5 myths about Low-Code

Over the past few years, low-code development became a buzzword among software developers and engineering teams.

While low-code platforms allow you to easily create (even complex) applications, there are many myths out there that need to be uncovered.

Let me share the top 5 myths about low-code development with you.

Low-Code Platforms No Longer Need Development Teams

Low-code platforms use visual modeling tools to represent logic and translate the underlying code into a visual format that both developers and business users can understand.

Since building enterprise-ready applications at speed and scale requires a continuum of developers, a cross-functional team that can participate in the development process fulfills the best conditions for the implementation of app development into a business. Great business ideas can be turned into applications much faster, and software teams can stop worrying about technical debt and resource constraints. Sure, some low-code platforms enable business users to build simple applications, but the applications that support digital transformation are not simple. They’re high-visibility, enterprise-wide and enterprise-grade applications that need to be built rapidly and integrated with the enterprise information systems — by expert developers. Applications built with Low-Code can be started by citizen developers and business users, while expert developers can take it to the last mile.

There Is No Custom Coding in Low-Code Development

Software engineers can use code to develop reusable code extensions. By leveraging client- and server-side APIs, engineers are able to build, package and distribute new functionalities, such as connectors to external services like machine learning and AI. Enabling developers to push beyond the boundaries of the core platform to build better solutions even faster will be possible by extending the native features of the platform with code.

Low-Code Platforms Create Lock-In Effects

While some low-code platforms do have a lock-in, causing customers to effectively become hostages of a company’s software or services, others provide full vendor independence. Such low-code platforms generate applications that exclusively use open source frameworks, hence there is no need for a lock-in. They can also be changed and extended with any Java IDE. The modus operandi with these low-code platforms is freedom because that’s what they give to the users. They are freely compatible with any major database, any Java application server and any cloud, on-premise environment, or operating system that Java is running on. As you can see, low-code gets high marks when it comes to independence, flexibility, and compatibility.

Low-Code Development Is Only for Simple Applications

From small- to large-sized companies, low-code platforms are a step forward from traditional software development when it comes to building applications for desktop, mobile, and web.

That makes low-code an attractive alternative approach to building large-scale enterprise applications for digital transformation efforts. Low-code platforms are able to scale and are suitable for thousands of users and millions of data sets. Most applications built via low-code are enterprise-wide or scaled for multiple departments. Low-code platforms make it easy for enterprises to build robust, unique, and intricate applications more quickly than conventional development tools. Many organizations that have experienced low-code development are scaling up their rapid development teams to cope with growing demand and are delivering mission-critical enterprise applications. Low-code is about gain, not pain.

Low-Code Platforms Are Browser-Based, ‘What You See Is What You Get’ Editors

Low-code Platforms are often not browser-based solutions. They rather run natively on your local machine. Also, it needs to be stated that browser-based low-code platforms offer a limited array of features. Whereas locally run, low-code platforms allow you to access source code and give you a better development experience.

To learn more about Low-Code, please check out the full Low Code Development Guide.