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Companies Are Developing More Apps With Fewer Developers (fortune.com)
Fortune reports that the "yawning gap in tech skills" has resulted in a surprising shift in supply and demand in the software industry. And in many companies now, a growing trend of developer jobs being given to non-developers can be seen. From the article: That's because a relatively new technology, known as low-code or no-code platforms, is now doing a big chunk of the work that high-priced human talent used to do. Low-code platforms are designed so that people with little or no coding or software engineering background -- known in the business as "citizen developers" -- can create apps, both for use in-house and for clients. Not surprisingly, the low-code platform industry, made up of about 40 small companies (so far), is growing like crazy. A recent Forrester Research report put its total revenues at about $1.7 billion in 2015, a figure that's projected to balloon to $15 billion in the next four years. Low-code-platform providers, notes Forrester, are typically seeing sales increases in excess of 50% a year.The report cites QuickBase, a company whose low-code platforms are used by half of the Fortune 500 companies, as an example. Its CEO Allison Mnookin says that almost any employee can now do most or all of the same work that developers used to do. Mnookin adds that there's a big advantage in this. "Opening an app's development to the non-techies who need the app removes misunderstandings between the IT department and other employees about what the end user needs."
Yep visicalc is an amazing program. Oh wait you mean something recent!
I have been doing this awhile. I have also converted a few excel spreadsheets to 'real' programs. It usually took many months and undoing of bad ideas.
Programming spreadsheets usually exemplifies the worst of the worst in programming methodologies. Usually poor separation of control and data. Meaning it starts off fine. But eventually ends up very difficult to change anything for fear of breaking something else.
Excellent point. As more tools like this appear from the aether, the value of developers will decline.
History says otherwise. Tools that make people more productive cause those people to be more valuable, not less. A developer that produces 10 apps per year is going to bring in more profit than a developer that produces one app per year, and can thus command a higher salary.
Rising productivity does not cause poverty. It causes prosperity. If your brain is too dysfunctional to realize that through logic, then just open your eyes and look at the world: Countries/regions with high productivity: America, Western Europe, East Asia. Countries with low productivity: Ethiopia, Niger, Pakistan, North Korea. Do you really think the latter group have benefited by avoiding "job killing" productivity improvements?
Delphi was and is not a low-code solution. It is a RAD environment where some really simple apps (i.e. the Fish app) could be built by dropping a few components on a form and linking the properties and writing a couple of events. But, most applications (and visual/non-visual component creation required coding skills.
What killed Delphi was stupid decisions by Borland/Inprise to move away from what they did best and become an "Enterprise" company instead of a developer company. They also concentrated on Windows-only development when other platforms (mobile, web, Linux, Mac) were becoming popular (see first f'up). And, they raised the price so far that even dedicated developers and can't afford it's stratospheric pricing ($2600+) - only Gods and birds can reach it.
The language is a dialect of Object Pascal (not in vogue despite its power). Delphi is the IDE and hasn't changed much over the years. It can now target Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. Linux server is coming. It is very easy to create a highly complex, cross- platform application in a way that Xamarin can't touch. Performance for business apps is good. But, I have yet to see a real game written using it. And, good luck in getting Delphi into your IT shop these days (at least in the US).
Not until developers can afford it again and work with it to see its power (if they can tolerate the language), it will regain its market share.