Low-code software development is not anything new or novel. Ever since the first programmers had to create punch cards to input their programs into mainframes that filled entire buildings, there’s been a desire to write programs with less code. In those early days, when massive computers were less powerful than the phones in our pockets today, writing code efficiently was necessary and expected. Today, when memory, storage and computer horsepower are cheap and plentiful, and development tools have advanced to the point where literally anyone can write code and run it in the cloud, using a low-code approach is considered niche or novel. But it shouldn’t be. We live in a world where finding software developers (or preferably software engineers) can be a challenge. And despite the shortage of developers, there is no shortage of demand for software development. The answer is once again low-code.
What is Low-Code Software Development?
The idea behind low-code software development is simple: enable organizations to build the software systems and apps they need in such a way that they have to write a lot less code to get the job done compared to traditional software development. There are many approaches to this, each with benefits and drawbacks that we’ll explore below.
Done right, low-code doesn’t replace your need for software developers, but rather acts as a force multiplier, enabling smaller teams to deliver results that would normally require much bigger teams. Once fully embraced, low-code can also significantly improve your Innovation Fraction, or the percentage of your software R&D budget that goes toward innovation vs. maintenance. The impact of automation like low-code can’t be ignored.
5 Reasons to Leverage Low-Code Software Development
Less Labor Involved.
95% of the cost of software is labor. The promise of low-code is that your developers will need to write less code to get their work done, meaning fewer hands pounding away at keyboards.
You want to get from point A to point B, and you want that route to be as efficient as possible. With traditional software development and outsourcing companies, you often end up taking the scenic route. Outsourcing firms are driven almost exclusively by the need to maximize billable time which is at odds with your business goals and keeping costs down.
Low-code means you don’t need to outsource. Less code means fewer billable hours and fewer hands needed on deck.
Time is Money.
You aren’t going to run out of work by using low-code. You never run out of work in software development, you run out of time.
Low-code software development will cost you less and save you time. With the increased control you will have over the process, you can quickly make changes and updates as needed. The high degree of flexibility offered by some low-code platforms means your development team can easily modify or customize applications as needed to respond to changing customer needs.
Get to Market Faster.
Using low-code will help you line up net new revenue faster. Remember, time is money, so the less time you spend writing code, the quicker the job is complete and the faster you get your product to market.
The increased speed and agility offered by low-code will enable you to develop applications faster than traditional coding approaches. Anytime you can automate coding functionality, you are going to get to market faster.
Reduce Risk.
Writing less code means there are fewer opportunities for mistakes, less that can go wrong, and less code that you need to QA – all of which reduces your risk and further drives down cost. With low-code software development, there is less code to manage and maintain which drives up your Innovation Fraction and reduces the rate at which you may accumulate technical debt.
Increase Quality.
Fewer defects means better quality. Less code to write means the code your developers are writing will get their full time and attention, resulting in a higher-quality product. Low-code also allows your teams, even those more junior, to work together more effectively and punch above their weight-class; an approach that leads to better quality applications.
Two Camps of Low-Code Compromise: How Low-Code Can Go Wrong
Although the term low-code is relatively recent, the concept is not new. Long before low-code there were CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) tools, and products like PowerBuilder, a low-code platform that allowed developers to build applications with less labor and less code.
When you look at low-code historically, it generally falls into two distinct camps:
Runtime Platforms (e.g., force.com from Salesforce)
Applications are built inside the platform and they also have to run inside that platform. You pay runtime fees and you don’t have control of where your applications are deployed in their cloud.
You are basically paying royalties to the low-code platform provider for every customer you light up.
Why is this a PROBLEM? It limits profitability because you have to give the platform vendor a cut of your revenue streams; as you grow, you will have to pay ever-increasing fees to the provider. For internal corporate needs, this works just fine. But if you’re building revenue-generating commercial software, this is extremely limiting as you are allocating a significant portion of your future revenue stream to a third-party provider.
With a runtime platform, you may get to market quicker, but you have no control over it and you pay for that privilege. This environment does not handle complexity well. For investors and business owners, the shared revenue model and inherent constraints of this approach will reduce your EBITDA and your valuation at exit.
Development Platforms (e.g., PowerBuilder)
With the best of these platforms, you can develop fairly complex applications and deploy them wherever you want, but your team will have to live within the black box provided by the platform vendor and learn its proprietary scripting and language constructs to be effective.
Why is this a PROBLEM? You and your team now have to learn a proprietary system, along with a new language and technology set. You need developers who can write applications in the development platform directly – you are stuck in a black box from a software development standpoint.
You can build applications and get them to market quickly if you stay within the box, but you cannot develop outside of it. This limits your development resources considerably, making training and onboarding difficult. In fact, the pool of software developers who are familiar with these black-box platforms is often smaller than the pool of COBOL or VB6 developers on the market today.
These types of CASE tools are not future-proof (case in point: PowerBuilder)! They are highly proprietary and binding. Finding and retaining people and resources to work in these spaces will be difficult, and future innovation will be stifled and limited.
Traditional CASE tool technologies become legacy very quickly which means you have technical debt as soon as you release your product, and you are unable to do anything outside the platform.
Why Both of These Approaches Are Compromised
Neither of the approaches above are good enough when it comes to commercial product development – each requires too much compromise. There are two extremes of thought in software development – on one side there is the belief that no code should be automated and it must all be written by hand. On the other side there is a belief that the ideal we should pursue is one of No-Code – that we should ideally have some sort of magical design surface to draw out what we want and the platform will provide. Junior developers often fall for the former ideal and feel they must write everything themselves to be in full control. But the low-code space is dominated by ivory-tower types who embrace the latter ideal and believe that 100% automation is possible and should be pursued. This is what drives these platforms to be black boxes and ends up painting those who adopt them into a corner.
How Modularis Delivers on the Promise of Low-Code
The Modularis approach to low-code is different from either runtime or development platforms. We don’t believe all code can or should be automated. The truth is that only 20% of the code in any commercial software product adds any real value to the end user. Our goal is to fully automate the other 80%, enabling and empowering professional software engineers to spend all their time on the 20% that drives value so they can be as effective, efficient and productive as possible.
Complexity.
Our approach is designed to deliver more benefit as complexity increases — the more complex your needs, the more value you get. Our process handles complexity far better than the other platforms.
White Box.
With Modularis, you will get a royalty-free runtime environment where the entire platform is white box, giving you complete visibility and control of how your solution works. This is a path to building your IP more quickly using common technology sets that give you the freedom to deploy whenever and wherever you want.
Simple.
The only skill sets you need to use this effectively are standard 3GL skill sets — you won’t need proprietary skills to make use of it. Finding specialized resources to leverage the platform is not a concern.
Access.
You have access to the technology AND the software engineers and architects behind it to quickly enable you to ramp up and extract maximum value.
These are the things you need to do to truly deliver on the promise of low-code without compromise, and with PlatformPlus™®, Modularis makes it easy. This is our niche, it is what makes us different, and it’s what will make your next software development project a revenue-generating machine.
One call is all it takes – schedule time to talk with A. J. today!