I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve published a new book on low-code (check the low-code book website!). 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 book
- 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, ….
- For non-experts that want to go further. I added a small part that shows how you can even go beyond being a low-code user and get a glimpse of how to create and extend a low-code platform to better fit your needs.
- 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?
- 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?
- How to read this book
- How to create my first low-code application?
- Phase 1 – Modeling your software application
- Phase 2 – Generating your software application
- What do I need to model?
- Is UML still relevant today? Why should I care?
- 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?
- How do I get my APP from the models?
- Executable models
- Model interpretation vs model compilation
- How to get my app via model interpretation?
- How to get my app via model compilation?
- Can I use low-code to generate AI apps?
- How do I model AI features in low-code tools?
- Can I create pure AI components using a low-code approach?
- What else should I keep in mind when modeling AI features?
- What low-code tool should I use?
- How to improve the chances of success of my low-code project?
- 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
- 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?
- Where is low-code going next?
Now available
The book is now available in kindle and paperback versions. Link to Amazon page
Want to use it in class?
If you are a teacher / instructor and want to use the book in your software engineering, modeling, development course,… contact me to get a set of slides explaining the book contents and ready to be used in class. We can also propose practical exercises to be done with our low-code platform BESSER (which is free and open source!). More information at the book’s website.
FNR Pearl Chair. Head of the Software Engineering RDI Unit at LIST. Affiliate Professor at University of Luxembourg. More about me.
Peter Smith’s model (https://www.logicmatters.net/books/) might be useful. He gives away the pdf and does print-on-demand at Amazon. I tend to use both.
Low code is a hype and sure it can be interesting explaining how to use. Another interesting item to explore for pedagogical issues is to analyse what are the main challenges introduced by Generative AI on the fundamental hypothesis of our beloved modelisation frameworks and tools
I don’t have a book for that but there is indeed a chapter on the low-code vs AI relationship. And this is something we have been working on in the team, you can find several posts on our ideas in this blog post (or just ask if you can’t find what you’re looking for)
Congratulations to the author, but even more to the readers, as this type of book is most welcome.
I found the index well covering as it even addresses how to build own tooling as well as address non-technical issues too.
While asked about questions to be answered one would be the application areas in which low-code is suited. Today most of these target enterprise webapps but what about others?
As you say, right now, the application areas of low-code tools is very business oriented. Mostly (IMHO) because low-code tools come with a fixed language so you can only target what the low-code platforms “wants” you to target. I think we’ll probably see low-code tools specialized in other domains but right now it’s clear they aim to exploit the business-oriented, data-driven, applications
Time will tell for sure, but perhaps one direction could be inspecting the areas in which low-code environments (as in section 8, modeling languages and code generators) are already built. For example, tens at https://dsmforum.org/cases.html. A subject for future research, masters thesis etc?
Absolutely. It would be indeed very interesting to conduct a survey on these case studies and compare them across several dimensions, not only in terms of the DSLs (e.g. complexity of the DSLs themselves) but also in terms of the functionalities implemented, and see what patterns we see emerging there!