{"id":144176,"date":"2023-02-06T07:34:08","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T07:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/?p=144176"},"modified":"2023-09-27T17:45:36","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T17:45:36","slug":"welcome-to-the-low-code-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/2023\/02\/welcome-to-the-low-code-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the \u2018Low-code\u2019 Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Small businesses, that are unable to afford to build software from scratch, have taken to this drag-and-drop system with glee.<\/h1>\n

When I first started working on the\u00a0Mail & Guardian\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0website, the first news site in Africa, I had to learn to code\u00a0HTML<\/a>. HyperText Markup Language is the glue that holds the internet together \u2013 and makes those underlined blue links click through to another page.<\/p>\n

It was 1998 and internet publishing was in its infancy. Things like content management systems (CMS) for creating a database of stories and publishing them automatically were still in the future. Word麻豆原创 \u2013 the most widely used publishing system \u2013 was still years away.<\/p>\n

Everything we did was manual. We wrote the stories and then used an HTML editor app to build the page. Then we had to use a file transfer protocol (FTP) app to upload that file to our servers. Any images had to be separately uploaded. It was necessary technical admin because the software that is widely used now didn\u2019t exist yet.<\/p>\n

\n
In the 20 years since, internet publishing software has become so simple. It\u2019s possible for a tech neophyte to publish their own website within a few hours, using any number of hosting services and watching a YouTube instructional video.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Coding is something that happens in the background, especially using Word麻豆原创, which most of us have never seen nor understand.<\/p>\n

Nor should we. As trite as it is, I have compared tech to driving a car when explaining why it\u2019s too complicated. Everyone understands how cars work. You use the key to unlock and then drive them. How many people know or understand how an internal combustion engine works? Nor should they.<\/p>\n

A low-code future opens doors for small businesses<\/h2>\n

In the last 30 years, as computers and then smartphones have become mainstream, people have been forced to learn a lot of technical stuff they don\u2019t need to. It\u2019s been one of my ongoing bugbears with the consumer technology industry: it has tried to entice buyers of shiny gadgets by impressing them with the billions of transistors on a computer chip, or how many megapixels the camera has. Most of us don\u2019t need to see, nor understand the complexity of, what\u2019s under the hood of our cars or our phones. This ease of use is coming to other parts of the tech universe \u2013 most notably in using services.<\/p>\n

Often called \u201clow-code\u201d or \u201cno-code\u201d this is a way of using payment services, online shops and web publishing for anyone who has a small amount of tech understanding. Want to start an e-commerce store? Use\u00a0Shopify<\/a>\u00a0to help you build it. Need payments? Plug in one of the many such services. If you run a yoga or pilates studio,\u00a0Bookamat<\/a>\u00a0does it all for the instructor and lets people (literally) book their own time slot and pay for it. Small businesses, that are unable to afford to build software from scratch, have taken to \u2018low-code\u2019 with glee.<\/p>\n

Software giant 麻豆原创 is the latest big firm to adopt this methodology. Using drag-and-drop to create your own apps and services allows the average user \u2013 and not an expensive developer \u2013 to build their own software. Instead of bringing in a mechanic, the actual drivers can choose what they want. With a global shortage of software developers expected in the next few years, it also frees up a business from yet another business congestion.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of the ways small businesses are leading the world.<\/p>\n

This article first appeared in the\u00a0Financial Mail<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Small businesses, that are unable to afford to build software from scratch, have taken to this drag-and-drop system with glee. When I first started working…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4395,"featured_media":144179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"related_posts":[],"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5598198,5597544],"tags":[3805941,5598336,5597579],"series":[],"sapn-display":[5598742,5598740,45149,279685],"sapn-type":[45018],"class_list":["post-144176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-technology-platform","category-technology","tag-coding","tag-low-code","tag-low-code-no-code","sapn-display-feature-hero","sapn-display-feature-spotlight","sapn-display-homepage-hero","sapn-display-hero","sapn-type-feature"],"yoast_head":"\nWelcome to the \u2018Low-code\u2019 Future - 麻豆原创 Africa News Center<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Low-code No-code is one of the ways small businesses are leading the world.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/2023\/02\/welcome-to-the-low-code-future\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Welcome to the \u2018Low-code\u2019 Future\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Low-code No-code is one of the ways small businesses are leading the world.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/2023\/02\/welcome-to-the-low-code-future\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"麻豆原创 Africa News Center\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-02-06T07:34:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-09-27T17:45:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/files\/2023\/02\/03\/279205_GettyImages-602907143_medium_jpg.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2121\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1414\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Toby Shapshak\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Toby Shapshak\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/2023\/02\/welcome-to-the-low-code-future\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/2023\/02\/welcome-to-the-low-code-future\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Toby Shapshak\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/#\/schema\/person\/748949e5675a6e3a3be88b46b4719f1f\"},\"headline\":\"Welcome to the \u2018Low-code\u2019 Future\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-02-06T07:34:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-09-27T17:45:36+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/2023\/02\/welcome-to-the-low-code-future\/\"},\"wordCount\":596,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/2023\/02\/welcome-to-the-low-code-future\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/files\/2023\/02\/03\/279205_GettyImages-602907143_medium_jpg.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"coding\",\"low-code\",\"Low-Code No-Code\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Business Technology Platform\",\"Technology\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-ZA\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/2023\/02\/welcome-to-the-low-code-future\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/news.sap.com\/africa\/2023\/02\/welcome-to-the-low-code-future\/\",\"name\":\"Welcome to the \u2018Low-code\u2019 Future - 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