
Is Low Code The Future? How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in 4 hours - bdv500
https://www.bethanvincent.com/blog/2019/10/28/how-i-built-and-shipped-my-revenue-ready-mvp-in-4-hours
======
omarhaneef
The criticism -- almost all the other comments at this point -- focuses on one
aspect of the low-code app:

It has to be re-written once it grows. *

While this is true, I don't think Bethan or any other low code advocate would
dispute that. The question is: can you get test an idea with low code.

The answer to that might be a trivial yes, but if you had asked me what that
means, I would guess a team of 3 people could prototype an idea in about a
week.

I did not expect a single person to be able to test an idea in 4 hours. That
is the real insight here.

* Not all the criticism. One person points out that calling it a business is overblown till someone pays for it.

~~~
zitterbewegung
Low code already happens. Now I think it’s just getting popular .

“Groupon was originally run on WordPress because they only needed to test one
thing: will local small businesses provide discounts in exchange for being
introduced to potential new customers.”

And yes it is an example of that it has to be rewritten.

From [https://bigthinking.io/the-mindset-for-innovation-
everything...](https://bigthinking.io/the-mindset-for-innovation-everything-
is-an-experiment/)

~~~
kyllo
Yeah, it's not really new. A few years back, I interviewed at a startup that
was close to two years in, and they described their app as "the most
overloaded Drupal installation in existence," and were in the middle of
migrating it to Rails.

------
planetzero
"I literally built a business in an afternoon and so can you."

Are you charging money and have customers actually paying you? If not, it's
not a business yet. It's a website.

This barely functions as a website and looks like a few components thrown
together using a bootstrap template.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
If they were charging for it, they would have called it "revenue-earning"
instead of "revenue-ready".

What does "revenue-ready" even mean? They're willing to accept money for it?
Really high bar to clear /s

~~~
uoaei
I'm revenue-ready because I'm capable of holding my pockets open.

~~~
1_over_n
I honestly feel like these comments are quite elitist.

I can programme if i need to but will often use convenience tools to quickly
test ideas. Thats kind of the spirit of (many not all) startups right now.

Isn't the magic in figuring out what people are willing to pay for? That's
definitely PGs message, along with speak to customers and do things that don't
scale. And now someones getting flamed for attempting to do all three (whether
it's worth blogging about is another thing).

I believe i'm ok to comment here as I have worked at both ends of the scale
(B2C super fast and dirty vs super deep scientific medical software with long
time line to market).

~~~
aguyfromnb
> _I can programme if i need to but will often use convenience tools to
> quickly test ideas._

I don't think people are making fun of the "low-code" aspect as much as the "I
literally built a business in an afternoon" part.

It's a job board, implemented 2 months ago, that has a handful of postings.
How is that a business?

~~~
1_over_n
Well to be fair the title is "How I built and shipped my revenue-ready MVP in
4 hours" not "how i built my business in 4 hours". The claim is an MVP. I've
seen people raise money with less than this so at least something was built.
I've also seen people raise money to hire people to build an MVP which ended
up being something built using "low programming tools". At least the poster is
making an effort to take some action. I cant speak for how they will iterate
etc but many people with an idea never actually even get started.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think the world needs another jobs board but at
one point airbnb sold cereal boxes so who am i to judge on what a persons
ambitions will look like in 12 months time if they continue to learn and get
some feedback. I mean, if they are reading the thread there is a bunch of
feedback here they can assess.

Everyone here who is commenting on scaleable systems had to start somewhere, i
would bet for many that start was not with something that was at least halfway
functional and could accomodate users.

~~~
bdv500
I can confirm that I am reading all the feedback with avid interest.

There are lots of fair and constructive comments here which I'm going to be
taking on-board both for York Tech Jobs and for future projects.

As many people have pointed out, the claim of being a business may be a bit
farfetched at this stage. The spirit of the article was to show that building
and validating a basic MVP is possible in a few hours, I added the last
sentence about it being a business as a bit of a perhaps misplaced barb at
people who are all talk, no action.

Thanks to everyone for their comments. It's really appreciated.

------
meredydd
So, this is where the founder of a "low-code" startup pops up to confirm it:
"Low code" is mostly a false promise.

We have been programming computers for most of a century: 71 years this year.
And in all that time, _nobody_ has come up with a better way of telling a
computer what to do than writing text in a programming language. People keep
trying, of course, with endless permutations of flow-charts and rules. But
sooner or later, you'll find yourself either:

(a) unable to express what you need to express, or

(b) tangled up in Cthulu's own flow-chart, barely accomplishing something that
you _know_ is a three-line `for` loop in Python.

And the thing is, anyone calling their system "low code" (rather than "no
code") _knows this_. They know that the shiny demo can't actually do all you
need. The moment you want to build something they haven't already imagined,
you fall off the edge of the world. That's why they hedge, and say "sure, you
might write a little code". Then the trap-door opens underneath you, and you
go straight from a click'n'drag flowchart to writing a React component (or
worse). Not fun.

I cofounded Anvil ([https://anvil.works](https://anvil.works)), and if you
squint hard you could call it a low-code platform for web apps. But many
valuable apps are a fifteen-line Python script surrounded by fifteen tons of
JS framework. The problem here isn't the application logic - it's everything
else! So build a drag'n'drop designer, and a VB/Delphi-like component UI, then
get out of the way and let the author write their app logic in peace. When
your users try to do something you haven't thought of (and they will!),
they'll have an industrial-strength toolbox to deal with it.

But to tell someone that they can build substantial apps without writing code
is to invite them to drive at speed up a blind alley.

~~~
lubujackson
"No code" is always only "less code": look at the complexity of Excel
spreadsheets by non-coders. But it is a "singularity event of sensible
defaults" that allows useful things to be built before the first whiff of
code.

What is exciting is that simple web/apps are getting to that same place that
spreadsheets were at and where blogging was at.

People already have a clear idea of what they need most of the time: "fill out
this form, send it in a email, put in a spreadsheet, load it on this page with
an image", etc. Provide sensible defaults and let the CRUD apps flow.

~~~
meredydd
Excel is _sui generis_ \- it is the end-user-programming platform that lived.
But even Excel formulas are a textual programming language, and the really
hairy Excel spreadsheets spill over into VBA (a "real language" for these
purposes, and one whose ergonomics still blow the web out of the water).

It is tempting (albeit a bit snobbish) to think that "CRUD apps", as a
category, have so little logic that you can describe a useful working version
without code. I just don't think it's true - they are always shot through with
squirrelly business logic.

You can carve off products like form builders (eg Google forms/Airtable/etc),
but anything you'd describe as a "CRUD app" contains an amount of logic that's
just painful to describe without code. (And the form builders know it, which
is why they don't support those use cases!)

------
kyllo
For prototyping relatively simple, UI-focused apps, yes, I think low-code and
no-code solutions do have a place.

The key is having the awareness and discipline, when the prototype is
validated and starts to gain traction, to throw it away and build the real
production app using what you learned, instead of just accumulating months to
years of technical debt and cruft on top of a prototype. If you launch with a
"permatype" you will eventually find yourself facing a very expensive and
painful "2.0" project.

------
fxtentacle
I feel like this is the self-help hype all over again. People with a network
of followers can sell almost any weird stuff. And then afterwards they praise
themselves for doing so.

------
JMTQp8lwXL
For 4 hour experiments, it sounds like a reasonable strategy; but what happens
are your requirements become increasingly complex? Is "Low Code" going to
work, for example, if you want to implement A/B tests? Possibly one day.

~~~
loopz
For what should be a prototyping solution: Definately, a resounding Yes!

------
Havoc
Don't think so.

I'd say easy code (think python and garbage collectors) plus easy scale (think
cloud and apps and serverless) is where the easy wins are.

People have been trying to do point and click IDEs for ever. It's always a
shit show and I see no reason to believe it'll change shortly

------
mharroun
If it's possible to prototype or test a potential new product or feature with
little to no engineering effort... that is the only responsible thing to do.

I've seen many cases where their were easy non custom solutions to test a
first version of a product/feature I have refused to custom build until
tested...where then shown ineffective.

Buy over build until it cannot scale (often the scale is cost not growth).

------
codegeek
Being the critical HN person, I would say that "revenue ready" is a fancy term
for "I built this website/app and now need to get clients". So revenue ready =
just a website/app.

~~~
JohnFen
Yes, and it's most definitely a long way away from being something that could
be properly called a "business".

------
klodolph
Great, you made a location-specific clone of an app that has been made
hundreds or thousands of times before.

Is this the future? Yes, for people who are pushing out clones of simple,
well-understood apps. You can put up a web store in a couple days, or make a
first-person shooter, or a dating app.

------
lalos
Low code is definitely the future. Look at all the things you can do by
calling the right APIs and/or all the scaffolding available. The clear trend
changed after RoR and managed cloud services like Heroku popped up. Now the
big players offer cloud services that would take months to code but if you pay
up you have access (everything as a service). The lesson for developers is
work on tools consumed by other developers and if this is not the case
probably someone else is working on automating bits of pieces of your work.

~~~
tguedes
This has literally always been the case for the history of software. Unless
you're willing to tell me an operating system is a low-code solution, building
software has always been about obfuscating the frustrating parts to focus on
the stuff that actually matters. Infrastructure as a service is just the
current iteration.

~~~
dragonwriter
> This has literally always been the case for the history of software.

And the code complexity doesn't actually go down; as it takes less code to
meet a given set of expectations, expectations expand.

------
oh_sigh
The problem is this MVP doesn't even fit the objective that the author lists
in the beginning. They stated:

> It’s also extremely important to me that an employer has a positive attitude
> towards diversity and actively encourages candidates from under-represented
> groups. This is a hard thing to tell from Indeed or a job aggregate site.

But their MVP does nothing at all relating to inclusiveness. It's just a job
board CRUD app just like all the other job boards.

------
mscasts
As with all titles that starts with a question, the answer is probably no.

Sure it may work for some easy cases but most products aren't that simple and
as soon as you want to add some extra functionality you basically have to
rewrite the application from scratch.

I'm happy that it worked for this guy but if I was a betting man I wouldn't
bet on "low code".

~~~
blazespin
she is right, but this a terrible example because her idea is weak but her
marketing is strong..

the future will likely see apps being built in collaboration with AI.

~~~
psv1
> apps being built in collaboration with AI

Oh please no, that's just so unnecessary.

~~~
filoleg
Real life is imitating art at this point, truly. Saw that whole plot point in
the final season of Silicon Valley that was released last month and thought it
was one of the most farfetched unrealistic scenarios in the whole show. Looks
like I was really wrong.

------
aries1980
I'm always curious what's the point of such articles? It is as useless as a
programming language benchmark on "Hello, World!" and "Number of empty HTTP
request/sec".

I am able to install a vanilla Drupal-based forum with all these integrations
in the fraction of that 4 hours (working with Drupal for 15 years certainly an
edge here), which I think can scale much better for less than your solution up
to a certain point, but certainly fits to a York-scale. But would this prove
it is a great business? Not really. Would this change if it was NodeBB,
Wordpress or any other technology? Not at all. Would I hate working on
something that is super boring to me just to earn money? Absolutely.

------
azinman2
So, basically nothing particularly noteworthy about the actual product as it
was built by 1 person in 4 hours. For this type of business the hard part is
the network effect, so in effect the journey is barely begun.

------
jimbob45
I vehemently disagree. To me, this is a classic case of people who believe in
YAGNI versus people who plan (sometimes too much) for the future. I've been
burned too many times to be able to adhere to the YAGNI protocol. Sure, these
low/no-code solutions may work fine for a while but eventually, they'll hit an
impassable roadblock and then they're stuck until they either decide that
roadblock isn't worth overcoming or put in the time and effort that could have
been accounted for at the beginning.

------
stephc_int13
I don't see any added value here. Only a weak attempt at self-promotion in a
kind of bait-click way.

------
carapace
As a programmer, I kinda don't want it to be, but I acknowledge that as short-
sighted.

In general, "low code" _should_ be the future: because efficiency, and
maturity of available libs/components. What i'm saying is that this should be
seen as a win.

------
blazespin
yeah, she missed the part where she used her network to market.

------
thinkingkong
No.

But these are not the products of the future. Another way to look at it, is
that anything like this might be a more well understood component of another
application or product, and the more they're used the easier they'll be to
integrate. The products of 2020's will end up being highly specific to some
niche / vertical and require lots of industry knowledge.

------
stareatgoats
Yep, we're doomed (sooner or later this will take over)

