Why Low-Code Software Development is the Future?

What is Low-Code?

Low-Code is a software development approach that enables the delivery of applications faster than ever with a more productive automated-tools and techniques and a minimal hand-coding

How Low-Code is possible?

Low-Code development describes a family of tools used to create a complete application visually, using a drag-and-drop interface rather than writing thousands of lines of complex code. Even business users and the IT department can collaborate to build applications with modern user interfaces, data integrations, workflows, and business logic, to deliver business results in blazing fast speed

Things that you can build with low-code development

Internal Application

People can unlock additional value from the existing systems and data through new mobile and web interfaces which helps business improvise their processes, efficiency, security with standard encryption templates across the enterprises

Customer-facing application

User interface and User experience are some of the keys to attract new customers for any business. In this era, every business wants to create a digital customer experience by introducing a design immersive front-end UI that reinforces the brands. Responsive design, progressive web apps, accelerated mobile pages, on and offline data availability, scalability, usability, and security plays an important role while developing a customer-facing application and this requirement as satisfied by low-code development within making integration with device capabilities or third-party products. Which helps users improve the application with iterative feedback and continuous testing to deliver the software

Modernization

Low-Code applications give the capabilities to modernize legacy ERP, CRM, and other systems without impacting your day-to-day businesses with the help of on-the-fly integration services. You can easily incorporate the latest techniques/ technologies such as microservices-based solutions, containers, CI/CD approaches within the application. Hence, the low-code development helps to modernize your legacy systems without worrying about your application’s availability, scalability, and functionality

Benefits of Low-Code Development

Unbeatable Speed
Dramatically increase IT collaboration resulting in faster time to market and significant shortened iterative update cycles
Integration with anything
Integrate with industry-standard protocols, API implementation using REST and SOAP web services, and third-party business tools
Great CX
Brillant customer experience through a pre-built design template, or import an existing design, all without compromising performance or functionality
Modern Architecture
Support for advanced design and architecture, which provides the flexibility to start small and scale-up and across without impacting performance on governance and transparency
Bullet-proof security
Enforced security technologies, processes, and audit trails exceed the strict requirements for public and private sector security guidelines
Easy-go deployment
Automated pre-deployment impact assessments that account for the entire portfolio, along with simplified staging and if something goes wrong, easily roll back changes with a single click
Data-driven decision
Real-time insights into the health and usage of every deployed application, giving teams the feedback necessary to make strategic decisions about resources and availability
Sensible governance
Team development initiatives require constant communication and open, but controlled, access to systems and resources. Implement agile, CI/ CD without sacrificing visibility or control

Here’s what a typical low-code development platform looks like

A visual IDE: An environment for visually defining the UIs, workflows, and data models of your application and, where necessary, adding hand-written code
Connectors to various back-ends or services: Automatically handles data structures, storage, and retrieval
Application lifecycle manager: Automated tools to build, debug, deploy, and maintain the application in test, staging, and production

What is Low-Code like to work with?

Building software with low-code is the same as building software any other way. Unless you’re writing everything from scratch in machine code — and, no, assembly language doesn’t count — then you’re already taking shortcuts built on the work of others

With low-code, it’s all about the things you don’t have to do. Rather than hand-coding yet another user management system, dealing with the idiosyncrasies of the latest programming framework, or writing ten tests before a single line of your app’s code, you get straight to creating something new and valuable. Why start new when these problems have already been solved and the patterns are well understood?

The Low-Code Development Process

With Low-Code it would look more like this:

Seven steps instead of sixteen

Low-code understands that most of the time spent hand-writing code on the web and mobile apps are pretty much wheel spinning. There’s no need to tread the same path each time we start a new project. Low-code lets us create applications visually using battle-tested fundamentals. Our focus becomes delivering something valuable to the world

Low-Code Vs No-Code

No-code development platforms are similar to low-code development platforms but require no coding at all. The line between the two is not sharp. However, there are a number of key differences:

App Creator

No-code platforms are accessible to any end-business user while low-code platforms require professional developers who can work within the platform’s constraints

Core Design

No-code platforms tend to function off a model-driven, declarative approach where the end-user dictates an app’s design through drag and drop manipulation or simple expressions. Low-code platforms depend more on hard code to specify an application’s core architecture

User Interface

No-code platforms most often rely on a preset user interface layer which simplifies and streamlines an app’s design. Low-code platforms may provide greater flexibility in UI options at the cost of additional coding and complexity requirements

Low-Code is about getting more done

Ultimately, low-code is a way for developers to get more done. With low-code, you spend more time creating and building and less time on repetitive work. Sure, it’s fun to learn the latest faddish JavaScript framework or play with a cutting-edge NoSQL data store, but while you’re spending time debugging unfamiliar code, your competitor has an MVP in front of customers

Low-code isn’t about reducing the value of developers. Low-code lets teams of developers produce more value more quickly while drawing on their understanding of how to create and maintain high-quality web and mobile applications

Criticism

Some IT professionals question whether low-code development platforms are suitable for large-scale and mission-critical enterprise applications
Others have questioned whether these platforms actually make development cheaper or easier
Additionally, some CIOs have expressed concern that adopting low-code development platforms internally could lead to an increase in unsupported applications