🚿 [Worksheets] (https://jen4web.notion.site/jen4web/Planning-Successful-No-Code-Websites-Apps-efd3651dfd124bdd9a4b04ca0c93ed7b)

📷 [Slides] (https://www.slideshare.net/jen4web/5-steps-to-effective-planning-for-your-nocode-website-or-app)

How often do you get distracted by the latest no-code tool? Do you start with technology first, solving problems later? Or do you start with a problem but give up quickly, because you just can’t figure out the ““perfect”” solution with so many choices out there?

Based on my Harvard course and book, I’ll walk you through how to define goals, audience, features and functionality, data flow, and brand to create an executable outline of work for your next project, complete with a clear outline and worksheets. With this plan in place, you’ll gain more confidence than ever in launching your next project and you’ll feel empowered to build more effectively!

Jen Kramer (she/her), HTML, CSS, and no-code training for all, JenKramer.org Jen Kramer has been teaching & practicing web design for over 20 years. Formerly an award-winning Harvard lecturer, she’s currently a freelance no-code, HTML, and CSS educator. She has also created over 60 courses for LinkedIn Learning, Frontend Masters, and more.

Presented at Webflow’s No-Code Conference 2021, November 17, 2021.

[Software is Scholarship] (https://law.mit.edu/pub/softwareisscholarship/release/1)

By transforming the way that knowledge is discovered and shared, software has the ability to revolutionize the way scholars communicate their ideas. This article explains how software applications enable the highest forms of scholarship and applies those lessons to law.

Interactive software applications can enhance research agendas in the humanities and social sciences by making traditional, prose scholarship more thorough, persuasive, and analytically precise. Due to recent innovations, developing software for scholarly purposes is accessible to those that work in the humanities. Platforms for developing software have grown so sophisticated that they no longer require creators to write code to develop powerful, data rich, and well-designed interactive applications.

Houman B. Shadab

Dr. Shadab, a law professor, is using Bubble.io to create his applications for scholarly research and communicating results. This is very far ahead of academia, and it’s a pleasure to see this happening.

[‘People rapidly create things, rapidly deploy things and rapidly regret things. Each subsequent generation of technology makes it easier to build bad solutions fast.'] (https://www.zdnet.com/article/as-low-code-and-no-code-approaches-rise-developers-brace-for-new-challenges/)

One of the things that bothers me about no-code approaches is [technical debt] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt).

It’s 1996 in the No-Code Universe. As the web was in 1996, the No-Code Universe is at the phase where the tools are exploding, the money flows like kegs of beer at a frat party, and new companies are created, get bought, and go under every day.

We will come out with some winners, but as we should have learned from the web, there will be far more losers than winners. The consolidation will be significant. Your data will slosh around all over Silicon Valley, and you may not even realize it’s happening.

Be sure you know how to get your data out of a system before you commit your business to running on it as a platform.

[Spoiler alert: No.] (https://builtin.com/software-engineering-perspectives/no-code-replace-programmers?es_id=b1380061cf)

When I started working as web professional in 2000, there were no “tools.” You used a text editor or you used Macromedia Dreamweaver (current version: 3).

The #1 client request was to be able to edit their own website without having to go through their web designer. That’s because most web designers SUCKED. They were utterly incapable of answering or returning phone calls or emails. The common story was the designer sitting on the client request for weeks at a time.

Then in 2002, along came Macromedia Contribute. Designed to integrate with Dreamweaver templates, this simple(r) software let clients make their own updates to their websites.

Much handwringing ensued. OMG, there would soon be NO WORK for web designers!

Of course, nothing could have been further from the truth. There was plenty of work for web designers. However, if “work” meant fixing typos or updating copy, yeah, you did lose out on some of that. But there was still a ridiculous amount of work for those wanting to build new websites.

Fast forward to 2020. The latest round of no-code tools are allowing people to automate tasks, build forms, create their own simple websites, and integrate technologies without developers.

Much handwringing ensued. OMG, there would soon be NO WORK for programmers!

And just like before, nothing could be further from the truth.

a. Who codes the no-code tools?…

b. Who does one call when one pushes no-code to the limit, or wants that one feature that seems to be nowhere in the no-code space?

c. The power of creation from nothing will still lie with programmers. But the junk work of building yet another form that emails the contents to the owner, or writes it to some spreadsheet? That stuff is going to go away.

Trust me, you won’t miss it.