The No Code Approach to Software and Why It Might Be Bad

Start here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/07/20/the-low-codeno-code-movement-more-disruptive-than-you-realize/#98cfc4a722a3

I'm not impressed. I have been not impressed for 40 years and many previous incarnations of this idea of replacing code with UX.

Of course, I'm biased. I create code. Tools that remove the need to create code reflect a threat.

Not really, but my comments can be seen that way.

Here's why no code is bad.

Software Captures Knowledge

If we're going to represent knowledge in the form of software, then, we need to have some transparency so that we can see the entire stack of abstractions. Yes, it's turtles all the way down, but some of those abstractions are important, and other abstractions can be taken as "well known" and "details don't matter."

The C libraries that support the CPython implementation, for example, is where the turtles cease to matter (for many people.) Many of us have built a degree of trust and don't need to know how the libraries are implemented or how the hardware works, or what a transistor is, or what electricity is, or why electrons even have a mass or how mass is imparted by the Higgs boson.

A clever UI that removes (or reduces) code makes the abstractions opaque. We can't see past the UI. The software is no longer capturing useful knowledge. Instead, the software is some kind of interpreter, working on a data structure that represents the state of the UI buttons.

Instead of software describing the problem and the problem's state changes, the software is describing a user experience and those state changes.

I need the data structure, the current values as selected by the user, and the software to understand the captured knowledge. 

Perhaps the depiction of the UI will help. 

Perhaps it won't. 

In general, a picture of the UI is useless. It can't answer the question "Why click that?" We can't (and aren't expected) to provide essay answers on a UI. We're expected to click and move on.

If we are forced to provide a essay answers, then the UI could come closer to capturing knowledge. Imagine having a "Reason:" text box next to every clickable button.

We all know what the essay answers will look like. They'll look like bad comments in code. And bad commit comments in Git. And bad documentation.

Some Option: ☑️ Reason: Required

Other Option: ☐ Reason: Not sure if its needed

The problem with fancy UI's and low-code/no-code software is low-information/no-information software. Maintenance becomes difficult, perhaps impossible, because it's difficult understand what's going on.