"Its deeply patronizing to hear gate-keeping developers discuss when is 'no-code' acceptable..."

I think we're mostly emotionally responding to the patronizing implication in these sorts of articles that no-code is the future and what we do is so easy that it's going to be replaced by a pretty GUI and some colored bubbles.

Does anyone deny these tools have some uses? They sure do. But they also manifestly have some serious weaknesses, as discussed in the article, and I'd add others beside. They may get incrementally more useful in the near future, maybe even build a few billion-dollar companies, but the odds of them displacing any conventional code in the near future is basically zero; no matter how successful they may become, the net amount of "yes-code" programming work in the world is still going to go up.

I don't think a factory line worker should get a Real Language... I think it's that credulous journalists or companies with a marketing department ought to stop writing these "oh man, software engineers ought to watch out!" articles and instead focus on the actual capabilities and deliverables... which, frankly, end up obscured, oversold, and outright ignored when you try to pitch them as replacements for conventional software. Any startup in this space, I'd advise against positioning yourself that way... you're in for some angry customers.

UML is great but I think the key area where Google has had a whole lot more impact is with its text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies for search. There's still a double digit percentage of people on this planet who aren't able to read or write. They haven't been able to benefit from advanced technology at all, until recently, due to the patronizing literacy requirements held by most software. In fact, I seem to recall, at one point or another, Google even made their search engine available by phone in a language that had no written form. Talk about conquering the digital divide.

It really is. High level programming languages were the original "no-code" compared to assembly of course.

That said: no-code is not "no engineering"

I guess it's kind of the reverse of the "perfect being the enemy of the good" adage. "Just barely works on a good day being the enemy of the good enough" maybe?

As a developer, I have the opposite opinion. I wish companies would stop buying this snake oil, because when the platforms do get old, the companies will take their time migrating off them. The platform will be sold to some tiny support shop in Bumfuck, Nowhere, who will gladly send representatives to HQ to renegotiate the support contract. So despite it being a pain in the ass to literally everyone who touches it, it somehow stays in the company because millions or even billions' worth of business goes through it, and replicating the exact logic in $SENSIBLE_LANGUAGE is not an expense the VP or CTO will approve because "what we have works fine". So supporting it, integrating with it, and coding around it falls to the schlubs on the dev teams. Schlubs... like me.

Going back a few threads, I just wanted to tell you that I think you're right that we have to fight hard against severe illness/injury. At least, I've decided to fight it instead of allowing it to kill me early. We'll see how things go. It may still get me, but I'm going to fight it.

I'm sorry to have insulted you, I honestly figured you were another naive 20-something year old giving advice on something they know nothhing about (and I work in tech, so I can't just not hang out around with them).

Just as higher level language abstractions have taken many years and many iterations to get right, so, too, have/will low-code platforms.

Yes, some are prone to “spoilage over time”. But to fully discard/dismiss the entirety of low code products is either foolish, or a conclusion that is based on old/incomplete information.