came to the tool itself. At that point, it turned into a waterfall project where everything had to be nailed down before the work was done.

I can mock up a application form very fast so there's really no need for a tool to do that every so slightly faster but in a proprietary and limited way.

Re-modeling database is very hard though. See notion.so, its db is now sharded but still slow because initial design is poor.

> I think your scenario reflects the main benefit of no-code, to let business users fix their own requirements.

wvenable stated that the no code solution was so complicated even the developers could not make sense of it, how does a business user with no development knowledge make sense of it? If the code is in pictograms instead of words I don't think that makes it any easier on the non developer to be honest with you.

I see this being cited a lot but I know from experience the business types like the idea of them being able to do everything themselves, but they won't actually do it.

My business users insist that every part of their site be editable in the CMS which we give them access to, a manual and training explaining how to use it, after 6 years not one of them have ever used the CMS, at most they will login to test I haven't cheated them on the CMS functionality.

They all just phone me and ask me to post a news item or change contact details etc because "I don't understand all that technical stuff" its literally a text box and a save button. I don't see them getting over their fear of technical stuff and getting their hands dirty because its pictures instead of words.

> At a very small scale, it might make sense but even for our meager need it was blown out so big that no one could really understand or modify it

A human can hold about 10 objects in working memory, a diagram can help you bump that up to about 20-30 objects, but it gets cluttered. I've been a long time user of mind maps and know they quickly get unwieldy. For more complex information you can use Wiki style web of links but lose the overview mode. Wiki would be more similar to using plain code.

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