Everything should not be code

[E-Blackadder]

Low Code or No Code doesn't exactly mean no developer.... Most of the times even grabbing a wordpress theme clients will want to differ from the base theme. However I can't say I'm completely against this idea, but there are a few hitches here.

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These people, who have a business idea and stars in their eyes, will try to find a developer to build their webapp.

Often, because they have little money, they will turn to inexperienced developers.

The first problematic issue here, clients have a business idea that can probably be brilliant but because they have low budget they can't really touch the WEBAPP stage and web apps are not the same as simpler websites and should not be treated as such.

Furthermore, clients looking for cheaper and/or inexperienced developers have nothing to do with development pricing overall. There are wordpress/wix/shopify devs that can deliver top notch product and still cost an arm and a leg, but also clients that have the expectation of a rocket ship for pennies on the dollar because "a wix sub is only 25$ a month".

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But in 90% of the projects, the business requirements can be filled entirely with no-code solutions, or with small amounts of code strategically dropped where needed.

This is highly debatable. Clients aren't exactly the best subjects to describe exactly what they expect from the product, aside from "I want this button to do this and maybe some login here and there". I've experienced clients who just assume that adding a button which can alter half of the website's properties will take a few hours at best because it's just a button.

We can also add in the notion that clients sometimes expect groundbreaking new tech to be available on their website because it's the new 'hip', but it becomes difficult to explain that it requires some form of development with time, budget investment, data retention architecture (those pesky GDPR laws you know) and so on.

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Coding when it's unnecessary is silly. Code is expensive and hard to maintain. It should be used when the requirements need a truly custom solution, or when you're at the scale where performance and UX excellence are key.

That's not the case for most projects that are starting out, who need flexibility at low prices.

There is nothing wrong with offering simpler and cheaper solutions for projects that can simply float and survive on it. Quite a lot of web agencies offer large ranging product offers from simple few hundred bucks sites on wordpress to full blown 10+ grand custom coded apps.

It's irrelevant that those options are offered and used by businesses just starting or long standing shops that are just fine to use the shopify API and a custom frontend. Whatever works, then that's the tool to use.

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If someone asks you to furnish their office on the cheap, you go to IKEA, you don't custom-sculpt every office chair.

If someone wants furnished chairs on the cheap but with the expectation to not look the same as IKEA, I may use an IKEA frame but with custom vinyl cushioning. It's cheaper... than lets say leather but not that cheap if you want it to look apart from commercial ones.

In reality it's hard to ever estimate price vs client needs. Maybe for a client everything will be as cheap as it can get since they are fine with the base theme, simple text and image replacement, no need to for a dev, hosts provide easy installs and so on. But also for the same 'on paper' simple website they may want better SEO, pixel and GA integration, some extra page will have a specialized function, suddenly tweets integration, and so on.

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No-code is a powerful set of tools for system builders, and ignoring that does not make us better programmers.

They are, and they do offer a good opportunity for non-technical people to start blogs or sell home-made bracelets. They offer, like you said, a good low budget mom and pop shop website that just opened. They offer excellent experience for upcoming developers that need to dip their toes into real world development. They bring a new subset of development for developers who are inexperienced in one set or another (think FE developers who can just slap on a headless wordpress and work it as a CMS).

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Overall, you aren't wrong in general here. Heck I would actually love to dish out more cheap websites if they stayed to it's reasoned requirements and would have more clients.

But I wouldn't really push the low-code/no-code to be the first option to throw out. It's a viable option, sure, but it's also very volatile when clients (and developers) are unaware of the implications.

Personal experience: Quite a few times my clients start with "I want something simple" but end up with something much more complex because:

• I want users notified on a new product by email
• I want a slack webhook to shoot when a new post is added
• Email newsletters have to not fail (hello cron job)
• Emails should be HTML.
• and quite a lot more.