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Comment by glutamate | Hacker News Reader

If you are asking "well we could build this in 2 hours with low-code or 8 hours with rails" - then you are not the target market for low-code. To be able to build a rails app in one day takes years of skill and education and maturity. A lot of people or organisations want to build apps but don't have that expertise.

Also, I don't see what is wrong with the outcome that at some point you have to rebuild with code. You have spent not very much time to develop a prototype that was able to get some feedback and come up with new ideas. Maybe that very revolutionary idea about the reservations app the author describes would never have imagined if they didn't have a prototype to play with?

And don't even get me started on the risks of traditional software engineering. How many projects never even got to a viable prototype because devs decided to rewrite everything in flavour-of-the-month every 3 weeks?

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> If you are asking "well we could build this in 2 hours with low-code or 8 hours with rails" - then you are not the target market for low-code. To be able to build a rails app in one day takes years of skill and education and maturity. A lot of people or organisations want to build apps but don't have that expertise.

Exactly, low/no code solutions have their limitations, but I think the space they're useful for is — "they" need a simple CRUD app so they build it themselves in No Code solution, figure out what they really want & what the pain points are and _then_ bring on board a developer if it needs expansion, but with a real todo list in front of them.

Or (just as useful to the business user), realise it's not what they need and bin the project before engaging a dev at all.

Well that's the point of the article isn't it, Rails hasn't been the flavour-of-the-month in about 15 years, it's boringly good, so that's why you should stick with it

> How many projects never even got to a viable prototype because devs decided to rewrite everything in flavour-of-the-month every 3 week

this part sounds pretty fanciful, my experience is at the worst six months for new library in your chosen language, and that you can generally talk them out of; 1-2 years rewrite fever in some is almost overwhelming.

on edit: in short I think even the least self-aware dev is not going to do rewrite cool new tech every 3 week, maybe once but not twice. So sounds a bit hyperbolical.

I admit it was an exaggeration for comic relief, but many projects have definitely not gotten to working prototype because devs wanted to use something fancy

Although i have to say i always found the concept of low-code silly. All code should be low code, and i think rails is actually a very good example of that.

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