Is No-Code Really a Viable Option For You?

How to figure out what you’re building and where to go next

image by pikisuperstar

The argument around the viability of no-code centers around the fact that there’s really no such thing as no-code.

I mean there is no-code as we know it, and I’m a true believer. I’m actually building a product around no-code — a viable, real, it-costs-money product.

I’m a believer because the promise of no-code is an entrepreneur’s dream, especially those of us who are also true-believers in minimum viable product, two-sided marketplaces, subscription models, and eService.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, and I’ve built dozens of viable, even successful products. I can tell you, through the lens of that experience, that no-code is finally a realistic option.

But I’m also a technical entrepreneur. I cut my teeth as the Internet went mainstream, and I sold the last company that I built from the ground up, coding everything myself.

So I can also warn you that if you want to build anything substantial, whether that’s a basic helper app or an entire company around a product built on a no-code platform, you’re going to have to get into coding mode. And the more elegant you want the final result to be, the more of a coder you’re going to have to become.

Here’s how to figure that out and where to go next.

The difference between low-code and no-code

Coding isn’t just mashing keys, it’s thinking logically and multi-dimensionally. This is the premise of low-code and no-code solutions, to take the mashing of the keys out of the thinking logically and multi-dimensionally.

I mean, technically, we’ve had low-code availability ever since the first visual interface in the early 1990s. Low-code and no-code are really just using point-and-click instead of tricky, fragile syntax.

The cost of all that ease, of course, is flexibility and scalability. I like to say that no-code is like using those big, thick Duplo blocks instead of Legos.

So the difference between now and a couple years ago is that we’ve reached the point in time where the code behind all…