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How Developers Can Leverage Low-Code/No-Code Tools to Make Themselves Invaluable

Thanks to new low-code/no-code tools, developers are able to refocus themselves on more advanced analytics tasks.

• By Ian Funnell
• February 18, 2022

The developer world has not been immune to the Great Resignation of 2021. In fact, even before the pandemic, data professionals were only staying in positions for an average of 2.6 years. Although many factors are contributing to this phenomenon, one major consideration is the burden placed on developers by monotonous, labor-intensive data engineering tasks, leaving them less time for the interesting and value-adding work that excites them and helps them advance professionally. For developers who are no longer content with doing the thankless tasks of data management, low-code and no-code tools provide an answer and an opportunity.

Low-code and no-code solutions free up developers’ time for more meaningful tasks in two crucial ways. First, lowering the technical barrier to entry to working directly with data across an organization means that nontechnical users can also perform tasks that only professional developers could do previously. By allowing the low-code/no-code tool to take over some of the more burdensome tasks, technical staff has more time to spend on strategic initiatives that create a competitive edge.

Second, professional developers are adopting low-code/no-code solutions to take advantage of their automation capabilities. Low-code/no-code tools can enable rapid development of applications, automate data integration, and support data visualizations to reduce time to value. By automating data ingestion and transformation, developers can put their time and expertise toward focusing on the unique business logic of the data processing itself, making analytics more useful.

Simplifying a developer’s job is not the goal of low-code/no-code tools. However, these tools -- and the relief they provide -- are a way to make developers more strategically valuable by clearing the path to putting meaningful ideas into production. When developers get to see their work furthering the goals of the organization, they are more likely to feel fulfilled in their career and stay in their current positions longer.

Some tasks are easy enough that a machine can do them -- and if they can, they should. For the processes and products that require expertise, thought, and a human touch, developers are invaluable, if only they are granted the bandwidth to prove it.

In short, low-code and no-code tools are here to stay, but should not be mistaken as a replacement for innovation. These tools are becoming essential to modern analytics, but we will continue to rely on professional developers to generate insights in a way that leads to real business value.