The good news is that people without a technical background can be zerocoders, but with an analytical mindset, product thinking, which means that soon there will be more specialists. Developers, on the other hand, are rarely interested in zero-coding and don’t want to relearn.”
“I think testing hypotheses through zerocoding is really cool, fast and cheap. Definitely cheaper than a team of programmers: while they get together, while they plan the sprint. But in long-term support, zerocode seems to be much more expensive. Zerocoding is difficult to document: a new programmer on a project will have a hard time understanding what his colleagues have done. You can’t understand what’s inside as quickly as in well-written program code.”
“I absolutely agree with this. We also have many clients who come with a request: “we pay several million rubles a month for a lowcode or zerocode, we really like the functionality, but it’s more cost-effective to write this functionality on our platform.” If you have a small number of users, small loads are one story. When the project grows, zero-coding will become more expensive, it will not be possible to save any more.
Alexey Odin, CEO and founder of Skipp
An entrepreneur without IT experience is unlikely to understand powerful zero-coding solutions
The speakers drew attention to a paradox: in order to use some zero-coding tools, you need to have a good understanding of IT. Somewhere you will have to write a little code, somewhere you will have to think over the architecture and the relationship between parts of the system.
It turns out that it is beneficial for an entrepreneur to use zero-coding tools, but without technical skills, only the simplest ones are available to him. In such, he will quickly encounter restrictions. To master more complex tools, you will either have to invest time and budget in your own education or find specialists (this is still as difficult as finding developers.
“We have a complex instrument. A person who has decided to become an IT entrepreneur without experience will not be able to cope with it. We have two main client groups. The first is those who know how to develop, but want to save time on routine operations. The second is those who once studied something, for example, programmed in Pascal at school or institute, can collect some kind of database in their head, and understand what the relationships between tables are. Such a person knows the basics of programming, basic logic, and can already use it. Pure humanists have to make a significant effort to start building this framework in their head.”
Pavel Ershov, CEO Directual
“I think that it will be difficult for a founder without IT experience to understand Webflow. For many non-technical people, even on Tilda, it will be difficult to design a quality site with a unique design. More real than on Weblfow, but still not that easy.”
Alexey Odin, CEO and founder of Skipp
Summing up
Zerocode is a lifesaver for non-programmers and entrepreneurs who need a quick start. Every year the possibilities of such tools grow.
But living with zerocode forever, especially if you have many users, can be difficult and expensive. It is possible, but at some point it will become unprofitable. Sooner or later, a growing business will either have to switch to a more powerful and flexible zerocode product, or go into development.
“Programmers are cool guys, they can make a thing that will work for tens of thousands of millions of users. It seems to me that their resource should not be used to test your hallucination. Like “listen, I have such an idea, it may not fly …”. You need to give them what has been tested. If 90% of the tasks that are now coming into development do not go there because they do not correspond to reality, the entire IT industry will win.
For the very first, turbulent and unexplored section of the path, there is now a zero code. Then, when you run into limitations or scaling issues, you can think about development.”
“On simple projects, it always makes sense to use zerocode/lowcode. And the farther, the less tasks we can close with such tools. We will have to combine them with development. I believe that in the next 5-10 years, zerocode will not be able to close 100% of tasks, so a more or less complex project will always be a combination of tools. It’s just that the share of what is done on zerocode will gradually increase.”
“Zerocoding is the direction the future is heading towards. All technologies are moving towards simplification. Zerocoding is one of those simplifications, don’t be afraid of it.”
“I think you should always start from the task. For example, when we started Skipp, we immediately chose Webflow as a layout tool – zero-coding, but there is a high-quality and flexible layout. Now the entire external component of our site is on Webflow. We save: we do not need a developer to start new pages, landings. And we are not going to move away from this solution, especially since it is constantly evolving. On the other hand, finding an experienced person who works great on Webflow is also a problem.
Therefore, for an entrepreneur, zero-coding is always a compromise. It may be possible to launch something quickly and economically, but you need to be prepared for certain risks. Firstly, sooner or later you will surely encounter limitations – both functional and budgetary. Secondly, not every programmer will undertake to develop a solution on zero-coding.