Low code solutions for devs to consider.
Tags: lowcode, tooling, react, flutter
Published: 2022-11-15 17:07:11

## How low can you go

Traditionally as dev's we may take pride in our ability of implementing systems 'from scratch'. We may scoff at tools that seem to provide 'shortcuts' for the work we do, but perhaps this attitude is counter productive.

[Low code/no code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-code_development_platform) is a term that refers to a class tech products and services which aim to simplify the implementation of technological solutions. This can be done at various levels and this post will give a breakdown of the eco-system at a glance.

* [Spreadsheets](#spreadsheets)
* [Builders](#builders)
* [Static Site Generators](#static-site-generators)
* [Content Management Systems](#management-systems)
* [Backends](#backends)
* [Automations](#automations)


## Spreadsheets

![spreadsheet apps logos](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/5dnmtjpi2hxxqmtlbo9a.png)

You've probably heard it before but the joke "economies and industries run on excel" definitely holds water.

Products like [Excel](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/excel), [Google Sheets](https://www.google.com/sheets/about/), [Airtable](https://airtable.com) and [Noco DB](https://www.nocodb.com/) are very effective for organizing data and can be integrated to work as a data source for web & mobile applications.


## Builders


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/neuvrzm64kxc6jsi28e1.png)

These products provide drag and drop interfaces for quickly putting together an application or website. For websites there's; [Squarespace](https://www.squarespace.com/), [Wix](https://www.wix.com/) and really recently [Canva](https://www.canva.com/website-builder/) to name a few.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/1jmd2o7b9gx0qrl8j56i.png)


For building applications there's; oracle apex for that work with larger scaled oracle databases, [LiveCode](https://livecode.com/), [Microsoft Power Apps](https://powerapps.microsoft.com/) and [Flutter Flow](https://flutterflow.io/) for cross platform applications built in flutter.

## Static Site Generators


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/9qxldifwb720cy6kjxwy.png)



These are nifty tools that let you create a fully static build of a website (no server-side code required). Tools like [gatsby](https://www.gatsbyjs.com/), [eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/) and [jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/) allow you to author a website's content with plain text files. Then, you can generate a full web experience from the files.

## Management Systems


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/zjq0ygwhocku9wqvoc2p.png)

Content/learning management systems, such as [Wordpress](https://wordpress.org/), [Drupal](https://www.drupal.org/), [Joomla](https://www.joomla.org/), [Magento](https://business.adobe.com/products/magento/magento-commerce.html) and [Moodle](https://moodle.org/) are fullstack web applications that you can configure and customize for course websites, blogs and e-commerce. Many if not all of these options are popular and open source.


## Backends


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/m9jn2gn0afawjt142p2l.png)

[Back end as a Service (BaaS)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_backend_as_a_service) are products that let you manage various aspects of you applications such as hosting, auth, database, uploads, cloud functions in a very "[serverless](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing)" way. The most popular one is probably [firebase](firebase.com), [netlify](https://www.netlify.com/) is vastly growing. [Appwrite](https://appwrite.io/) and [Superbase](https://supabase.com/) are really cool opensource alternatives. 


## Automations


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/pojyn36sviz9djmpf4gk.png)

Automations are really fun tools that let us create flows with popular products and services without needing to setup api keys and coding. For example you can let a form submission from airtable trigger an automated email campaign in [mailchimp](https://mailchimp.com). Tools like [zapier](https://zapier.com) and [IFTTT](https://ifttt.com/) are very popular and more recently we have [buildable](https://www.buildable.dev/).


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/spnzl09r6wruirgugbco.png)



I will also include [Robotic Process Automation (RPA)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_process_automation) tools like UI path, Automation 360 and Microsoft's power automate. 

## Why should devs care about no code?

The proliferation of lowcode shows a clear trend in the industry. There is a growing market of people that don't mind trading off in-depth customization for ease of use.

Meanwhile, as developers we may take pride of our 'from scratch' implementations but are we really doing that? 

Yes, you wrote that code but you're using a framework, written in a language implemented on a runtime running on protocol by someone else's design. One can argue that your [react.js](https://reactjs.org/) is just a lowcode wrapper for vanilla JS.

Technology is all about building on top of work done by those before us and low/code is just an extension of that.

![coding purity comic illustrating the previous point.](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/kqdomid87s3nuy2v6ks0.jpg)

My parody of xkcd's [purity](https://xkcd.com/435/)

## Conclusion

Many of these services can be integrated with to save us considerable amount of time. This let's us focus on delivering our core competency rather than stretching ourselves thin over various concerns of a software solution.

Note, this is by no means an exhaustive list. As technologists we need to be aware of all options that are available if we are to build the best solution for our users.