Bankloch

Much has been said about how GenAI and Low Code platforms are set to replace software engineering as we know it. And while it’s true these technologies can already generate large volumes of code, the reality is far more nuanced. The 80/20 Reality of Code Complexity : Software engineers typically spend 80% of their time on just 20% of the codebase - the most complex, business-specific logic. This "last mile" of coding is highly tailored and nuanced, making it the hardest to automate. While GenAI can generate the more routine 80% of simple code, the actual time saved is modest because that portion represents just a fraction of the engineering effort. Coding Is Just 25% of the Job : Writing code is only a quarter of what developers actually do. The remaining 75% is consumed by meetings, debugging, waiting for requirements, updating tickets, reviewing PRs, handling Slack or Teams messages, explaining tech debt, managing deployments, and context-switching. Even if AI revolutionize...

In the corporate world, the usage of Excel files is still enormous. Many business tools are still running in Excel, often extended with VBA macros and applications. As an Excel fan myself, I can relate to that, as nothing else allows in such a short time to build a powerful and flexible tool, adapted to your specific business needs. However as a software engineer, I also see the issues with these decentrally managed business tools built in Excel. Typically there are 4 main issues with these tools, i.e. The   lack of central storage The   lack of collaboration possibilities   offered by Excel (we all tried to work on a shared workbook, but don’t think anyone was really satisfied with the result) The   lack of versioning The   (non-)functional limitations   of a tool like Excel. Numerous examples exist of an Excel tool growing continuously in complexity and size, until one day it becomes impossible to maintain, it becomes unacceptably slow and/or you reach th...

“ The future of coding is no coding at all ” - Chris Wanstrath (CEO at GitHub). Mid May I posted a blog on RPA (Robotic Process Automation -   https://bankloch.blogspot.com/2020/05/rpa-miracle-solution-for-incumbent.html ) on how this technology, promises the world to companies. A very similar story is found with low- and no-code platforms, which also promise that business people, with limited to no knowledge of IT, can create complex business applications. These   platforms originate , just as RPA tools,   from the growing demand for IT developments , while IT cannot keep up with the available capacity. As a result, an enormous gap between IT teams and business demands is created, which is often filled by shadow-IT departments, which extend the IT workforce and create business tools in Excel, Access, WordPress…​ Unfortunately these tools built in shadow-IT departments arrive very soon at their limits, as they don’t support the required non-functional requirements (like h...