Should you Learn to Use No-Code Tools?

Building Tech Products Without Coding

Tech has been a sector with a very high barrier to entry and a steep learning curve. People in tech pride themselves often as this cult of coders who are nerdy, techy, and simple in grey T-shirts. While this has been the case, things are turning.

As a pragmatist, I believe the purpose of everything, including technology, is to make lives easier. (Whispers: I was tempted to say “human lives,” but I’m scared to face animal rights activists.) New technologies these days are making it easy for anybody, or at least anybody with two connected neurons with ability to generate action potential, to create technology products without having to go through the stress of learning how to code.

When I myself started on my tech journey, I had an existential crisis on which tech stack to learn. Should I become a frontend or backend developer? Javascript or Python? Django or Flask? It was difficult to decide.

New tools today are making it very possible to develop a product quick without going through all the hassle.

What are No-Code Tools?

There are tools that allow you to create technology products without building from scratch, or, as the name implies, without having to code a thing. This means you do not need to be a programmer to build a website, web app, or even a mobile app.

In reality, these aren’t entirely new. In fact, WordPress has allowed designers to build websites for a long time now without coding, although you could still embed custom codes in some places if you want.

Should you Learn to Use No-Code Tools?

If you are really interested in building things, but don’t have the time or patience to learn how to code, then yes, I think you should learn to use no-code tools.

In the past, there were only two ways you could build a product. You either invested a lot of time learning to code yourself, or invest millions of money trying to hire developers. (If you are lucky, you could find someone techy who is willing to build your product with you as a co-founder.) This second step is usually very expensive, especially for startups who have very shallow pockets.

Some of the advantages that no-code tools give you are:

• You could develop and deploy your products fast. This helps you focus on the product than the engineering that goes into it.
• You can learn and iterate very fast, depending on what your customer wants.
• If you want to work on very large softwares, you could use no-code tools to build your minimum viable product (MVP) and test your product in the market.
• If you are a web developer or designer, you could build products faster for your clients.

Which No-Code Tools Should I Learn?

The type of tool you learn mostly depends on what you want to build and the design skill and acumen you have. With time, I shall expand on each of the no-code tools and their most important use cases in different articles.

My two favourite ones, however, are:

• Webflow: This one is currently creating a buzz. It allows you to design beautiful websites from scratch, with nice backgrounds and all. You could use this for building blogs, e-commerce sites, landing pages, etc, but you could still build a whole lot more with it.
• Bubble: This one allows you to create web apps with very mind-blowing functionalities. You could also integrate many APIs so that your web app has more functionality. For me, I think Bubble’s potential is limitless. You could build literally anything, ranging from the next UberEats to the next Jumia. Check out this site below built with Bubble.

Messly.com, built with Bubble.

Will No-Code Tools Replace Programmers?

Developers on YouTube are always having this argument. In my opinion, it’s not even a necessary question. The most important thing is building tech products that make our lives better. If it means lowering the barrier so that more people can build things, isn’t that a positive sum game for our species?

I believe developers will always have a place, though. After all, you need them to develop the tools on which no-code platforms are built. Although with the rise of general AI, I can’t predict if this would last forever.

If you have interest in writing codes, building out logic, and stuff like that, there is nothing wrong in learning how to code. However, if you just want to build products and make beautiful websites for clients, no-code tools should do just fine for you.