To Code or be SaaSy?
Is there a new shift in the programming world: Raw Coders vs. SaaS Stitchers? If yes, it would be the right time for tools serving fast and error-preventive SaaS and Backend stitching coding workflows.
My inner programmer’s curiosity was stirred this past week when I happened to come across a demo by Wayscript and articles about Jet Admin and Adalo. This semi-new trend of trying to make everyone a coder or spend less time coding piqued my interest. Actually, it caused conflicting feelings. If you package things up extremely neatly, it sure streamlines a common work process, but at the same time doesn’t it also hide away a lot of creative possibilities?
We are in the era of streamlining, and I am all for it. Yet, the programmer in me knows developers love to code; they love to innovate and create, and they love to build further on what they already know. But is that world changing with a growing percentage of new generations growing up actually knowing how to code? What are the new generation’s coding desires?
Is there a programmer generation shift coming:
- In one corner you have the last three decades of coders (e.g. C/C++/Java and other same-era languages) the ones who had to learn, as part of their programming education, how to build a compiler, to truly understand (and appreciate) the power of these “upper level” programming languages. The raw code generation?
- In the other corner, you have the new decade coders (Serverless, cloud-based, containerized, python/javascript et al), who presumingly never had to customize and build a Linux kernel from scratch…but they know how to design super cool user interfaces, on the other hand, and know how to get their software used. The SaaS generation?
Truth be told the coder generation before me must have felt the same way about my generation. I.e. why a Java Virtual Machine when you have Assembler and OS functions? The virtualization or abstraction layer will always come with limitations but it also comes with streamlining and convenience — i.e. business productivity. The question is perhaps if ease of use and pace of value to market beat innovation derived from customization and complete creative freedom (i.e. in the raw levels anything is possible)? Perhaps it is my generation’s turn to feel like a previous generation coder. Will the SaaS-stitching trend become limiting, or will it in a few years' time (just as the Java-era also did) evolve to pave way for other types of innovation?
The coding trend has obviously been moving up the stack for years — towards abstraction and simplification. Coders are directed to spend less time on maintenance and custom spaghetti-code infrastructure, and instead outsource to SaaS services with the aim to open up more time to focus on core business logic.
If we assume that business pressures on automation will continue to grow, as the digitalization trend continues, it will result in outsourcing to SaaS services and hence demands faster and easier integration with increasingly more of such services. If we draw correlations right, we will see programmers’ increasing need for simplified, pre-packaged, drag-and-drop guided coding workflows, that need to be even more abstracted to protect the pressured business workflows from human error.
Does this mean that the new generation’s coders will be more drag-n-drop SaaS integrators than old school programmers? Will this require education to focus on different SaaS tools and API options over real deep understanding of programming paradigms? Nah, the truth is that we go through cycles. We will go through a phase where SaaS stitching will eventually lead to inefficient code, memory, and CPU bloating — especially as processor and GPU architectures change. After which we will go back to the basics again and optimize for new needs. I think there will be a need for both SaaS Stitchers, focusing on business and development workflows running as efficiently and streamlined as possible, and Raw Coders, who can focus on the proprietary business logic and innovation parts. What do you think?
In conclusion, SaaS is taking off and will continue to do so. Coding is becoming more democratized, making way for simplification tooling. There will always be a demand for innovators, and they probably will use the tools they prefer — as every decade has proven so far. What do you think?
