Very interesting! This concept has been around for a long, long time in many guises - arguably recent examples are Zoho, Microsoft PowerApps, Salesforce perhaps... And many more going back to Access, Lotus Notes and dbase.
The question is really one of execution (and remaining modern). Too generic and it lacks a killer app. Too specific and it hides of a niche.
I've not seen one of these type of applications yet that allowed the flexibility needed to handle many (perhaps the majority?) of use cases gracefully.
What I have seen is non-programmers getting enough power to get overconfident only to wind up with a mess.
These type of applications make it super easy to do 85% of the work. Unfortunately the remaining 15% often turns out to be impossible. Additionally when requirements change (and when don't they?) there often isn't the flexibility needed to make the changes.
The last thing I've observed is when something goes wrong if the person can't drill down into the internals and make adjustments they are just plain out of luck. I've seen this with both Access and Lotus Notes. Companies struggle with bugs for years. I've had a fair share of work re-writing these type of applications into web applications which finally do what is really needed without issue and can be changed when required.
In short I'm not concerned. Seen it before. Works for very simple apps, blows up spectacularly when something non-standard is needed. And this makes work for me.
Maybe this time it will be different but I really don't think so.
Comments
Very interesting! This concept has been around for a long, long time in many guises - arguably recent examples are Zoho, Microsoft PowerApps, Salesforce perhaps... And many more going back to Access, Lotus Notes and dbase.
The question is really one of execution (and remaining modern). Too generic and it lacks a killer app. Too specific and it hides of a niche.
I've not seen one of these type of applications yet that allowed the flexibility needed to handle many (perhaps the majority?) of use cases gracefully.
What I have seen is non-programmers getting enough power to get overconfident only to wind up with a mess.
These type of applications make it super easy to do 85% of the work. Unfortunately the remaining 15% often turns out to be impossible. Additionally when requirements change (and when don't they?) there often isn't the flexibility needed to make the changes.
The last thing I've observed is when something goes wrong if the person can't drill down into the internals and make adjustments they are just plain out of luck. I've seen this with both Access and Lotus Notes. Companies struggle with bugs for years. I've had a fair share of work re-writing these type of applications into web applications which finally do what is really needed without issue and can be changed when required.
In short I'm not concerned. Seen it before. Works for very simple apps, blows up spectacularly when something non-standard is needed. And this makes work for me.
Maybe this time it will be different but I really don't think so.
I get the feeling that some day theyll get it right and 90% of programming jobs will dissapear.