Risks and Challenges of No-Code & Low Code Development

Imagine having entered into a room filled with geniuses from various fields of physics. It has Isaac Newton eating apples, Albert Einstein applying moose to his hair, Stephen Hawking analysing his own book and other prominent personalities. They turn towards you and start asking advance numerical on gravity, quantum physics and electromagnetism!

How do you feel? You must be intimidated, confused and full of agony because you just weren’t prepared. You feel inferior, being surrounded by the most intelligent brains. It is very de-motivating and you start hoping you studied physics a little harder to at least face this day!

Why did we ask you to experience this mock-up situation? Try to inspect the condition. You made an application using a no code or low code platform. Fortunately, it worked wonders and now you want to advance your app. But you become restricted by your platform. Using no-code or low code development means going to the market filled with competitions who might be experts in web development.

We can’t ignore the fact that many entrepreneurs have build exceptional and sustainable businesses from no-code or low code development.

Here are a few things to look out for while using no-code or low-code development.

What is no-code and low-code development?

A low-code/no-code development platform is a visual software development platform that helps people to create mobile or web applications using the drag and drop method with no or minimal use of code. This form of application building is recently becoming popular with more people accepting and using it.

Low code or no code helps small business owners, managers and other people who are not software developers to build apps. It is vastly gaining popularity due to its low cost and easy access.

According to research by Markets and Markets, the low code development platform market is expected to grow from $4.3 billion in 2017 to more than $27 billion by 2022. In fact, 84% of enterprises have adopted a low-code development platform or tool.

While the world is facing a pandemic, all major sectors are going online at a rapid rate. Be it retailing like eBay recorded a massive 34.6% growth; Digital Health Market size is estimated over USD 106 billion in 2019 and the industry is moreover growing at 28.5% CAGR through 2026; eLearning was estimated to reach over $370 billion by 2026; buying food online as the global online food delivery services market is expected to grow from $107.44 billion in 2019 and to $111.32 billion in 2020.

With such a growth in various sectors online, it has become a crucial factor to become digitally connected. We are facing the highest demand for web application developers. There were 26.4 million software developers in the world in 2019, a number that in 2023 is expected to grow to 27.7 million but even that is becoming insufficient.

Hence came the time to take the lead and make our own apps. No-code and low code have seen tremendous growth due to the need for developers. Analysts at Forrester Research Inc. predicted that the low-code market will reach $15 billion by 2020. And another research firm estimated that low-code application development will be responsible for 65% of all application development activity by 2024.

It does sound too good to be true but it is happening with phenomenal results. Does it have no flaws? Woefully nothing is perfect and no-code or low code comes with similar shares of doubts.

Also Read : Growth Factors of No-Code and Low-Code Market

Risk and Challenges of No Code & Low Code Development

Here are a few things that could be troublesome if overlooked while using no-code or low code development platforms. The challenges range from frivolous to significant. To be fully prepared one must be aware of the pros and cons equally well.

1) Limitation by the platform

This is the main problem that you can’t run free while being dependent on the platform providing you no-code or low code development. You might want a feature that is not present and you’re left hanging.

2) Difficult debugging

Debugging comes in two parts- frontend and backend. But as you are not the coder, you might not understand the debugging process. If there’s a glitch or a bug you will perhaps get lost and confused.

3) Larger databases are difficult to manage

These platforms have predefined databases and once you need to expand it can be strenuous. Even transferring the data from the No Code Platform to a local database can be arduous.

4) Integrating various parts of the website is difficult

Your website is bound to have various components, all unique from the other. Putting them all together is not smooth sometimes.

5) Concerns of Shadow IT

No-code or low code platforms are many a time cost-free. Hence the higher authorities might lose track of the applications using their sensitive data. As a senior, it is an important job to supervise that no Shadow IT is happening in your organization.

6) Security of the data

Usually, the code and security controls that no-code and low code platform providers have are not visible to the enterprise. Your blind confidence on these platforms can be risky to your company. To secure their apps companies have to rely on third-party security audits, security and compliance certifications, service level agreements, and cybersecurity insurance. Intruders love low-hanging fruit and unprotected source code of enterprise apps which are easy to hack.

7) Control over the app

When not designing a product from scratch by yourself, you get obliged to the vendors providing no-code or low code development. These platforms typically include permissions and access controls by default, often inherited from the underlying data, they hold for their customers.

It becomes questionable how much control you have over your application and if you can detach or transfer data from the platform to other places.

8) You might have to code after all

Low code platforms often promise that you don’t have to write code, but then many non-trivial use cases require significant code to be written. If you are not quite experienced with writing important parts of code then you’ll get stuck.

We have tried to explain most of the major drawbacks while using no-code or low-code development. If you sincerely notice, you can easily work with most of the foibles. These platforms are highly recommended for a start and eventually as you dig deeper into them, you’ll learn to manage the imperfections.

Conclusion

Many no-code and low code development platforms are trying to improve their customer interface to attract further citizen developers. There are a few dangers of using NCDPs but being careful will work in your favor.

A few suggestions would be to use standard platforms. Verify the policies and analyze the security they provide. Read all the terms and conditions and prepare your team likewise. Preparation and caution will protect your application from any harm.

You can grow and enjoy no-code or low-code development and make some very useful mobile applications and websites. No matter how much technically sound you are, now is the time to use technology to its full potential.

Also Read : No Code Movement: A Rising Trend or Future of No Code?