6 Questions about misconceptions in OutSystems

As a Computer Engineer student, there has always been a balance between the love for complexity but also how quickly you can get to a solution and it is hard to keep it but once you start leaning to one side it can become challenging to counterbalance. After finishing my bachelor’s, I heard about OutSystems and its potential and how it can tackle a solution more productively so I decided to explore its possibilities and try it. After that, I landed a position in an OutSystems Academy at KinetIT, where I learned all the basics about this technology, and started my professional career. As it started and I talked to friends and colleagues on other IT jobs, the more I heard that OutSystems and other low-code technologies were considered to be “drag and drop” and needed little to no effort to achieve a solution that might not even be good enough due to low-code limitations. But from what I’ve learned in the academy and my experiences so far were exactly the opposite. With this in mind, I discussed these points with a few of my peers and decided to try to understand and debunk these misconceptions about OutSystems.

I decided to discuss this topic with people that have jobs in IT but also students that are finishing their bachelors/master’s degree in Computer Engineering and have little to no experience with OutSystems or other low-code technologies. The discussion will focus on a few questions we prepared to try to understand each person’s knowledge of low-code technologies and their capabilities.

Although these questions focus on low code in general, most of the solutions to everyone’s concerns or shortcomings will be given through the OutSystems platform. Everyone that participated in this discussion has a basic understanding of how these technologies work.

1 — Do you believe that low code can be used to build complex and important applications?

I wanted to know if they think it is possible to build a complex app and if can have some high level of importance to the end user. Most of them think that it is possible to create these kinds of applications but all of them questioned if there is a need for some custom features that are not part of the platform, it will unnecessary complexity and that the app should have been done in traditional code from the start.

OutSystems, although it’s a low-code technology, has a lot of integration solutions to customize your code. If you’re working on the front end and need to change the UI you can use CSS and JavaScript to customize your webpage or if you need some complex functionality, you can look for a custom component made by the community in the Forge. You also can integrate with C# code and with other systems using REST or SOAP API’s.

2 — Do you believe these applications can be secure?

In terms of security, there were mixed answers. Some believe that if you follow the platform’s best practices it can be secure, others think that because they do not have that much control over the code written it can lead to some security issues.

Yes, following the OutSystems best practices can simplify your work but most security features like authentication and authorization, are all out-of-the-box features (I.e. OutSystems Security Features) but they also can be customized to achieve a more advanced level of security.

3 — Do you believe that these applications can be used in an enterprise market?

Next, I wanted to know if they think these apps can be used in an enterprise market as a solution to a client or even for internal systems. Again, the answers were mixed, some think it can be used without any issue in an enterprise market while others think, mainly because of the reasons given in the previous questions, there may be some problems when using low code in this market.

OutSystems, in this case, offers massive scalability to support a large number of users and, now with the OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC), it will be able to scale with zero maintenance and a low-downtime database.

4 — Do you think that to build these applications, the developers need problem-solving skills and knowledge of other technologies?

I wanted their opinion if to create these apps in low code if it needed deep knowledge of problem-solving skills or any programming language prior and if they were offered a position to work in low code, they would take it or not. The first part of the question had the most consensus so far. Everyone agreed that making the most out of low-code technologies requires a deep knowledge of problem-solving skills and also have prior knowledge of other technologies.

5 — Do you believe low code has a low ceiling?

I wanted to ask them if they think there are any limitations in using low code and if there will a case that can prove to be impossible to solve using this technology. Some of them believe that it can be very limited depending on what kind of solution you’re working on and also in terms of integration with other technologies, others think that although it can be limited, the time spent on development is beneficial and also the reusability of some features is a strong point.

With OutSystems, for example, you can with very few steps integrate with any database but also with other languages like JavaScript. Most of the concerns in this question are shared with the first question.

6 — If you were offered a job to work in low-code, would you take it and why?

Lastly, I asked if they were offered a position to work in low-code, would they take the position. Almost all of them said they wouldn’t take that position. The main reasons for them to not take an offer are not having the same feeling of “fulfillment” when creating an app and having the freedom of high-level languages. Some of them contemplated the idea of trying it out and exploring more about low-code technologies without losing their connection with high-level languages.

In conclusion, after these conversations, although there is some understanding of how low-code technologies work and what benefits can have to deliver solutions, there is still a pushback due to fear of change and the feeling of not “owning” your code and controlling it is still a priority to them instead of the fast development time and easy deployment, OutSystems, in this case, can offer. I believe one solution to this problem is to promote low-code in universities to show its capabilities and fast development to an academic audience to debunk some myths and show that low-code or high-level languages share the same knowledge pool to create a better solution to a problem.