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Comment by Khaine | Hacker News Reader

When I was at university, one of our professors was really big on Executable UML (exUML)[1], where by using a subset of UML to model the problem, code would be automatically generated.

Even back then it seemed like a dumb idea that was doomed to fail. Feels like it ideas like it keep coming back. For some reason, there isn't the same push in engineering. Can you imagine someone trying to sell the idea that anyone can design and build a bridge? Yet in software, we refuse to accept development as something that requires specialist skills.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_UML

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No, I can't imagine someone trying to sell the idea that anyone can design and build a bridge.

But a website is not a bridge – the stakes are low, and yes, for many basic use cases, Squarespace suffices as the intermediate that enables "anyone" to build a website.

Actually, revisiting the bridge idea – for a sufficiently small creek, yes, anyone can design and build a bridge (simply chop a tree and fell it across). So I guess the question becomes – what kind of bridge are you asking for? A bridge designed to support large volumes of cars absolutely requires specialists, and those specialists should feel no fear from the companies that sell plywood to toss onto creeks.

Software has an increasingly large impact on people's lives - including their safety. Consider [ransom attacks on hospitals](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/hamst...) as just one example. Even ignoring bad actors, people have made billion-dollar mistakes in Excel (there was even a recent article about how contact-tracing data being handled in Excel was lost. That can lead to real deaths, too).

No-code is great when it improves someone's ability to complete a task. Excel is still a great program, and learning VBA was my first introduction to programming. What isn't great is when companies lean on low/no-code solutions because they want to be cheap rather than do things properly.

The problem is, in the software world that log across a creek is added to and added to and suddenly its 10 logs duct taped together crossing an ocean for trucks to drive on.

You see this in how excel is used and abused.

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