Low-Code Is Often High-Code, So We Must Design Low-Code Platforms to Enable Proper Software Engineering.

The concept of low-code (and no-code) platforms has been around for decades, even before the term was used. The idea is that applications on these platforms can be built by people with less technical expertise than a professional programmer, yet can leverage powerful technology such as, for example, for databases, financial analysis, web development and machine learning. However, in practice, software written on such platforms often accumulates large volumes of complex code, which can be worse to maintain than in traditional languages because the low-code platforms tend not to properly support good engineering practices such as version control, separation of concerns, automated testing and literate programming. In this paper we discuss experiences with several low-code platforms and provide suggestions for directions forward towards an era where the benefits of low-code can be obtained without accumulation of technical debt. Our recommendations focus on ensuring low-code platforms enable scaling, understandability, documentability, testability, vendor-independence, and the overall user experience for developers those end-users who do some development.