Low / No code solutions are NOT the next big thing

 Low / No code solutions are not new. The promise of business folks being able to create applications without much help from developers has been a dream / promise that has been around for quite a while now. There are also some powerful solutions out there that do this to a significant degree.

I have been closely working with a couple of well known low code solutions for many years now. The are actually pretty useful and cool. But here is a truth that those companies realized early on and many startups also eventually realize

‘If you try to do everything for everyone, you end up doing nothing for anyone’

Business folks, the intended target, do not connect well with a product that says you can build whatever you want. So the companies eventually, and correctly, decide to focus on a particular market/vertical and even evolve a reference implementation as the product they sell. Now there is a solid thing that can be sold. 

The real problem is that generic ‘no code / low code’ products are too generic for business folks and irrelevant for developers. 

So, these will continue to either have a limited use case as general purpose tools OR evolve eventually into specific targeted products backed by the solution.