In recent times, the rapid growth of digital services and evolving consumer needs have made companies seek faster ways to enact a digital transformation of their products and services. The fast pace of change in the kind of services which are emerging in our ubiquitously-connected world puts pressure on businesses to iterate efficiently and with optimal speed when producing apps for mobile and desktop devices. A Low Code approach is an excellent solution adopted by companies worldwide to boost their ability to offer digital, connected services in a way which can shorten their time to market. But what is low code and what is a low code programming language? In this article, let’s find out what it is exactly. We’ll also discuss why we need Low Code, the pros and cons of Low Code, and explore some of best Low Code platforms you can find in the market.
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What is low code?
Low Code is a modern approach to software development that emphasizes little to no coding. It allows faster delivery of software with less manual coding. Furthermore, you often don’t need extensive knowledge of programming languages to build apps with the Low Code approach.
A low code application platform is a collection of tools that facilitate low code development. It enables building applications visually with the help of modeling and a GUI. One common feature of many low code platforms is their drag-and-drop layout builder.
According to Gartner, more than 65% of software development projects will use low code approach by 2024. The pressure to produce digital solutions to cope with Covid 19 pandemic has further increased the adoption of this approach.
Why do we need low code app development?
The low code approach simplifies the development of sophisticated business apps. It allows you to easily build complete software rich with modern interfaces, integrations, and logic without writing thousands of complex code lines.
The following are some major benefits you can gain through this low code application platform approach.
- Increased productivity – Since low code development often speeds up application delivery, a project which once took a few months of traditional coding could now only take a few days. Thus, low code can remove the time expenditure barrier from software development, paving the way for real innovation and faster iterations to meet new challenges and demands in a shifting market.
- Reduced Costs – The ability to deliver more apps in less time undoubtedly reduces the amortized labor costs. However, it’s not the only driver of this cost savings. Low code also can eliminate, or at least mitigate, the need for more developers, cutting down hiring costs. Besides, Low Code platforms can help facilitate development by less specialized software development staff which can either free them up for alternative tasks which demand their skills or obviate them need for them.
- Improved business agility – In this rapidly evolving technology landscape, businesses must effectively adapt and respond to changing market conditions and potential opportunities. Building apps using traditional development approaches to cope with these needs can be tedious and time-consuming which can lead to mistakes too. Low code development tools aid the rapid development of systems that are capable of meeting numerous requirements. By using ready-made and ready-tested blocks of program functionality they can also avoid errors that can occur in completely untried new code.
- Enhanced customer experience – The impacts of low code development travel beyond the IT companies who are using it. The consequences of speedier development and the potential for a faster turn-around on feature development can lead to better customer satisfaction.
What are some examples of Low Code platforms?
It makes sense that businesses with a need to scale should search for effective ways to maximize their productivity and output velocity – getting things into the hands of the customers. Investing in one of the best low code platforms might be a great solution to this endeavor. The better low code platforms are, at their most fundamental level, app builder software that includes intuitive and visual tools for users to build apps without writing a lot of code. A good low code platform allows the developer to produce either a fully-ready app, or at least the majority of it, mostly by describing the desired features and functionality in a visual sense – either by dragging and dropping functionality elements onto a preview of the app’s screens or by making choices in a ‘wizard’ type questionnaire.
Some popular names which have this kind of functionality include PowerApps, Retool, Quixey, Creatio, GeneXus, Zoho Creator, Appian, Mendix and Embarcadero RAD Studio with Delphi or C++ Builder.
What are the pros of low code development?
- Mitigation of shadow IT – Gartner states that a company’s demand for new apps is growing five times faster than their IT department’s ability to deliver them. The IT team is struggling to meet this increased demand. So what happens when the IT department can’t deliver all the solutions required by the company? Then the companies entirely bypass the IT department and adopt third-party solutions. This practice is known as “Shadow IT.” Companies can avoid this Shadow IT by utilizing Low Code app builder software. They enable end-users to build their own apps without the assistance of the IT department.
- Cross-platform functionality – Low code development lets you develop an application once and deploy it across various devices. This cross-platform nature and 1-click deployment enable adding new features and updates to all application instances simultaneously. Thus, users can have an equally outstanding experience across all desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
- The ability to achieve more with existing skills – Application development is a constantly evolving field, demanding new skills from time to time. Many companies find it difficult to bridge this skills gap. Besides, recruiting highly skilled developers when there are outdated systems and apps is not affordable. However, the Low Code approach addresses this issue by utilizing the current skills of employees. For instance, one company used a low code tool to develop web applications using COBOL programmers who were familiar with the business needs but not the most up-to-date development technologies and platforms.
What are the cons of low code development?
While Low Code definitely has its pros, there are also some cons you need to be aware of.
- Limited functionality – The functionality you can implement using low code development platforms can be limited. Even though they speed up the development, the available options may be limited when you want to try something innovative.
- Vendor Lock-in – This is another greatest fear surrounding low code development. If you need to do any modification to an app built using a specific low code platform, you might have to do it on the same platform. Some solution vendors don’t allow the end-user developer to own the source code of the apps built with their Low Code platform solutions. If you choose one of these vendors you can be locked into that particular vendor as long as you wish to continue with the app. Migrating to a new platform or adding a previously unsupported device target might be difficult, and you might have to build a completely new application. For the vendors who do not supply source code you are typically required to pay a monthly or yearly fee in order to keep using the platform. If you don’t pay the fee your app stops functioning. It’s important to pick a vendor who provides access to the full source code and one who confers ownership of that source upon you.
- Security limitations – While low code solutions have built-in security protocols, they still can’t provide the same level of security as stand-alone development technologies. If you have chosen a Low Code vendor who doesn’t provide you complete control over data security and access to the source code you may be put in the position where a potential security issue or flaw in your app cannot be addressed (or even examined to determine any possible vulnerabilities).
- Lack of customization – This can be one of the biggest drawbacks of some Low Code development solutions. Customization options may vary according to the Low Code platform you use. Some platforms might limit your capabilities, while others enable you to create tailor-made applications for your business requirements but only if they fall into some narrow use cases. Thus it is critical to consider the customization limits before adopting a specific Low Code platform. It’s your app so why wouldn’t you want to make it look like it’s your app?
How does RAD Studio work compared to other tools?
RAD Studio from Embarcadero is something more than a low-code platform. Yet, it comes with many low-code features as well. For instance, it allows users to build apps for all major platforms with less code. It provides a visual editor and live data bindings to simplify the development experience. Furthermore, it comes with robust compilers and debuggers, making the compilation and debugging processes extremely fast. It also offers a rich UI, RTL, and database libraries.
RAD Studio ticks the boxes:
- You get full unrestricted access to every single line of the created app’s source code – for ever, on your machine or wherever you choose to put it. You’re in complete control.
- You don’t pay a single penny to use, sell or even give away the created apps. It’s your code, why would you pay?
- You create your low code apps using a Low Code App Wizard which allows you to easily pick the features you do – or do not – want in the app. After a couple of clicks the app gets created on your own computer. You can customize it, change it, add features, enhance it, in fact do anything you want with it – because it’s yours.
- The Low Code App Wizard is a free add-in which integrates with the RAD Studio IDE. With it you can create multi-platform apps which work on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux.
- If your development needs are not met by the things the Low Code App Wizard can do for you then there are hundreds of examples and dozens of variations on app samples to do almost anything you can imagine (and many you might not). This is a full strength software development environment with a Low Code Wizard addition – not a slightly narrow vertical market Low Code app solution.
- RAD Studio uses a drag and drop interface for screen design along with other components, visual and non-visual, to provide little packets of fully-tested ready-made functionality already written for you. All this is backed by either the Delphi programming language or C++, both are available so you can choose the one which suits you.
The low-code features of RAD Studio enable you to build apps with almost no coding and yet build out on that foundation if you want to go further. You can even expand this platform using add-ons and ‘components’ from its rich ecosystem of third-party free and paid sources. It seems like whatever you might need to achieve in your apps there is probably a component or example which does it.
What’s the best low code platform for your business?
Different Low Code platforms have different functionality and features. Therefore, finding the best low code platform for your business can be challenging. You have to carefully review the features of each platform and follow several steps before going for a particular platform.
RAD Studio is an excellent cross platform app builder by Embarcadero. It allows you to develop apps 5x faster with a single codebase for all platforms, including Windows, iOS, Android, macOS, and Linux. The latest release of RAD Studio 11.1 comes with ample features to build high-performance native applications using C++ and Delphi. Furthermore, it consists of robust visual design tools and integrated toolchains to simplify the development. Their FAQ will help you to get a quick idea about the product. Their thorough documentation make it learning pretty easy.
Download a free trial of RAD Studio now and try out building a low code app today!