Software may eat the world, but weak code could eat software

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Marc Andreesen claimed in 2011 that "software is eating the world" in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

His argument was that software was the new engine for creating value.

"My own theory is that we are in the midst of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift, in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy," said writes Andreesen.

The article details a variety of examples in which digital companies, such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Spotify, have achieved dominance fueled by software and digital products. The article defines software quite loosely, saying that companies using software to trade digital assets and dramatically expanding data usage and automation are the new winners.

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Andreesen was right. Software companies have eaten and are eating the world. However, his analysis focuses on large companies achieving considerable victories with industrial-scale software. The software he points to that ate the world was the product of elite engineering teams and layers and layers of complex platforms.

In my view, we are entering a new era in which software will continue to devour the world, but in a much broader and more distributed way. It won't just be the most famous or the biggest companies that will achieve digital victories. We will find that in almost every business, the use of software will explode to increase efficiency, bring new awareness and expand automation.

That will never happen if this software can only be created by elite engineering teams.

How software will eat up the rest of the world will be through low-code and no-code methods, but that's not all. Much of the software that Andreesen says has eaten up the world will itself be eaten up by low-code methods.

In short, if software eats the world, then low code eats software.

Let's review what I mean exactly and explain why this is happening.

The basics of low code

The low code greatly facilitates the process of creating applications. It's important to remember that modern low-code systems are just the model of this era for the intelligent application of basic computer science concepts.

If you've been in the business software and IT world for a while, you know that the idea of ​​simplified coding taking over the world of software development is not new. Domain-specific languages ​​are one form of this idea. SAP created ABAP and Salesforce invented Apex as domain-specific languages ​​to make it easier to code their applications and separate them from the underlying implementation details. A long time ago, so are fourth-generation languages. Going even further, we can refer to IBM's RPG as a form of low code.

Low code, in simple terms, is the ability to quickly create and automate applications of a certain type. No Code is the ability to customize an application only through configuration settings.

Low code, in simple terms, is the capability to build and automate applications of a certain type quickly. No code is the ability...