EMERGENT Once you’ve seen enough circus acts involving dancing bears, you stop being amazed at the fact that a bear can dance and start to think about how good the bear is at it. This has happened to low-code development. During a relatively short time span, low-code development has become the default approach to helping developers quickly build and introduce new applications. What used to be quite revolutionary and novel has, in some ways, become as ubiquitous as drag-and-drop. In fact, a recent study conducted by Vanson Bourne and WEBCON revealed that 84 percent of CIOs anticipate the growing significance of low code in the next 12 to 24 months. It’s become clear that we don’t need to persuade anyone that “low-code is good” any longer, and I for one am happy about it. What remains very much worth discussing is “what organizations can achieve” using low-code (or traditional) platforms and tools. We can talk less about the merits/caveats of tools and more about the best practices: for example, business process solutions and data-driven decision-making. It’s also still worth talking about citizen development; yes, low-code and citizen development are often discussed together, but who’s building things is different from how they’re being built. The aforementioned survey found that 70 percent of companies are transitioning towards involving non-technical users in their application development – but it also found that only half of those who have attempted citizen development reported success. This seeming discrepancy isn’t hard to explain; it stems from the misconception that providing individuals with low-code tools alone will transform them into proficient developers. The resulting lesson that is hopefully sinking in is that there’s more to development than just coding – it’s still necessary to think like a developer. I NEVER WANT TO TALK ABOUT LOW-CODE AGAIN By Mike Fitzmaurice 8 CHANNELVISION | JULY - AUGUST 2023
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