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Low code isn't no code

There's been a lot of talk about "low code" over the past couple of months. At my place it's an approach that's starting to enable us to prototype and build new digital services a lot quicker than if we created everything in a framework such as .NET or Django.

We're near the start of our journey, and councils like Adur and Worthing are way ahead of us with this this approach, already creating line of business systems with a low code approach.

Whilst low code is often sold as an approach that means you don't have to write a single line of code, that isn't true. What is really means is that you write the code once, and you don't have to be a programmer to utilise it many times.

Take this example


This all you need to send a postcode the user has entered in an input box and return a list of addresses. Many services need a postcode lookup so we've utilised this quickly and easily tens of times.

Is it low code? Yes. Is it no code? No.

Below is the code we wrote to get this to work, searching two data sources (a local and then a national address database) and returning any addresses that match.


This took us a little while to put together, and we needed knowledge of server side JavaScript and Node.JS, but now we've done the work it can be used many times, and it's all maintained in a single place.

So don't be fooled into thinking low code means you or your supplier doesn't have to write code, you sill will, it's just a far more efficient way of deploying it's use across many services.

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