Low-Code: Achieving 10x Software Engineering Productivity Through Better Dev Tools
The Mystical 10x Developer. A Creature As Elusive As Bigfoot.
Developers love to debate whether 10x developers really exist.
Search “10x developer” on HackerNews, and you’ll find many heated online debates on the topic. Expect nuggets of wisdom such as “Being a “real” 10X programmer is like being a savant. It’s about being F****** SMART.”
We’re not going to weigh in on the debate of the 10x developer. At least not in relation to individual talent. Instead, we want to look at it from the perspective of development tools.
How To Achieve 10x Software Engineering Productivity
Remember the story of the 30-story hotel built in China in just 15 days? If not, we recommend watching the video first before continuing to read.
Here are three lessons we can learn from the video regarding software engineering.
- Pre-built components help increase productivity in complex engineering processes. The less you build from scratch, the faster you can build – whether that’s a building or a piece of software. “If you’re writing it from scratch, you’re doing it wrong!” – Titus Winter, Software Engineering at Google
- Not everybody in your software engineering team needs to be a 10x developer to achieve 10x outcomes.
Better tools and processes can make a difference that even a team of highly-talented 10x developers would struggle to achieve. - The trade-off is between speed of development and customizability.
Expect to sacrifice some customization in return for faster speed of development. But also expect that this trade-off will be less and less pronounced in the future.
What’s the overall conclusion? Process improvements, be it through better tools, such as low-code tools, management techniques, or even organization culture, can trump individual skill and help increase software engineering productivity. Software engineering is best managed as an engineering process. And outcomes are driven by making this process as efficient as possible.
If you’d like to learn more about low-code software engineering, check out our blog about all things low-code software engineering on https://five.co
The topics that we cover are:
- Are low-code and no-code the same?
- What are the limits of low-code and no-code?
- And, will low-code make developers redundant?
