HACKER Q&A
📣 rishabhkaul1

Do engineers like the term low-code?


Hey ve been wondering if engineers genuinely like the term “low code”?

Or is it something they might scowl at like “digital transformation”.


  👤 thiago_fm Accepted Answer ✓
I like it, even though I never use it.

I write complex distributed applications, but wish my life would be easier. I don't care about having my job forever nor fear innovation. Anyhow, I think it might take a while until low code or no code becomes a thing on what I do, but I deeply believe in a future that doctors, engineers and everybody will use those tools to build amazing things, or cure really hard diseases, or whatever people might invent.

I think we are living in an awesome time and I love to hear about it, how clever some low code or no code are, and how it empowers people.


👤 jjice
The term? Yeah, I think it works well. The concept? You always end up really restricted and if you want to get some serious work done, you usually end up needing a real platform (in my experience).

👤 d--b
Nope... it’s unclear where the code is low.

It usually means “that has a shitty DSL”.


👤 quickthrower2
I like it. Does what it says on the tin. It might get diluted though (how low is low?).

For example AWS Lambda is low-code in a way. You only need to write the code for the function, not the server or scaling. But that might not be low enough.

Excel is low code, but that's old. Does low code mean newfangled?

I think it could be confusing what is low code and what is not.


👤 el_dev_hell
I find "low code" much more palatable than “digital transformation”, but I still wish the concept had a better name and clearer borders (e.g do most people consider Excel low code?).

I don't have a better name to offer, so I have no major gripes with low code.


👤 maxrev17
Don't swim against the buzz-word tide!!!! (I think it's known as sales/marketing?)

👤 giantg2
It depends. I would call Splunk and Tableau low code. I think they did a good job. I think many other products tend to screw it up.

So I don't think I have any opinion on "low code", but would evaluate the product on a case by case basis.


👤 muzani
A term is a term. We've lived with worse, like "master-slave" and "male/female connector". As long as it's clear what it does and isn't vague like "dependency injection".

👤 PaulHoule
"Model Driven Architecture" is trademarked so they can't use that.

👤 dyingkneepad
I had to duck-duck-go it to figure out what it means. After reading the first description I kept thinking on things like Wordpress blogs or Delphi or Excel. Does any of these qualify as low code?

👤 runawaybottle
I’ve yet to get over the term ‘Agile’.