Low-code and no-code development tools let non-programmers build useful and powerful applications. There are those who believe that because of that, the need for well-trained developers will shrink. And as a result, the job market for them will shrink as well.
On the face of it, that sounds logical. But is it true? An excellent set of answers come from an interview with Marcus Torres, GM of IntegrationHub and VP of Platform Product with ServiceNow, in the TechRepublic article “Low-code and no-code won’t kill developer jobs, here’s why.” Following are highlights from the interview.
Torres starts off by explaining, “The reality is development is a team sport. If you are an admin, if you’re someone in operations, if you just know how to, you’re fluent with Excel, the reality is there’s platforms and technologies out there that allow you to do innovative things. It doesn’t mean developers go away.”
Low-Code Helps Empower Citizen Developers
He says that professional developers are needed to help citizen developers make their applications better: “Real developers can actually enjoy empowering and educating this no- and low-code community to go further, faster and innovate themselves.”
But professional developers will be needed to do more than that, he says: “The reality is, developers are the Jedis of innovation, and they’ll continue to be in the future. They just get additional help and can go faster and build more with some of these platforms and along with their teammates.”
Low-Code Enables Digital Transformation
Torres believes that low-code and no-code platforms will be used to a great extent for what he calls remedial tasks, things like automating workflow and simple chores. And that, he believes, will free developers to work on much higher value work, particularly related to digital transformation: “The fact is these remedial tasks, what they do is they slow us down from being able to innovate, they slow us down from being able to actually focus on the critical things that are going to bring a higher value.”
He also believes that COVID will accelerate the use of low-code and no-code platforms, and also offer developers greater opportunities to work on creative, transformational projects. He concludes: “I think we are just seeing the true next generational wave of agility. If you look back 10 years, there’s companies you think that would never go under, that no longer exist because of their lack of agility and ability to respond to customers and what customers are looking for. Now we have all of main street, all of retail, all of restaurants having to do the same thing, and it’s about survival and you cannot survive without being agile and that’s exactly what low-code platforms have provided.”
At Alpha Software, we believe that companies need more developers, not fewer. We believe businesses have so many market, labor, and competitive issues, they need developers building new applications that streamline tasks, turn manual processes digital, and quickly collect and deliver data in new ways. When companies empower citizen developers to automate tasks with no-code and low-code software, it frees up developers to tackle the complex technical challenges that can help the organization truly transform the business.
This post originally appeared on the Alpha Software blog.
