Article for SiliconANGLE by Jason Bloomberg
The sudden explosion of generative artificial intelligence has upended the low-code/no-code landscape, as it has done for so many corners of the software industry. I trekked to the NoCode Summit in Paris this week to get the latest story.
I found a surprising mix of vendors: some focusing on gen AI, but more often than not, the emphasis was more about where in the stack each vendor plays.
On display were front-end, back-end, workflow, and full-stack vendors as well as the AI-focused offerings. Here’s the lowdown:
Pinning down the terminology
My first surprise upon arriving at the NoCode summit was just how many “no-code” exhibitors were actually low-code vendors. I define low-code as a visual development platform that allows for hand-coding when necessary, thus supporting both business users and engineers. No-code, on the other hand, is exclusively for business users – no coding allowed.
Many of the vendors at the conference, however, defined these terms differently. For them, “no-code” means that coding is strictly optional (but still possible), while “low-code” requires some amount of hand-coding. For the purposes of this article, therefore, I’ll use the terms interchangeably, or punt entirely by referring to them as low-code/no-code tools.
There was also plenty of confusion about AI. Even though gen AI is the new kid on the block, at this conference, “AI” meant “gen AI.” Other forms of AI, including machine learning, computer vision and even natural language translation never came up in conversation.
I was also surprised at how many of the French companies played fast and loose with their English language support. They all sported buttons that switched the language, but the French screens all showed plenty of English and vice-versa. Sacre bleu!
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