It has been a long time since my girlfriend taught my girlfriend what cloud computing, blockchain, autonomous driving, and data center is. My girlfriend hasn't "harassed" me for a long time.
When I asked, I was learning various new technologies, and I didn't feel in the mood to talk to me.
Are you irritating?
This weekend I was thinking about how to alleviate the embarrassing situation now. After all, how difficult it is to find a girlfriend these days, but I can’t let this "get-to-hand" girlfriend fly.
As a result, the girlfriend suddenly appeared unexpectedly.
Seeing the unkempt girlfriend who always doesn't wear makeup and doesn't go out, I know that it must not have asked me to go to the movies or go shopping. It must have come across some technology that I don't understand.
Am I beautiful?
Sure enough, just as I guessed, the wife who was addicted to new technology recently started to teach herself new things. But recently, I have been stumped by a new technical word, that is-low code.
It turns out that my wife has been paying attention to the actions in the 2B market. Recently, Alibaba Cloud mentioned a "low code" term at the "Cloud and Nail One" press conference. This made my girlfriend stumped. After many days of unsuccessful research, I finally remembered my boyfriend.
Seeing that my girlfriend can still remember my boyfriend, I burst into tears (in my heart). I have to use this opportunity to improve my position in the heart of my girlfriend.
▉ Low code is not a new word but has great value
In fact, low code is not a new word, nor is it the first time that Alibaba Cloud has proposed it in China.
The reason why so many people can talk about it this time has something to do with Alibaba Cloud's large size and strong technology. Another reason is that the current software development model has also reached a stage of transformation after the epidemic.
Software technology development has been developed for so many years, but the development model has not changed. In order to speed up the development of programs, the development of software technology has been constantly evolving.
The earliest computers can only recognize 0 and 1, and the machine can only recognize this binary string. This method is very inefficient and error-prone.
Later, people invented programming languages. With the development, there are now thousands of languages. C, C++ and Java are all popular programming languages.
From the machine language to the current programming language, the difficulty of people learning and understanding has been reduced, and the efficiency of development has also been improved.
However, this improvement is far from meeting the needs of current computer application development.
Now each of us has several computing devices and uses many applications, and professional developers are becoming less and less available.
Don't want to work overtime
Therefore, in order to improve development efficiency, in addition to constantly letting programmers work overtime, software development technology needs continuous improvement.
For example, the emergence of software development visualization, modularization, framing, etc. are all to improve the efficiency of software development. But this kind of efficiency improvement has not brought about "quantity change", and it is a drop in the bucket for the accelerated growth of software demand.
Software development still needs revolutionary solutions. Thus, low code was born.
▉ Low code is like Lego, you can build your own app
The so-called low-code development means that applications can be quickly generated without coding or a small amount of code. In traditional application development with high technical barriers, developers need to write lines of code.
With low-code development, users can complete an application generation by "dragging and dropping". Just like Lego bricks in a toy, you can just use Lego to put together whatever model you want, which is so convenient.
In software development, in the past, the development of a program required continuous communication and modification between users, product managers, project managers, and developers to develop a user-satisfied program. Now you only need to drag and drop to write down to generate it. This brings changes. It is revolutionary.
And you don’t have to understand code or technology, you only need to know what function you want, and you only need to combine the function modules by dragging and dropping. In this way, as long as other departments have needs, they don't need to mention their needs, wait for development and do it themselves, and they can be well-stocked.
In fact, the low-code concept was formally proposed by Forrester as early as 2014, and it has been developed abroad for several years. Even in China, manufacturers like Yanhuang Yingdong and Yunjiepei have been deeply involved in the low-code field for some time.
▉ Low code is not a panacea, not so magical
An important advantage of low-code development platforms is speed. Using a low-code platform, a traditionally time-consuming project can be completed in a short time, which will greatly reduce the cost of the enterprise.
But in fact, low-code platforms are not that magical, and low-code platforms have many drawbacks.
For example, low code is not a panacea, and it is not suitable for all businesses. While the rapid development and cost reduction brought by low code, enterprises lack flexibility in software development and are only suitable for use in some common and simple workflows. Like some large-scale application software development, traditional custom development is still needed.
Low code also limits enterprise innovation to a certain extent. Low code is more like a component on a PaaS platform. Therefore, low code software must be used in conjunction with the PaaS platform. For business departments, it may be simple to build according to needs, but it must be on the platform. Some functions can only be used. For professional programmers, this platform is not suitable and will even affect the innovation enthusiasm of these professional platforms.
At the same time, it is also a new challenge to connect and utilize data between applications brought about by low code and traditional old programs. This adds new data islands for many companies.
Moreover, once there are quality or security vulnerabilities in the components of the low-code development platform, the stability and security of all applications developed will be affected and cannot be controlled.
Simply put, like building blocks, although it allows us to quickly build the application, it can't build everything. If I have a special overture, Lego may not be suitable, and the safety and quality of Lego directly determines everything. The quality of the model.
▉ Why does Alibaba Cloud launch "Cloud and Nail One"?
Under my constant indoctrination, my girlfriend seemed to understand what low code is at first, but he still followed a problem.
Since low-code has these problems, why does Alibaba Cloud launch the "cloud nailing one" strategy and low-code development tools?
I explained that this has a lot to do with Alibaba Cloud's overall strategy.
We all know that Alibaba Cloud has developed very well in the world, and it is the number one presence in China.
Cloud is a support platform, similar to a house built for enterprises, and now Ali has built a house. But how to go next, how to encourage corporate customers to live in the house, and even can not do without Alibaba Cloud?
First, we need to consider how to move corporate customers to Alibaba Cloud?
DingTalk is an important channel for Ali to bring corporate customers up. Since its launch in 2014, users have exceeded 100 million in content in just three years. It can be said that DingTalk is now the WeChat on the B side.
Alibaba Cloud has built a house for its customers. DingTalk is the channel for Alibaba's customers to go to the cloud. The "cloud and nailing integration" allows Ali to aggregate internal advantages and connect DingTalk with Ali's customers to form a joint force and grow stronger.
Moreover, after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, companies are stepping up their digital transformation. "Cloud and nail integration" will greatly increase Ali's competitiveness in corporate digital transformation.
Today, corporate users have been led by Dingding to this building, but how to retain customers is an important thing Ali must consider?
Low code is a key means to retain users.
If the entire Alibaba Cloud ecosystem is a city, then Alibaba Cloud is building houses, DingTalk is the road for customers as much as possible, and low-code is for users to buy "furniture" in Alibaba Cloud, when companies buy in Alibaba Cloud After finishing all kinds of "furniture", it's very difficult to go.
▉ "Cloud nailing one" is very suitable for Ali, but not suitable for all users
For Alibaba Cloud, "Cloud and Nail One" is a very suitable set of play and strategy in a certain sense.
Most of Alibaba Cloud users and DingTalk users are small and medium-sized enterprises and large users, not many super-large enterprises.
Small and medium-sized enterprise users are generally weak in technology development. With the help of Ali's "cloud and nail integration", it can not only solve the problems of the basic platform, but also solve the problems of application development. "Cloud and nail integration" is also very suitable for these customers.
However, for those ultra-large enterprise users, or enterprise users with personalized needs, the "cloud nailing one" approach cannot meet the needs of these users.
Of course, for Alibaba Cloud, those super large users are not the users they want to cover, so this cloud nail integration is very suitable for Alibaba.
But low code is not suitable for all enterprises. For those large-scale enterprise users or enterprise users with personalized needs, they still have to develop and deploy according to their actual conditions.
▉ Follow-up...
In the end, the girlfriend regained the look in the eyes that worshipped me in the past and realized the importance of me. She promised to set aside time every week to communicate with me and smile proudly!
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