Over the past several decades, the north star in enterprise software development has been to build faster, faster, faster. Anything developers and enterprises could do to hasten time-to-market was good. These improvement efforts included the evolution of preferred programming languages from COBOL to Java to Python as well as new software development methodologies like Agile, Scrum, and Kanban.
And for many decades, these efforts succeeded in making developers more productive. But then, something strange happened. Around 2010, developer productivity began going in the other direction.
Research shows that developers were creating software 20% slower than they did in the aughts despite the advances in languages and methodologies. There are several reasons enterprise development suddenly became more difficult, but the chief drivers are:
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Complexity: Modern enterprise ecosystems must incorporate multiple teams worldwide, a vast array of internal legacy solutions, and a growing number of external third-party services. Resources must be invested to tie all these elements together effectively.
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Legacy Systems & Technical Debt: Modern organizations dedicate an increasing amount of IT resources to managing legacy systems (some of which may be decades old and built by programmers who have long since moved on) and paying down their technical debt (i.e., workarounds that must eventually be addressed to keep systems functioning). All this maintenance demands an outsized amount of developers’ time and makes it more difficult to build new functionality.
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IT Skills Gap: Organizations are forced to compete for experienced developers within a limited pool of talent—and competition is particularly fierce when it comes to advanced fields like machine learning and data analytics.
What ties these three trends together? Code. This is why enterprises are increasingly sidestepping editable codebases altogether and embracing visual programming approaches such as no-code application platforms like Unqork.
In this eBook, we will explore the power of visual programming and how it can help your organization innovate at speed, stay ahead of the competition, and lower overall costs while increasing your productivity and efficiency.
