Hacker News Reader

Comment by mgummelt | Hacker News Reader

Visual Basic is an overloaded term that can refer to both the language and the RAD IDE. The IDE was certainly low-code.

Having done more than my share of coding in VB3-6, I can tell you that VB in any incarnation has never been "low code". If you think that WinForms or XAML in Visual Studio is any less RAD or somehow "more code" than the VB<=6 IDE, you are wearing some amazing nostalgia goggles and I wish I could believe in a world you seem to think existed.

Low code just means using visual techniques to replace or augment code, so any WYSIWYG system, including VB or XAML, qualifies.

No, that's what "RAD" means. "Low Code" means systems like Excel where "formulas" aren't exactly seen as "code" and nearly everything can be wired up visually. Power Apps and Power BI are "Low Code". Access and Excel are "Low Code". VB was never "Low Code", it was "RAD".

(And yes, today's WinForms and XAML editors in Visual Studio are quite "RAD", and exactly as "RAD" as VB <= 6 was, if not more so. VB.NET was never less "RAD" than VB <= 6 from the standpoint of visual tools. It just shifted component/plugin ecosystems and left an impression that it was less "rapid" to develop with because of sharp new learning curve, but the "rapid" never meant "no learning curves", it meant WYSIWYG designers, which VB.NET still had in spades.)

None of these terms have widely accepted precise definitions, but there are plenty of platforms considered "low-code" that still require quite a bit of traditional programming. Outsystems, for example.

Those that only offer formulas with no escape route to traditional programming, as you describe, are more commonly considered "no-code".

This distinction from wikipedia is pretty accurate:

"No-code platforms are accessible to any end-business user while low-code platforms require professional developers who can work within the platform's constraints."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com