Great to see your name here, Zack. I think the problem with low-code is that its a catch all that spans between primarily data-storage-and-use work (Airtable, quick base, Filemaker, etc), the primarily app-alternative platforms (retool, Mendix, etc, and the ETL tools.
To me, AI changes the inflection points of build vs buy a bit for app platforms, but not as much for the other two. Ultimately, AI becomes a huge consumer of the data coming from impromptu databases, and becomes useful when it connects to other platforms (I think this is why there is so much excitement around n8n, but also why Salesforce bought informatica).
Maybe low-code as a category dies, but just because it is easier for LLMs to produce working code, doesn't make me any more willing to set up a runtime, environment, or other details of actually getting that code to run. I think there's still a big opportunity to make running the code nice and easy, and that opportunity gets bigger if the barriers to writing code come down.
Great point, and I agree the catch-all nature of the category feels overly broad. At our company, we've felt this shift most clearly on the app-building side so far but I'm curious to see how the low-code data applications fare as context windows grow and the core LLM providers improve their collaboration tools, governance, and improve the UX of on demand app creation. And nice to see you, too!
People don't respect the salary premium software developers have received and expect relative to other creative, human endeavors.
You lay it out perfectly in your answer, and I'll add that the entire non-tech world generally feels that if tech jobs lose their shine due to AI, its actually a welcome reversion to the mean. Software has likely depressed wage growth in many other jobs.
Which is unfortunate, because the thinking people should be having is that we should bring everyone else up to our level, and not trying to bring down the lucky few that are well compensated in this world full of leeches in the form of CEOs and middle managers.
That perfectly ties with my experience. Just direct prompts, with limited setup and limited context seem to work better or just as well as complex custom GPTs. There are not just diminishing, but inverting returns to complexity in GPTs
limited prompts work well for limited programs, or already well defined and cemented source bases.
once scope creeps up you need the guardrails of a carefully crafted prompt (and pre-prompts, tool hooks, AGENTS files, the whole gambit) -- otherwise it turns into cat wrangling rapidly.
Not in our (30+ year old software company) experience and we have large code bases with a lot of scope creep ; more than ever as we can deliver a lot more for a lot less (lot more revenue / profit too).
Graphically, I really like the way autodesk makes sketches in fusion 360 blue until they are fully constrained, and then they are black. My intuition here is that you could color code “degrees of freedom” and “locked” states so that it was more intuitive.
and, its so cheap. there are alternatives for individual components, but nothing that comes close to being this low cost. And, the ultimate value is that if you buy a niche tool (like notion) then only people with licenses can use it. Everybody at the company has office, so it's easy to share/collaborate. You have to really commit to avoiding office at all if you're going to replace parts of it.
Cheap is the same reason I ended up on an M365 family plan before they stopped allowing custom email domains. I'm grandfathered in, but I will probably end up paying more for just email when they decide to cancel the feature, plus needing to find a place to stash my off site backups.
0% NET accretive profit - the OP was saying that the invest/return wash doesn't affect prior profitability, just revenue. Obviously, the new profitability inclusive of the new revenue will actually by lower because of the zero margin wash trade.
Welll, if you were good at drywall already, drywall patches would be faster and better. But if you are good at printing and scanning, and you enjoy that process, then it’s fine.
The challenge with the example is that “success” is personal preference. With plenty of examples, the success criteria are external.
My only addition to this discussion is that the Dirty Labs dish soap has been legitimately better for our baby stuff and other plastic stuff that sometimes gets oily. I recommend it.
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