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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

Serverless is Cloud 2.0. The goal is to abstract everything away, making it PFM so C-level execs at unicorn startups don't have to waste brain cycles understanding anything beyond their immediate "core competencies". And just like "the cloud" abstracted physical hardware, disks, etc. into PFM (you need a server, presto! an abstract server will appear when you cast the circle and wave money in Amazon's direction), so "serverless" abstracts away even this abstract server and its OS and software infrastructure.

The next step, obviously, is a softwareless infrastructure, allowing C-level unicorn execs to simply exert their will without going through pesky developers. Is this what the current "no code" trend is about?

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Ah, I believe they’re calling that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) now. Why bother to even look for the API docs for that shitty SaaS app? Just train Selenium to do it and feed it inputs, then hire some dude offshore to update the automation whenever some step breaks because they changed it on the other end.

Honestly it’s faster/cheaper than doing proper integrations most of the time, simply because the tools are already well-known to the users so there isn’t a lot of futzing around with unfamiliar tools or APIs.

It turns a technical challenge into a business challenge simply by automating the lowest common denominator through the stupidest possible means, and automating it through a point and click GUI. It’s the final nail in the coffin of the swivel-chair data analyst at most companies, however.

This is already happening widely across fortune 500s today... the bloodbath is being felt by the Indian offshore folks who are losing a ton of basic automation support / development work to these RPA tools (which can be operated by onshore management consultants doing operational design work).

What RPA tools would you say are the best ? Anything you'd recommend?

Depends where you are in the market and what other tools you’re using. I’ve seen it set up many ways; from just recording macros in SeleniumUI, hand-parameterizing them and running them on SauceLabs to being part of a full enterprise integration suite like Pegasystems.

I would say UIPath has a pretty good product at the low-mid range though. The high end tools require serious enterprise architecture capabilities like business process management already be in place. UIPath is pretty good if you just want to set up a simple API gateway, parameterize some flows and pass data back and forth.

This space is only now heating up, but IMO a dumb technology like RPA can be more transformative to the industry than we think simply because it’s not technologically elegant. It does solve a real business problem (need to keep deep technical knowledge in many many areas on staff) with a very general-purpose setup.

What "no code" trend?

QuickBase, Bubble, etc.

What is PFM?

Pure F... Magic

Source: Worked with senior devs long enough to hear the term uttered before.

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