Why I Believe No Code Tools Are OK – And When
In the field of developers, I have often heard that GUI tools or WYSIWYG is the bad path to take. Honestly, I tend to be like this too.
The reasons are such as the quality of your product won't be as good, the code might even be a mess. You might also have heard other reasons like lack of flexibility and hard to debug.
Why I Chose To Try a GUI Tool
I support all these reasons and I still believe they are true to some extend. However, as I have moved forward in my life and career along the road I have also learned that the real world is unfortunately not only a matter of quality. Sometimes we need to prototype fast, to test if an idea has its right to exist or it was just good on the planning board.
This doesn't mean quantity over quality, but it means that the old concept of re-factoring is indeed very valid here. You should prototype fast, GUI tools are perfectly fine here, as this is not the time in your project where your fiddle with 1 or 2px to the left, but rather focus on first releases.
My Experience Using A UI Tool
As your product grows, you will most likely realise that the GUI tool had its limits. This is why refactoring should always be in mind. Don't build your prototype on a closed platform where all your data might be stuck behind another company's proprietary wall.
Instead build with a tool that allows you for fast progress. Later on, if you have success, you build your custom solution and migrate the data. By this time you are also aware of what you need to do custom made.
Blogging Example
An example could be blogging. Hashnode is a great tool and platform to get started fast. When you have (for example) 100,000 daily visitors from not within the Hashnode community, you might start considering if you should build your own platform.
I chose to write my thoughts, after I saw the similar topic here: Why it’s perfectly OK to use no-code tools as a developer
