Is the low-code/no-code movement discouraging developers?

will the low code and no code movement result in fewer developer jobs or will it actually encourage more people to become developers that's what we're talking about on this episode of dynamic developer i'm your host bill detweiler and on this show i'm joined by marcus torres gm of integration hub and vp of platform product with servicenow to talk about how the low code and no code movement is affecting the field of software development and how his company is using low code and no code platforms to help companies be more agile and respond more quickly to customer needs marcus thanks for joining me no thanks for having me here it's always great to speak with you well so i know that what we're going to talk about is no code the low code the the movement that's been part of the developer community for quite a while now um sometimes a little bit of uh controversy um so before we kind of get into some of the things that maybe you know servicenow is doing around no code and low code or how you think about it let's start with maybe like um one of the hot button issues uh which is you know what's what is the net effect of low code and no code going to be on the developer community at large you know are we going to see a time where we have fewer developers because more end users and admins are creating code or really is that sort of just a standard kind of unfounded fear that we always have with kind of new technology and transitions you know bill um i don't know about you but ever since i was a kid and watching the jet sensor looking at old clips from the 1950s where stoves make dinner themselves the reality is is technology has helped us it hasn't it hasn't hurt us as a society and as a workforce we've constantly leveraged technology to be more productive and to focus on the things that in all honesty humans are better at and yes there's been doom and gloom about everything from ai and now to no and low code the reality is is development is a team sport and um you know if you are an admin if you're someone in operations if you just know how to you know you're you're fluent with excel the reality is is there's platforms and technologies out there that allow you to do innovative things it doesn't mean developers go away and the one of the most um common ways that i see this is um is it's just experience like any other job if somebody starts and picks up a no and low code platform they build what they know but guess what they start working with their colleagues they start getting feedback from people just as you know someone like me and product management hears from customers all the time and now they want to improve it now they need to maintain their application guess what who's the who's the army of people that know how to do that best real developers and those real real developers can actually enjoy empowering and educating this kind no and low code community to go further faster and innovate themselves and guess what those same developers also like using nolo code tools to get past what i want to call the remedial part of applica application development and really focus on the challenging parts and so like i said this is a team sport developers aren't going anywhere if you're listening to this podcast and you're in computer science and you're like oh i don't know i'm gonna be automated through some low code platform that's not the case either the you know the um the reality is is developers are you know the jedi's of innovation and they'll continue to be in the future they just get additional help and can go faster and build more with some of these platforms and along with their teammates yeah let's let's talk about that because that's one of the things that i hear from people who work and are developing autumn work in and developing automation platforms um not just with respect to development but in other sort of parts of uh what we would consider sort of digital transformation is that it really is about taking away some of those tedious repetitive tasks and allow empowering um in this case developers to really focus on those things that they want to focus on which are maybe building new products solving problems as opposed to maybe responding to to every end user request or project product manager's request what's your what's your take on on that i mean it sounds like that's what i'm here hearing you say in simplest terms please take the simple tasks away um i think everybody wants that and when you whether you're you know a recent grad in your first role in a corporation to a startup entrepreneur doing it all you know to an executive you don't want to do the remedial tasks you want to focus on the critical work where you're adding value to your customer to your employees to your organization and the fact is these remedial tasks what they do is they slow us down from being able to innovate it's they slow us down from being able to actually focus on the critical things that are going to bring a higher value and so if you have automation platforms um like you know flow designer and our workflow capabilities within servicenow or integration hub that can connect systems you know with clicks versus code again same thing we want to automate the easy things the the the trivial things and allow people to focus on the critical part of of work that takes you know cognitive human thought right um and i'll give you a great example of this there's a customer who was trying to um you know i was just talking to and they were they're trying to make something more efficient and in their process and they they just happened to tell me about oh well for every single one of these records in this case in servicenow that had a specific filter criteria they have to go and get their team to enter these manually and i was looking at them and i was like why are you doing that simply create a trigger in flow designer and go and create that child record every single time you never have to worry about it again and and to some so some folks it's like i didn't know to do that i was going to put process around it but that's tedious labor that just takes time and so similar to kind of the low code question of before we want automation automation is a good thing automate this the simple tasks allow the people that you know we have you know doing their function to focus on the critical value for their customers and and we're all we're all going to be better off customers will have better experiences um you'll you'll probably increase your your overall revenue and it'll drive um success and satisfaction for everyone so if you had to tell developers um who are you know or do you think that most sort of developers coming through the pipeline right now you know look we've had code complete you know tools uh libra for a long time you know but um so but there does seem to be kind of a new um the the the low code and no code movement is beyond that right but it's only a step beyond that because it's pushing those tools and the processes maybe a little further closer to the end user right and and so how do you kind of what do you tell maybe uh developers like you kind of touched on this earlier coming through the pipeline now to i guess get their minds right around like don't be you know don't worry about this don't be afraid of this it's kind of similar to like the tools that you're using it's just a little step beyond that so as opposed to doing a change request or as opposed to doing a ticket a trouble ticket that comes in and having to build like you were talking about this whole process you can focus on that new project the new app doing something a little more interesting than kind of that oh i really want this data i really need this one form to do x kind of thing bill i'll answer your question tell me if after i answered it if i didn't address it um quite the way you intended but what what i think you're asking is hey there's a there's a new wave of developers that are you know coming through and how should they think about you know their kind of their skill set and and how that relates to low and no code is that is that yeah that's exactly it said much more artfully than i could you know i really think it's a tool in the tool set right if you look at what developers and i used to be a developer sometimes i miss it because you don't have to deal with all the prioritization he gets just just put hands on keyboard to get stuff done but the the reality is is our job our function as developers is constantly to learn new skills and and take on emerging technology and we love it like we love doing that um and when you look at no and low code tooling i really see it as um a tool in the broader toolset of how they approach a problem right and if you have you know an operational use case especially you know i think of things like you know retail uh medic you know medical uh use cases where they still have paper forms all over the place right um and they're just trying to digitize it any you know almost any low code platform can give you a form pretty quickly like a digital form think of covid in all of the restaurants and all of the dentist appointments and i know because i have two little girls that i had a figure you know get a bunch of digital signatures for and these kind of check-in apps all you need is basically some content some forms to fill out an acceptance digital signature and go right these are the kinds of applications that yes could i go and i spin up some you know you know like a vm and start to code this you know full stack in aws because i have the skill set too 100 should i probably not because it doesn't require that level of complexity and so in the same way that you know when we i approach say a project um i like using my hands instead of because i'm in digital land all week long in the weekends when i'm approaching say like a home project i take the right tool for the right job and i think the same thing is true for known low code you you gave an example not to interrupt you i'm sorry but i'd love to to drill down on that too which is you gave that example how do you what's your thought process for making that decision like you see a project that comes to you where the end goal is x y or z in your case you know creating this really quick this this this form a process that allows you to schedule a dentist appointment which i can identify with too i had to reschedule my daughter's orthodontist appointment yesterday um so but what's the decision process in your mind uh for for making that choice like whether this is something you need to do a full stack you know development process on or whether it's something you can do with a much maybe much more quickly or with the right low code no code platform yeah well um the the first thing i would do um in all honesty is probably gravitate to platforms that allow me to do everything um in all honesty you have uh you know you have platforms you know that developers love and breathe every day whether it's google cloud or azure or aws like the you know the professional developer and some of those those cloud companies have come out with solutions for sort of known low code but they they're a frag they seem fragmented or separate from the rest of the platform and you know one of the one of the benefits i the reason why i joined servicenow and the things i love about our platform is it doesn't matter if you're a no code all the way to pro code it is the same platform and if you want extensibility there's you don't have to learn four different ways to do it based on which tool you're doing it's like it's the same ubiquitous platform but so when when people are approaching you know which platforms do i use or how do i leverage it look at something that you can get consistency on as you look at something that you can solve all of your problems instead of a subset of your problems that that being said um you know when you when you start looking at use cases um what i tend to to do is i i try to look at the total workflow of of that specific use case so i'll give you an example of this um for geez for the last 20 odd years now with with various sas platforms or various platforms that are out there people are like this is my job and in my job i do this part of the capability so i need an application just to do this like my part but guess what when you look at the workflow let's take a you know an employee-on-boarding scenario you're talking to it there's hr you have finance you have your direct team managers you have um you know potentially procurement or facilities to take care of you know arrange well not right now but you know what i mean facilities to arrange the desk every single person is a chain is is a link in that chain of value or in that entire workflow and so when i look at those kind of problems i say hey is there a broader workflow here right then you need say a workflow platform to address it in the case of the dentist example a lot of these smbs kind of um they're just like uh i need to digitize a form so someone can or i need a scheduling app because that's what people used to do you know either in person or on calls it would like i need them to to do this online because it needs to be touchless in those cases they are starting at just one step of that overall workflow but that's the critical need and so when you're evaluating which platform to go with part of it is like speed and ease and technical acumen right like small dentist shops make don't have a developer probably or even even a loco developer per se but if they can use some of these platforms just to deal with that initial interaction that's going to be enough to get them started and guess what in all of these platforms once you sort of have a little taste of success and being able to deliver that value you continue to grow from there and you want a platform that can help you do that so i know that you know we've been talking about low code and no code being around for quite a while now but one of the things that seems to have really kind of sparked it and we've talked about some of those examples here with the dentist office is covit and people having to make sort of rapid and dramatic shifts in how their apps work how they interact with customers speak to that a little bit about what you've seen from your customers and some of those rapid changes that they've had to make i i think we are just seeing the the true next generational wave of agility you know if you look back 10 years there's companies you think that would never go under that have no longer exist because their lack of being able to be agile and respond to customers and what customers are looking for now we have all of main street all of retail all of restaurants having to do the same thing and it's about survival and you cannot survive without being agile and that's exactly what loco platforms have provided you know customers of ours like honor health they used citizen developers to create a coven 19 symptom tracker in a chatbot chat bot experience in six hours you know we've had a us hospital system that developed an exposure exposure tracker app in three days that serves oh you know 10 000 staffers this is what's required and in some cases especially with kovid it's actually saving lives and and creating the right connection so we can address this problem but now think of where we're going to be as as a society as as industries as as people coming out of this um we now know what it what is required to to shift quickly and um and what that means um to our businesses and to our families and um i think the the more people that can innovate and get their get their hands dirty with things like low-code platforms um the faster we're going to be able to respond and honestly compete both as individual um you know professionals or people as well as on a global economy so let's talk a little bit about the platform you work on um the integration hub uh there it's it's servicenow give me a little for you know i can't imagine um anybody listen this does isn't familiar with servicenow but give me a little rundown on how integration hub sort of functions within you know integrates low code no code into um into its sort of the application development process um there yeah if uh if you don't mind bill i mean augment your question just a little bit there's two fundamental aspects of our platform for local development there's what we call app engine that's our you know it's sort of our version of of you leveraging like google cloud or adm aws in the sense of you can take that platform and whether you're a no code developer all the way to a professional developer you can leverage that platform to solve your needs and and that's really for any kind of low co development um and then there's integration hub which is our our low code integration solution that is accompanying it um and so what we really see in the modern enterprise right in the modern business of today um no matter your sizes there are multiple systems you have to connect with there's external systems you have to connect with whether it's sas applications or um other platforms that is part of your business to on-premise you know um you know historical systems or legacy systems and when you again look at that entire value the entire workflow that is that you're building this application for not just this narrow piece you may start in one chunk and keep growing it but in order to do that you need to connect systems people and processes and app engine helps you build those applications seamlessly in a low code way an integration hub allows you to connect to any third-party system or on-premise system and integrate that into the workflow this is much different than other platforms where you you know what an integration is right you go you talk to the their system you write that to a specific you know you map the data to an internal data model within whatever platform you're using and then you incorporate in that into the application but in in um app engine and integration hub you can just seamlessly incorporate that data um with what we call a reusable action in integration hub so it just makes it simple and the best part about it is professional developers who understand apis and write all those they build those reusable actions that then a no and loco developer can reuse at any time and that's that's really the beauty of our our one platform do you think that i mean you use that term a couple times and which is no and low code developer do you think we're kind of seeing a bifurcation um in the development developer community around maybe folks who specialize in languages and so or even building you know a full stack developer as opposed to maybe someone who is half a product manager or even um maybe an end user to some in some respects but they also have a little bit of you know coding experience in themselves you know and they can do some things through no and low code how do you how do you think that that how do you see that sort of playing out in a modern enterprise because i want to touch on that really too before we kind of um you know before before we're done because i think that if that bifurcation happens or you see that happening it affects the structure of where development lives within an organization because you know i've been around for a while i started in i.t not in in tech media and so and um you know i i've written a lot of code myself but then again reached you know it's it's not my full-time thing um so you get someone that may be like hey i can write sql queries and do what i need to do to pull the data out but i can't do this other thing and that's something that's been around for you know a decade and it seems to me maybe replaying itself here but with these no code low code tools yeah um you know the fact is is low code no code has been a term for probably 15 years if not more in one way or another i think i remember trying to write my first website in a low code front page uh application if you remember that i'm definitely dating myself now but what did i do the second i did that i had to jump into the code the html code to actually make it work right um but we are at a different time i think in in a really uh a unique time where we have a broad base of the workforce most the the majority of the work force now is the millennial generation or lower right so we have a younger you know workforce um that actually grew up with technology and they used it as day in and day out and we don't really think of it as oh well you had apps and phones but what they they they essentially have and um that familiarity with technology has given like a technical or literacy that just comes with with with today's day and age and now if you accompany that with the fact that low code platforms are much more powerful than they were before you have a perfect union of people who just want to get stuff done and can figure out technology if you give it to them and technology that is powerful enough yet simple enough to leverage to to to really um innovate on now there is something you mentioned there bill that is really important which is enterprises have to be bought into this right like maybe not the mom and pop smb but like you know you get into any decent size organization probably even over you know 50 people to some degree or you know definitely in a few hundred you're gonna have this you're you're gonna have some level of um cooperation and collaboration and dare i say um guard rails or even governance around that and that's because there's real risk to customers there's real risk to you know liability or or you know systems going down and affecting that business and so that is really where you know um it or some you know center of excellence comes in that works with this contingency um or this contingency this con constituency of uh known low code developers and and the one thing that i've also seen and i'm curious because again i used to be in it too is there's been a shift in the mentality of it it's no longer and nobody who's in it don't get mad at me but it used to be sort of the department of no right like yeah that was it was it was the the people that just tell me why you can't do anything um you're exactly right no i lived that and i was you know often seen as one of those people that was saying no you know that's right that's right but now it's really about partnership like it understands and has always wanted to deliver value to the organization but they were always the one with sort of the target on their back if things went bad and and so now what they're really trying to do is create the right empowerment model on the right platform with the right visibility so they can help and empower people to innovate but help them when they need to get help and monitor the critical systems that apply to the business and ultimately the customer and that's what it's really all about in today's age and that partnership culture has really changed in and that's what i'm seeing more and more today especially with you know customers that are being successful with citizen developer programs and no and low code platforms and blending that with their you know their it organization or other development organizations well you know i couldn't have picked a better place to kind of end our conversation on marcus you know a positive note um and and you mentioned something there citizen developer programs and you know i'll you'll definitely have to i'd love to have you back to talk about that someday too would love to bill sounds great all right well marcus thank you again for being here i really appreciate it no thank you bill i appreciate it as well and thank you to all our viewers and listeners for joining us you can listen to more episodes of dynamic developer on your favorite podcast platform or watch a video of each episode as well as read a transcript at tech republic you

Channel: TechRepublic

Views: 420

Keywords: Developer, Digital Transformation, Bill Detwiler, Dynamic Developer, TechRepublic

Id: 3bUk4lHjebo

Length: 28min 17sec (1697 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021