Recently spell a lot of sudden death event of employees make a boiling public, this sad event not only let people see the cold-blooded cruelty of unscrupulous enterprises, more let a lot of people deeply feel the sense of crisis in the volume of programmers.

When programmers were still scarce, there was not much overtime work. However, with the rise of foreign low-code platforms in China, a tug of war for “low-code” market share is taking place.

Since the advent of low-code platforms, the competition for programmers has become even more intense, because few people who can’t code need to learn SQL, and even people with zero programming background can quickly rush into the industry.

But programmers do not have to worry too much, because the low code can not solve all data problems, you think if ali in Taiwan to a group of people without programming basis, if double twelve collapse who will be responsible for it? As a result, professional developers are more familiar with databases, structures, and so on, and work more efficiently.

The emergence of low-code tools

At present, many low-code platforms are mainly oriented to enterprise management software development. When it comes to enterprise management software, many people immediately think of ERP system, but in fact, low-code platform is proposed for the working mode of the entire software development industry, not only for ERP system.

The most common low code is to componentize functional modules to reduce repeated code writing, which can reduce the dependence of business departments and companies on THE IT department, and programmers do not have to write code repeatedly, which can shorten the development cycle.

But low code is just a tool, and the value of a tool comes from the person who uses it. So how should we choose a low-code platform? After two years in Ali, I have learned the following three lessons:

1. Clear selection

First, determine whether your platform was developed with low-code tools or with your own product. Second, look at the tutorials and documentation, look at the quantity and quality, do you charge, and then look at the time? Many platforms are too short and have nothing. How can people learn? And I don’t think there should be a charge.

Some more sinister ones, such as ClickPaaS, can’t find any documents at all. See time, basically be to see platform teaching to have update, for example niu Dao, I see video to have 2000 or so, namely 20 years ago!

2. Select the schema type

In general, the C/S architecture is now very old lags behind, generally are relatively backward, the complexity of the platform and low code related, if at first the design is bad, have already had users, later want to update the product will be more difficult, after all C/S to you know, not only unsightly, and do this kind of product will be washed out in the morning and evening, And it doesn’t fit with the way cloud computing is going.

Therefore, the more popular architecture is B/S architecture. B/S has incomparable advantages in security, system expansion, cloud support and other aspects. Does it support Oracle, Mysql, Mongo and other databases?

For example, the common low-code reporting platform **FineReport** in the market is CS(design)+BS(use) architecture, which directly connects to the data source for calculation and presentation.

3. Select platform categories

Take FineReport this Excel report tool, mainly used to build financial management, purchase, sale and storage applications, do not need to learn Java, PHP and other complex programming languages, only need to know simple SQL can be enterprise-class report development.

In fact, in many domestic companies, most report developers are not programmers, so they need a tool like FineReport that is easy to learn and easy to use.

For IT personnel, compared with other report tools and code report tools, can greatly reduce the cost of learning, improve the efficiency of report making, after using FineReport, as long as the data is configured, a report can be developed in 1 to 2 hours.

We used to ask third-party software companies to develop reports, but sometimes the software companies couldn’t do it because they didn’t understand our business and reports at all.

Secondly, our reporting requirements vary greatly. Today it is one thing, and tomorrow it may be another. However, the development of software companies is one-off and cannot meet our long-term needs.

Finally, software companies do and develop, but the response speed is difficult to ensure, affecting the company’s decision-making. Therefore, we use FineReport to build a report platform. With this report platform, our own staff can make reports, which is very convenient and fast, without the need for developers and saves a lot of labor costs.

The big advantage of FineReport is that you don’t need a professional developer, just someone who knows a little bit about databases can make reports.

4. Low code visualization

FineReport is different from ordinary report making. Decision report is composed of various components and supports drag and drop operations of chart/layout/parameters/controls and other components.

This tool is a popular responsive design, component extension independent support local refresh, support component linkage; Perfect self-adaptation, better support the use of mobile terminal and large screen;

In fact, most of them are H5 charts that come with FineReport. IT has been mentioned before that FineReport has good openness, which allows IT to write code development at the same time. Therefore, third-party controls such as Echarts can also be connected to make charts during production.

conclusion

Back to the low code platform!

For developers:

• Low code development liberates the development process of heavy and repetitive coding work, can effectively reduce labor costs.
• Improved development efficiency: Supports cross-platform deployment and can build applications for multiple platforms simultaneously.

For business people:

• The communication cost between the business team and the IT department is reduced. IT personnel generally cannot personally experience the actual pain points of business personnel. Business personnel can customize demo through low code development platform and deliver IT to the IT team for technical implementation.
• Reduce the probability of error, low code development componentization, drag and drop reduces the loss caused by human error, and error can be found in time and improve.