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The situation, as I see it, is this:
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Time/Difficulty
A developer (or team) has a lot of tasks to complete, but most of them are quite easy.
There are some difficult tasks, but they are few. (Your mileage may vary.)
Tools such as described, and ETL packages and such, address only the easiest tasks.
But developers don't need help with those, we need help with the difficult tasks.
Whenever a vendor announces, "we have a tool which will solve all your problems", you can be assured that it actually addresses only the "low-hanging fruit" -- and no one needs help with "low-hanging fruit", that's the definition of "low-hanging fruit"!
At best, such systems can allow a team to expend less time/energy on easy tasks and concentrate on the difficult ones.
And/or allow an enterprise to hire low-paid contractors to deal with the "low-hanging fruit" in a way that the "real" developers can understand and support once the contractors have left.
However, no tool will "do everything".
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: However, no tool will "do everything".
And if it ever gets to do it... we will probably have other bigger problems to worry about
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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You know what will happen. Some manager will get one of these no-code platforms and try to build his own apps. He'll get stuck part way through and then get a developer to try and finish it.
And that will be where we run into the dilemma of trying to complete it in that no-code platform (if it is even possible) or tell that manager it cannot be done and has to be re-written fro scratch...
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Based on the responses so far, developers clearly underestimate the power of low code. I am not familiar with the Microsoft one but I am familiar with Mendix and it is powerful enough to run businesses. It can do anything .Net can do and much easier to build.
Those that think this is just a passing fad will be passed by this "fad."
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Some trivial apps will be possible, but these solutions always have bottlenecks that make somethings very difficult or impossible.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
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Microsoft was offering "no code database development" in Visual Basic 3, and that was released in 1993.
It's true, using VB3 you could build a database system by doing nothing more than dragging and dropping controls onto a form and clicking the property showing where you'd like to source the data from.
Yet here we are, 27 years later, and I'm continuing to have a good career as a software developer specializing in databases.
No code systems will continue to exist, they will continue be used by "Power users" who all have varying degree of skill, and they will continue to be the bane of the real IT professional who is asked to come up and fix the mistakes of the "Power user", usually after data is lost or a business critical limitation is reached.
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Does it bother anyone else that you declare a pointer like:
char* sz;
But an array is declared like this:
char sz[1024];
I think it's inconsistent, and I think the array specifier should have been declared with the type since it's essentially a type modifier like * and &
Maybe it's just me?
Real programmers use butterflies
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In both instances the first part declares the type, the second declares the variable. The array modifier is telling you how many of the type.
Think of the first declaration as having a silent '[1]' and it becomes consistent.
And you might be 40 years too late for bringing up this argument! 
If you can't laugh at yourself - ask me and I will do it for you.
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I guess that makes sense.
DRHuff wrote: And you might be 40 years too late for bringing up this argument!
At least!
Real programmers use butterflies
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What has bothered me more is the fact that:
int* pa;
int *pa;
are the same. Had I been Bjorn, I wouldn't have allowed the latter.
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I can see why but on the other hand I don't like the idea of significant whitespace between tokens in language. It's one of the reasons I don't like Python.
Real programmers use butterflies
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But you can also write:
int*pa;
int * pa;
the spaces do not affect the binding. And that was the rule way before the great Stroustrup.
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Agree, the later makes no sense.
I'm not sure how many cookies it makes to be happy, but so far it's not 27.
JaxCoder.com
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The latter may be the better notation since I can declare;
int *pa, a;
where pa is a pointer to an int and a is an int. If I declare
int* pa, a;
this is also legal, where pa is still a point to an int and a is an int.
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I was just to reply with the same.
I always put the * modifier RIGHT in front of the variable. And it makes sense since, "char *" is not really the type. A lot of beginners are confused when something like the following:
char* psz, pszHi, pszBye;
and they discover pszHi / pszBye are just character variables.
Code like the following helps those initiates:
char *psz, *pszHi, *pszBye, chA, chB, *pszString3;
Just my $0.02.
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They are literally half backward. In order to understand a C type definition, you ping-pong between the part before the name and the part after, until all tokens have been processed. 
If there is one single thing for K&R ought to have been taken out and shot, this is it! 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Let it Rust!
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The usage is odd as well:
char* p = ...
*p = 'x'; Vs
foo f;
foo *pf = &f;
f.x = '?';
pf->x = '!'; Why invent two access operators "." and "->", when you could just use "*pf.x" and be more consistent? Or use "->" to dereference all pointers?
I get the feeling bits of the C spec were thrown in just before the submission deadline ... 
"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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Quote: Why do we do this? I'll tell you... I don't know. But because of this, every one of us knows what a pointer is, how to dereference it, and what K&R expect of him.
With apologies to Sholem Aleichem and to the producers of Fiddler on the Roof
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Beautiful. I'm proud of you.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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If you read it in reverse it can make more sense:
char * sz;
char sz[1024];
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The floating asterisk looks lonely!
Real programmers use butterflies
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There's a stricter formal rule, called the Right-Left rule.
I wrote my only technical article on CP more than 15 years back on just this: How to interpret complex C/C++ declarations
Cheers,
विक्रम
"We have already been through this, I am not going to repeat myself." - fat_boy, in a global warming thread 
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Yes, but I could not remember it. I know it's important when typedef'ing function pointers.
I just reread your article - very interesting, and should be required reading for all the QA kiddies.
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