• The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
Menu
  • The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • The Steady Growth Of The Low Code Movement

    December 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    With IT talent in short supply and expensive as too much demand chases too little supply – a hard concept to get your brains around with over 42 million software developers working around the world creating and maintaining software that has an economic value in excess of $1 trillion a year – it is no surprise that some are looking to low code tools to help automate some aspects of their business.

    Low code is not just happening in the datacenters of small and medium businesses writing new applications to take on new problems and add new functionality to systems. But this part of the low code market – known as the low code application platform, or LCAP, is but a small portion of this nascent yet fast-growing market, according to research by Gartner. Here is how the market researcher breaks it all down, and forecasts revenue out to 2024:

    Frankly, this is not a lot of money to be made by the providers of low code tools, even if you add in adjacent areas that comprise another two-thirds or so of the market. What we wonder about is the economic value of all of the applications that will be created by such low code tools, what potential third-party software or homegrown software the applications created by low code tools will be displaced by these applications, and how maintainable and auditable such code will be when it exists outside of the formal IT department.

    Gartner is predicting that by 2026 application developers working outside of the formal IT department will account for 80 percent of the user base for these tools, up from 60 percent in 2021. This implies that the use of such tools by non-IT personnel and individuals working solo is growing faster than the use of these tools inside of the IT department.

    But again, we have no sense of the impact such tools will make on the entire code base. It seems highly unlikely that core applications will ever be created with such tools, but certainly functionality to provide features above and beyond such core applications certainly could be created in this fashion. Call us old school, but we like code that an actual programmer creates with known tools wielded by professionals. But like spreadsheets and low-end databases that proliferated outside of the formal IT departments starting in the late 1980s as PCs became cheaper and more powerful, there is never putting these genies back into their bottles. People are trying to solve problems, and they will find a way.

    We just wish some days that it had all been Smalltalk, with its native object oriented programming and a very similar low-code approach to creating widgets that could grow into applications. Imagine the vast GitHub of SmallTalk widgets we could have all had access to, and how we could have plugged these all together to create any manner of applications running at any kind of scale. The IT industry made the wrong choices in some ways.

    The good news is that RPG is still around. But we can even envision something we might call RPGtalk, which could have taken the best of what became Java and free-form RPG and made it into something truly modular and object oriented, as well as easy to use and ubiquitous.

    RELATED STORIES

    Momentum Builds For Code For IBM i

    Smart Modernization Is The Answer To IBM i Talent Shortage

    Transferring Low Code Benefits Into The IBM i

    Profound Goes Low Code with Node.js Framework

    Visual LANSA Customers Can Now ‘Portalize’ Their Apps

    Low-Code API Development Gets A Boost From Profound

    Idera Bolsters Visual LANSA 15

    LANSA Revs Low-Code, UI Modernization Tools

    LANSA Bought By Software Conglomerate Idera

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Tags: Tags: GitHub, IBM i, Java, LCAP, low code, low code application platform, RPG

    Sponsored by
    WorksRight Software

    Do you need area code information?
    Do you need ZIP Code information?
    Do you need ZIP+4 information?
    Do you need city name information?
    Do you need county information?
    Do you need a nearest dealer locator system?

    We can HELP! We have affordable AS/400 software and data to do all of the above. Whether you need a simple city name retrieval system or a sophisticated CASS postal coding system, we have it for you!

    The ZIP/CITY system is based on 5-digit ZIP Codes. You can retrieve city names, state names, county names, area codes, time zones, latitude, longitude, and more just by knowing the ZIP Code. We supply information on all the latest area code changes. A nearest dealer locator function is also included. ZIP/CITY includes software, data, monthly updates, and unlimited support. The cost is $495 per year.

    PER/ZIP4 is a sophisticated CASS certified postal coding system for assigning ZIP Codes, ZIP+4, carrier route, and delivery point codes. PER/ZIP4 also provides county names and FIPS codes. PER/ZIP4 can be used interactively, in batch, and with callable programs. PER/ZIP4 includes software, data, monthly updates, and unlimited support. The cost is $3,900 for the first year, and $1,950 for renewal.

    Just call us and we’ll arrange for 30 days FREE use of either ZIP/CITY or PER/ZIP4.

    WorksRight Software, Inc.
    Phone: 601-856-8337
    Fax: 601-856-9432
    Email: software@worksright.com
    Website: www.worksright.com

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Four Hundred Monitor, December 14 What AWS Supply Chain Can Offer IBM i Shops

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

TFH Volume: 32 Issue: 83

This Issue Sponsored By

  • TL Ashford
  • WorksRight Software
  • ARCAD Software
  • UCG TECHNOLOGIES
  • Manta Technologies

Table of Contents

  • 2022: An IBM i Year in Review, Part One
  • What AWS Supply Chain Can Offer IBM i Shops
  • The Steady Growth Of The Low Code Movement
  • Four Hundred Monitor, December 14
  • IBM Bolsters Fed Business with Octo Buy

Content archive

  • The Four Hundred
  • Four Hundred Stuff
  • Four Hundred Guru

Recent Posts

  • To Comfort The Afflicted And Afflict The Comfortable
  • How FalconStor Is Reinventing Itself, And Why IBM Noticed
  • Guru: When Procedure Driven RPG Really Works
  • Vendors Fill In The Gaps With IBM’s New MFA Solution
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 27
  • With Power11, Power Systems “Go To Eleven”
  • With Subscription Price, IBM i P20 And P30 Tiers Get Bigger Bundles
  • Izzi Buys CNX, Eyes Valence Port To System Z
  • IBM i Shops “Attacking” Security Concerns, Study Shows
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 26

Subscribe

To get news from IT Jungle sent to your inbox every week, subscribe to our newsletter.

Pages

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Four Hundred Monitor
  • IBM i PTF Guide
  • Media Kit
  • Subscribe

Search

Copyright © 2025 IT Jungle