I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve now completed a first draft of a new book on low-code. Given the growing popularity of this concept (even among researchers), I felt there was the need for a book that introduced the key concepts behind the low-code movement in a way that people new to the field could easily grasp.

Goals of the book

I wanted the book to be:

• Short, so that people actually read it. My target was 100 pages, which is a common target for this type of introductory books
• Question-based, so that people can find answers to their questions and, if needed, go directly to the question they are more concerned about
• For non-experts. The book aims to be useful to business people, project managers or even programmers that have heard a lot about this “low-code thing” but never really understood what low-code is, what it entails, ….
• Pragmatic. The self-imposed length constraint helped to make the book pragmatic. Sure, there is much more to say about every low-code aspect I mention in the book but I focused on giving a comprehensive view over a complete one.
• Useful to teachers. As I did with my previous book, we hope the book (and the supplementary material I’ll prepare go to with it) is also useful for teachers and instructors interested in introducing low-code in their courses.
• Not that boring. The book is rigorous but I tried to use an informal style to make it more enjoyable read. Tech concepts should not be boring.

Book index

To help make things more concrete, this is the current index of the book. Take a look and let me know what you think. Am I missing something? Is there any key low-code question you may have (or you think people new to the fields may have) that you don’t see answered here?

1. Basic low-code questions
   • What is NOT low-code?
   • So, what is low-code?
   • Is low-code for me? Can I trust low-code has a bright future?
2. How to create my first low-code application?
   • High-level architecture of a low-code platform
3. What do I need to model?
   • Is UML still relevant today?
   • How do I model the data the app will manage?
   • How do I model the application logic?
   • How do I model the UI of the app?
   • Do I need to manually generate all the models?
   • How can I be sure my models are good?
   • How do I model this other specific dimension that it’s so important for my project?
4. How do I get my APP from the models?
   • Executable models
   • Model interpretation vs model compilation
   • Getting your app up and running via model interpretation
   • Getting your app up and running via model compilation
5. Can I use low-code to generate AI apps?
   • How do I model AI features of smart software systems in low-code tools?
   • Can I create pure AI components using a low-code approach?
   • Modeling a smart system goes beyond modeling the desired behaviour, you need to care about ethical modeling!
6. What low-code tool should I use?
7. How to improve the chances of success of my low-code project?
8. How to build my own low-code tool?
   • What are the first steps?
   • How to create my own modeling language
   • How to create my own code generator
9. How low-code relates to these other software development concepts?
   • Is low-code compatible with agile methodologies?
   • Is no-code the same as low-code?
   • Low-code/no-code approaches
   • Is Generative AI going to kill low-code?
   • Is low-code compatible with domain-driven design approaches?
10. Where is low-code going next?

Interested?

If, as I hope, you think this book could be interesting to you, go here: https://forms.gle/TzVKrfgc78k2pa517 to be among the first to get all news on the upcoming book launch and to provide some feedback that could help me to refine the current draft to make sure it matches your expectations. Highly appreciated!!