Will Low-Code Development Tools Unleash an Army of Junior Developers Into the World

Software is only as good as the developer creating it

Ben "The Hosk" Hosking
ITNEXT
Published in
4 min readNov 24, 2021

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Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels

A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse — not a remarkable mathematician.” ― Warren Buffett

Citizen developers are junior developers and junior developers make mistakes and low-quality software. Even if low-code development tools can stop them creating low-quality code, it won’t stop them making mistakes.

The assumption of low-code development tools is they will make software development faster and easier with excel formulas and components instead of code.

The tool will do all the hard work, citizen developer will learn to create software quickly and all companies will rejoice at the lower cost of software development and maintenance.

It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

Low-code development platform is a tool? for Low-code development to work it uses the assumption there is no skill with software development and experience makes no difference.

The other perspective would say low-code development tools take away the complexity of writing and maintaining code by doing it for the developer.

The truth is somewhere in the middle

Low-code tool

It’s like a missile launcher with auto aiming or heat-seeking missiles. We just need someone to push the button. Low-code development tools powered by an inexperienced citizen developer will create software.

Is that really true? The big assumption behind this is, is the developers only create code and little else.

If the code was the only problems in software development, then I would ride a rainbow skateboard to work and eat unicorn sick as a snack.

For this to be true, there would be little difference between junior developers and senior developers if writing code was the only actual skill.

Anyone who has seen junior developers work will know that experience makes a significant different, and that development is a skill that improves with…

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Technology philosopher | Software dev → Solution architect | Avid reader | Life long learner