No-code Movement

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Hello all,

Recently I have discovered a new movement and group online called “No code”.

Here is a Wiipedia article on the topic.

I had the realization fairly quickly that I have been one of these “no-coders” for about 14 years now.

Anyhow, its pretty exciting as you might imagine to learn there are new groups of like minded people and organisations out there.

I’ve dove straight in signing up to a few courses and subscribing to things in a bit of a manic fashion.

Anyway, I digress.

I think this No-code movement is a good opportunity for Maid and the Network.

This community of no-coders is basically at the baby steps point. I think it only just came out as a new thing in the coding and web development world in about 2018 with the movement beginning to really grow in popularity it seems this year.

Bit about me and why it’s important; i’ve made stuff for the web for about 14 years now and I have ALWAYS done it with this no-code philosophy before I even knew it was a thing.

I’ve built and developed probably more than a dozen websites, a few are still lingering around somewhere on the web. Why I chose the no-code route? It’s probably not something I consciously chose. Wait actually I lie. I went that route because of two reasons; 1 my brain just does not function like a coders, believe me I have tried, I’ve never been that good at math either (connection?) and 2, I suppose I am more of a BIG Picture, ideas guy. I suppose you could call me an entrepreneur.

Now why this is important: What Maid has been doing excites me for several reasons. I am somewhat of a private person, or at least I value privacy, I like decentralised things, I dislike BIG governments, I am a fan of technology, new technology, I consider myself a bit of an early adopter and I’m a sucker for futuristic optimism. However, I’ve never really felt like I could contribute in much of a way other than to write the odd article, because well I am not a coder.

This new no-code movement changes all that or at least it offers the opportunity to change all that and offers me and the network potential.

What would happen to this network if we attracted a bunch of non-traditional type people that could build new and exciting things, they just needed the right tools? Go a step further, what if we aligned ourselves to this new movement?

Some resources:

The future is exciting.
Great things come from times of great change.

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Code is a weird one, so snobby. I think like this, you have an idea, it might be wood or metal to make that idea happen. The 100% important part is the idea, not how you can saw/plane/mortise or cut/file/tap etc. In software there is way too much metallurgy or grain knowledge discussed, in fact that is >90% of a software project at times. It’s really not important, the idea is important. No point in making a wooden combustion engine etc. So the trick is what can you make with software/metal/wood and that is the invention/discovery.

Folk in software tend to discuss traits/generics/objects/relations and much more, mainly words for non human coding genius obfuscation, in fact it’s coding stupidity. Like a car mechanic who lectures on the num of teeth in his ratchet, it does not really matter and not as much as the car working, the big picture or idea is key.

I think with code, if you can do it in a pneumatic or hydrolic circuit then you can do it in code and at a much lower level of understanding than a professional coder. However it;s not important, what is important is what are you building. If what you build can be built with code then 99% of effort goes to that, 1% to the code language/implementation etc. AI can create much better.more complex code than humans, we are not that great, regardless of the snobbery.

Stick to ideas and deep thinking, code fixes itself.

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I like this.
This will now show up in search engines when folks search for “no code movement” :slight_smile:

Welcome guys!

Hopefully some of the coders can build tools the no-coders can build other things with lol @happybeing are you still working on safepress?

I like the term “Learn to no-code” maybe some of those truckers can find solace here.

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Yeah, I hope as time goes on there will be more and more of these sort of things available so people can more easily realise their own ideas, which as David says, are the really important bit. It’s certainly something I’ve always would be nice on SAFE, and helpful in getting people to interact more fully rather than just being consumers.

On a broader level, now we’re at a point where so much of our world relies on tech, and software in particular, I think it’s especially important to try to empower a wider range of people. For example, if you’re good at coding, then you’re obviously more likely to try and solve a problem using code, but on a bigger and longer term scale it might be better to approach the problem from a different angle.

Similarly, something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is that the ability of a relatively few people to make things that are so powerful ends up concentrating power in a very few hands (even if it’s not always the same hands!) and then we end up having these discussions about censorship, or wealth disparity or whatever, when what’s being censored, or who’s too rich, isn’t the primary problem at all. It’s the ability of any person or small group to have that level of power that is the problem, rather than how they use it (although how they use it is often quite a large problem as well!)

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I’d argue that the point of all software is to move towards a world of no-coding. Each new layer of software aims to make a development simpler, appealing to a wider audience. In short, as developers, we’re all port of the no-code movement.

Case in point, I’m creating a new company website. I’m not pulling writing HTML or Javascript. I’m not creating back end scripts to process contact forms and such. No, I’m using Square Space, where it is mostly adding blocks and filling them with text and images. No code in sight!

Compare this to a decade or so ago. Cutting your own HTML was common, along with adding Javascript, PHP or whatever. People realised this was more complex than it needed to be and created tools to make it simpler, such as Dreamweaver. It was still too complicated though, so they started creating websites to do all the complex bits for you.

The same is true for the Devops movement. Infrastructure-as-code has become a slogan and scripts now spin up new virtual hardware, where previously they were hand built, on-metal. Something like Ansible builds out infrastructure from simple mark-up.

This takes time to happen though. There are many layers required to make something usable by everyone. In the interim, we have specialists which have learned the complexities and act as middlemen. System Administrators may largely have been replaced with DevOps, but the latter are still needed.

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Not for a while though we do now have several ways to build websites, incomplete die to limitations of the API, but ready to be finished and deployed. Just thought I should answer. Safepress is more a way to encapsulate the intention now, any of the ‘nearly products’ could fulfill this, though I may go back to it at some point regardless.

I think nocode is a fine way to do things and of course I’ve used such systems myself, though they tend to be unable to tackle certain kinds of ‘idea’ realisation, and you get plugins etc rather than nocode, so you are limited by what others provide. I always gravitate to code because I don’t like anything limiting my ideas. BTW I’m not good at maths either. It’s relative of course, but I always had to work far harder at it than anything else and so just did enough to get by.

Building logic and algorithms visually is a form of nocode that has fascinated me for decades but has turned out to be limited in application. I saw another attempt at it on Twitter this week, but having seen so many I’m a bit skeptical and not so excited by it as I was. I still hold out hope though.

Maybe there are certain things - the ideas David talked about - that require certain ways of thinking and it doesn’t matter whether the creator uses a visual or other nocode ‘language’ or some cryptic conventional software gobbledygook, you still need someone who can hold the idea and transform it into some kind of implementation.

AI may take that role one day but AFAIK we aren’t near that yet. I’m not sure what I’d want to be doing if it happens. Probably learn make things out of wood and metal, which I was doing before I got sucked full time back into code. Welding is the bomb.

On relevance to SAFE I just don’t know much about the ‘movement’ so I don’t have a view. Follow your nose. That’s always worked for me.

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PS interestingly I’m working on an area of ‘idea realisation’ that I find hard - design and UX - and quite ambitious goals so it will be interesting to see how far I get. I’m not sure my mind is good for this kind of work, so it will be surprising to me if I can realise the ideas adequately.

Maybe some folk will help me out of I can get enough of the to express the intention.

At some point I’ll have something to share and see what happens. Look out for ‘incremental UX’ (iUX), hiding complexity until the user is ready for it and unfolding the story to guide them while they are learning. And if anyone thinks they’ve seen something like this let me know, I’d love to see examples!

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Code is no different than anything else. People use it do do their job, they use it to create, to solve problems, to make money, to learn, to discover. And everywhere there are people with wrong focus in life, and some with better focus, and the ones with wrong focus would resort to snobbery and such.

I would not want to say that code and its mundane aspects is not important at all, that would almost risk being a theoretical snobbery in itself. It is a tool, and the tool we have now. In all crafts there is discussion about the tools and the materials.
And while they are used, how they are used will affect various aspects of the outcome. It’s inevitable. Also for the grand idea of autonomous vehicles, the details of the materials and their assembly will have importance.

I’ve spent a lot of my “coding” on visualizing goals, trying to synthesize abstract ideas, exploring in my mind in an intuitive way, making discoveries that weren’t brute forced by use of the frontal lobe. Understanding needs, essential properties of a situation.

Also, I think code has a short shelf life, and does not hold the actual value gained in a tech company. It is sort of a snapshot of a team of developers ability to understand a problem. The world moves, so that snapshot will become out of synch (and not seldom simply irrelevant), sometimes fast. What the developers have in their head is what will determine the next and the next and the next iteration of the code base and understanding.

Still, even having said all of this, I consider it of utmost importance that while we are limited to the tools, materials that we are, that we use them with sophistication, with knowledge about the materials and tools, and strive to always improve that. Will I get tired by wielding the hammer this way, does the wood split if I go at it in this direction. Or even, how do I get a super smooth finish for a handle that I will use daily. Humans work with the code, so the code base must be adapted to humans working with it, even if it has nothing to do with the big idea. It will simply be a question of how to avoid the humans messing up the big idea too badly with their code.

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I think it’s a great idea to encourage everyone who does not know how to code and give them freedom to develop ideas.

Code blocks I’d seen developed a few years ago to help School children learn how code works…I myself though this must me a joke until I used it myself…it’s very good.

You can create complex code blocks to creat websites, run C+ and C- applications and develop in Java. If you look at wordpress this has come a long way over the years and comes with a page builder which works just like a code block. It’s amazing gives you the same results but saves on time.

If you can code what you do first is create a library or reference. So you can call CSS, JS, PHP, Java, etc…

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Basically, soon enough, kids with their creativity and seemingly outrageous/nonsensical ideas could make traditional coders look like dinosaurs. Who would have thought.

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