There's a new computing movement that represents the next wave of humanity's relationship with machines, and it's called NoCode. If you've never heard of NoCode, in short, it's a process and a collection of tools that allow people to use the power of computation to create tools, products, services without writing lines of code.
There are a couple of common elements in every NoCode platform. Usually, the 'coding' part is abstracted to a number of clever and sleek UI elements. Rarely is there a text editor, lest a designer freak out at the sight of "real code". Lastly, 'What You See is What You Get' (WYSIWYG) as far as the output is concerned, so the results of your logic are immediately apparent to you. These features do a pretty good job of encouraging 'non-coders' to dive into the platform to try and prototype their dream.
Right now, prototyping is as far as NoCode will usually take you. There are some services that will allow you to NoCode your way into a fully functioning product, if you count SquareSpace as a NoCode tool. But the movement has some serious momentum. It's proving itself as a learning tool, and the Web Services sector has a tremendous incentive to turn your average Jane into a developer. So expect the sector to keep growing, and expect more and more services to support deploying NoCode tools as full-fledged products and applications without all of the drawbacks that you see now.
If the above mini-explainer has you interested, check out the Demo Day my friend John Scrugham put together recently (a recording of it is on YouTube) In it, a couple of us designers show off some of our NoCode tools that we developed using platforms like Bubble, Notion, Airtable, Glideapps, Zapier, Coda and Webflow.
If Steve Jobs envisioned the personal computer as a bicycle for the mind, NoCode may be the paved road or the motorcycle; just another developmental step in this iconic metaphor. No longer must we resign ourselves to using our laptops as glorified typewriters. Finally, we may be liberated to teach ourselves how to fish in this digital sea of the internet.
NoCode Demo Day brought to you by some of the awesome folks at Coda