So code or no-code? I'm joking. I hope we've put that debate to end, hopefully by concluding that the answer is it depends.

I do however want to bring a different angle to this debate: that, in fact, no-code doesn't replace code in most cases. Yes that may be the case for non-technical entrepreneurs. Most folks aren't entrepreneurs though, they're employees. No-code tools more often than not replace other software. More precisely, vertical software built around a specific use case.

The sheer amount of apps that any business uses has grown tremendously. Okta, an SSO provider with lots of data on what folks use reported that their average customer used 83 apps in 2018. And that number is only growing.

And it's clear why: for every problem there's cloud software out there to solve it. Better managing 1 to 1's, UX research, light to heavy CRMs, chat, social media/content calendar management and the list goes on and on. For each problem, there's one of those landscape maps showing you every competing start-up for that slice of business.

We've gone from having trouble maintaining tools we build to a difficulty maintaining the eco-system of tools we've purchased! Enter stage left tools to help us manage our tools: Zapier for data, Okta for SSO, LMS' to learn our internal tools, etc. But none quite handle worker fatigue of having to learn yet another app!

What if no-code's goal wasn't to stop net new code from being written (I think we've settled that) but instead to alleviate the proliferation of new tools? Personally, before buying any new software, I think 'can some form of this be built with Airtable, Zapier, Parabola?' The answer is often yes with some very specific and clear trade-offs. Usually the analytics won't be as detailed and permissions not quite as granular as I'd like them to be, but I can live with that! And in most cases, for most teams, that's more than sufficient! It even sometimes comes out better :)

That said, there's some subtle irony in all of this. In order to decrease the number of apps you use (and increase the number of custom apps you build using no-code), you first have to learn a whole set of complex no-code tools. More tools (at first)! You then have to build your tool (more work)! And then convince your team to use this new tool (and the underlying tools)! In the short term, no-code tools are a pain. And it's why I keep saying that education and change management are the two main hurdles to no-code adoption. I'll speak about those more in upcoming editions.

When folks say "every business will be built on no-code"--they'll be right but only in the sense that every business' operations will be driven by  no-code.

Best

Aron