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"Kids are cute when they think they invent stuff" comes to mind rather often when on online forums. I don't think all of them are younglings never seen anything, I rather think it's the general attention span of a geriatric fly.
Or maybe the desire for drama. That, of course, is best served by repeating it.
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Is that the article citing how Excel is a great example of low-code democratisation?
Reading that my first thought was " had this clown ever looked at any Excel spreadsheets designed by the 'democratised'"?
Also, our favoured software supplier is very fond of providing solutions which have 'low-code' front ends for business numpties to 'develop' with (to protect them from doing any real harm) and they invariably make it impossible to do much more than change the colour of a font....
But hey!, the 'potential' is there for you to use...
And, of course, Management (who will never, ever have to use it), buy into the crap and expect wonders from staff who have no idea what the hell they're doing....
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I thought similar things when reading that article. I once wrote a bit of code to use a database for powerlifting meets to replace a ghastly Excel solution they use. Their response? We don't want our members in a database  So at every meet we copy the spreadsheet and use it and I dream of database structure and easy apps. Oh well.
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I couldn't agree more and I have been programming probably as long as you have.
I remember the efforts with "Magic PC", a product that promised to eliminate code altogether. A similar product has recently appeared but I have heard little about it's success.
I also attended a seminar where Oracle demonstrated its "no-code" database application development environment. It started out well and good but as the demonstration application became ever more complicated, so too did the tasks that one had to perform top build it.
About every 10 years, someone in the industry comes up with a new product that promises to be the panacea for businesses for the elimination of developers and software engineers. To date, not a single product has ever worked... and probably none ever will. This is because complex tasks require thought and innovation, which is something outside the box of these fads...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Right.
Now there is some usage for SSIS packages in SQL. But these are relatively small/short ditties that, for example, sucks in a file and populates some data table, or spits out a file from some data.
The problem is - all this creates code fragmentation. A little code in SSIS, a little in SQL, a little in C#, a little taste of jQuery/jScript, a GitHub file or two, et. al.
So if you are not aware of all the pieces and parts to this basket of 'stuff', you can be stranded when you take it over from someone who created the mess unless someone provides you with a road map.
Another goofball process created by those trying to prove their worth with little else to do is MFC. I once created a new MFC project in VS and sat there for a good 10 minutes while it loaded in literally a ton of support files. Tagged and sold to management (and some self-proclaimed gurus as the next best thing since fire), you don't hear a lot it about lately.
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Instead of Microsoft spending money on no-code/low-code bloatware like PowerApps and Logic Apps, why not create a UI designer for XAML (Xamarin Forms, MAUI, etc.) and HTML/CSS (Blazor)? It is hard to find developers today who were not raised as "script kiddies. They prefer hacking out reams of UI code, and are confused that a UI designer can do a better job much faster - indeed, they have little concept of what rapid application development (RAD) is.
Most of the ones I have talked to are surprised to learn that Alan Cooper's small team created the VB WinForms designer in a relatively short time. When I ask some of them (including the few MS program managers I talked to), they thought it would take huge teams several years to write a useful UI designer. That Alan Cooper and his small team did it in such a short time, with just as complicated a UI syntax as HTML or XAML, is news to them.
Microsoft could hire a small team of sharp, knowledgeable individuals and get back to prominence in the area of RAD.
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Good point.
For business development, RAD development is a must. Sadly, some of these new languages are really not RAD. Say what you want about this one is good for this, and that one good for that, RAD is best for business development.
While the original VB did not provide the vast abilities as C# now does, you could access the API if needed. But the speed of development was great because the entire syntax for VB could be printed out in a medium size binder - no intellisense needed. The only pitfall VB had was DLL hell, which with care, could be avoided.
Except for Delphi, which I used for several years, I have not found any other RAD development environment that beats VisualStudio - specifically C# in my case.
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I was actually writing more to the point of a UI designer, not the language, being the RAD context. The fact that MS's UI designer in Visual Basic, before the days of Visual Studio (but the UI designer was carried over into Visual Studio as .NET came along) was the de facto RAD standard for UI development (that others like PowerBuilder tried to copy) says a lot about the concept of reducing UI development time to 1) reduce overall development time, 2) provide consistency while allowing manual changes, and 3) allowing more of the finite time devoted to a project to be spent on what has to be coded instead of grunt-level UI coding.
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Check out OutSystems.com
You can spin up a test environment for free to test drive it.
They have good tutorials to help you learn it.
I think of it as an alternate IDE/forward code generator for C# apps or a cloud-ready Microsoft Access.
If you need to drop down to code C# or JavaScript, you can. Web or mobile. Need to tweak CSS, you can.
It is a developer oriented low code platform.
For web based LOB apps, it is hard to beat.
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Okay, but this is a developer assist, not a user created application; which is what my original topic was about. BizTalk was supposed to be used by analysts/power users, which never happened.
While probably automating some standard processes, at $4000/$10000 per month, it would be hard to justify that expense to many medium/smaller companies. That is $48,000/$120,000 per year.
Not knocking the product here. From what I see, it probably does provide some time savings - but for a steep price.
But I would still bet that in complex applications, you would still be adding code.
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It was nice while it lasted. But it seems you're now owned by mercenaries who put even the Ferengi to shame:
Star Trek on Paramount+ on Twitter: "To our international #StarTrekDiscovery fans...… "[^]
Less than two days before Discovery season 4 was due to air on Netflix, and suddenly all Star Trek content has been pulled. It will be available "at some point" next year, but only if you subscribe to the new Paramount+ streaming service. 
Yeah, just what we need: another single-show streaming service.
Now, which way to the bay of pirates? 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Live long enough to see one of your favourite TV franchises become the villain. 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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It used to be that people feared that capitalism / communism / democracy / liberalism / dictatorship* would take over the whole world.
But the reality is worse: accountants rule the world, and they know the cost of everything and the value of nothing ...
* Delete as applicable in your political area.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I can't help feeling these particular accountants have one too many "o"s in their job title. ![Sunshine | [little ray of sunshine]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/sunshine.gif)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Under the same premise, they hold the title of Count.
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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The engineers at Boeing agree with you.
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It's time to go back to fishing at the river.
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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No huge loss. I keep saying it's too bad Star Trek died before it could reach its 50th anniversary.
Because what's been produced since, even though it says "Star Trek" somewhere in the title, bears no resemblance whatsoever to what Gene Roddenberry had in mind. It started with the Jar-Jar Abrams movies, and only went downhill from there.
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I quite liked Discovery.
But there's lots of box sets I've never watched on Netflix and Amazon Prime so I won't be getting another streaming service!
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Taxi, the (French) automobile. Not a vehicle for the plotters (5, 3)
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Cable car ?
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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And there was me, waiting an hour ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I expected you to get it and appreciate your patience
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