a few more words about no-code, because I am angry:

the answer to "code is hard" is not always to throw code out the door: maybe we should just make code a bit easier

in my short career working at technical companies, i've been blown away by the ability of completely non-technical people to be curious, excited, and interested in learning code that will be useful to them. this is precisely why posts like this do well https://twitter.com/itunpredictable/status/1262419668926513157?s=20

there is a steep learning curve to learning code. it's not easy. im mostly self taught, and it was difficult getting here. and that's precisely why for simple applications, well designed user interfaces are better than writing code. this is equally true for developers and others

but there comes a point where the *fundamental task* a user is trying to accomplish is so complex that the interface required to do it is going to be harder to use than the underlying code would be to write. this is why virtually all successful "no code" companies let you code

shielding non-technical users from any code at all, instead of investing in them and helping them improve and learn over time, is just as destructive to their long term potential as forcing them to write Java on day 1. this, to me, is where a lot of the no code movement fails

i'd like to "raise up" people to code literacy in addition to making common workflows easier to do without code. These two things are not mutually exclusive, and that is nuance that gets lost in the absolute, religious allegiance to "being a developer" or "being a no code person"

thank you for coming to my talk