[Software] Why the low code industry is in for a reckoning

[Sxynix]

Developing applications using a traditional approach can be a costly and time-consuming venture. For this reason, many organizations are now using low code to develop their own custom apps at a much faster pace. As developing apps this way doesn’t require a full team of developers, even smaller organizations can experience the benefits of having their own software.

As low code has become increasingly po[CENSORED]r over the past few years, more and more low code platforms have emerged. However, OutSystems’ CEO Paulo Rosado believes that many of these platforms are making the same mistake that others did with Visual Basic 20 years ago by offering solutions that don’t really meet the needs of businesses or developers. TechRadar Pro spoke with Rosado to learn more about how he helped pioneer the low code industry and where he believes it is heading.

We've put together a list of the best laptops for programming
These are the best Linux distros for developers
Need something more powerful? Check out the best mobile workstations
Why is low-code becoming so po[CENSORED]r among businesses and what advantages does it provide when compared to traditional software development?
New approaches to development are gaining in po[CENSORED]rity recently because while pressure on IT to deliver value to the business has never been higher, the success of developers is increasingly stymied by the productivity limitations of traditional development. Only a small, elite group of tech companies are finding success with traditional development approaches, and for everyone else it just isn’t fast enough, efficient enough or flexible enough for them to be able to consistently get their jobs done. In short, low-code helps more companies - even ones with small development teams - build software faster - and the advantages are so significant, like you, we are seeing interest explode. 

That being said, we identified these core challenges and started working on ways to solve them more than 20 years ago, and a visual, model-driven approach to coding (i.e. “low-code”) was a natural place to start to get teams building high quality applications faster. As one of the inventors of low-code, we discovered early on that as the solutions customers were building became more complex, that “low code” by itself wasn’t enough. Customers didn’t just need better, more efficient development tools, they needed an entire platform that improves the full application lifecycle in the same way that low-code improves the development experience. For customers with serious development needs they require a platform with no compromises. They are looking for real development, but under a different set of rules. So we have invested in taking that low-code foundation, and building a set of platform services and capabilities around it that make it very different from anything else in the market. 

By combining the speed and efficiency of low-code development, with the expressiveness and capability of traditional development, customers of any size are capable of tackling the most complex applications - so they can innovate, compete or just do a better job of running their organizations and servicing their customers needs. At the end of the day, it’s not how you accomplish something, it’s whether or not you deliver the result. Modern applications platforms just do a better job of helping organizations solve their most complex software challenges - and those advantages are getting more and more people interested in making the switch. 

 

How long does it take on average for an organization to build an app using your platform?
The answer depends on the level of complexity, but a simple rule is 1/10th of the time it would take you in traditional development. A simple first version of a mobile app in a few hours, a more complex MVP candidate in a day, or completely rebuilding a massive, inflexible back-end system in a few months. When the first round of COVID lockdown orders hit, we had customers building completely new applications that enabled their employees to work from home - over a weekend! These were apps that would have taken weeks or months had they built them using traditional code. 

Ultimately, OutSystems helps businesses create applications they need at a speed far greater than any alternative, without compromising on functionality, scale, reliability or security. Most importantly, with OutSystems, once you’ve deployed an application, you can continually evolve it as quickly  as your requirements change. The dramatic speed and flexibility that OutSystems delivers applies not only to version 1, but version 2, 3, 4 and everything beyond. 

What are Service Studio’s ‘Builders’ and how do these visual toolsets help speed up the development cycle?
Service Studio is the primary development environment for the OutSystems platform, and it enables OutSystems developers to quickly assemble mission-critical applications either from scratch or from a massive library of templates and pre-built code modules. Our Builders are complementary tool sets that are designed to be used by team members with specific skill sets or are focused on enhancing a specific part of the development process. All of the builders, like Service Studio, rely on a visual, model-based approach and they are all seamlessly connected to enable team collaboration. This means that diverse teams can collaborate on applications with the expressiveness of traditional development, but with superior speed and efficiency. For example, Experience Builder is designed for a UI/UX expert to build out the user interface of an application. That interface design can then be augmented - seamlessly - by a developer using Service Studio. Similarly, a business analyst can define the application workflows that underpin an application - and those workflows seamlessly integrate with Service Studio. 

Each of the Builders add unique, specialized application design and creation functionality to the platform. More importantly, the Builders enables all of the diverse members of a multi-functional - including business analysts - to all seamlessly contribute to the creation of enterprise-class software solutions.