Hey HN, I wanted to know the communities thoughts on whether there was any actual difference between no code and SaaS products. Is no code just a new marketing term for more usable SaaS?
Software as a Service includes software with coding in it such as databases. But more importantly, some SaaS products require a lot of customisation and to achive a certain level of customisation you need to code. Think wordpress themes or Salesforce scripting.
NoCode promises a highly customised product that does things that traditionally needed code - like talking to APIs - but without any coding.
Often this means that in reality, you code visually or through a very complex series of dialogues and property lists that are akin to coding. This may however be more accessible or have a lower learning curve - even for an experienced programmer.
SaaS is for any particular use case with a predefined set of rules and workflow specific to that particular use case or industry. No Code is basically a set of lego blocks to build any use cases without writing any code. So definitely there is a major difference. Examples could be https://bubble.io, https://drapcode.com, https://www.adalo.com, https://webflow.com etc.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 20.6 ms ] threadNoCode promises a highly customised product that does things that traditionally needed code - like talking to APIs - but without any coding.
Often this means that in reality, you code visually or through a very complex series of dialogues and property lists that are akin to coding. This may however be more accessible or have a lower learning curve - even for an experienced programmer.
These are more the no code for X, rather than a platform for building an application, if I understand the question you are asking.
Of course Kelsey Hightower has the only true no code app out there and anything else will eventually require code if it becomes economically viable