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Software Engineering
A Brief History Of Low-Code Development
Back to the roots of visual programming
“Low-code” is a visual programming approach that allows companies to put together software applications relatively quickly using a graphical interface without having to write code directly.
Though the term “low-code development” was introduced in 2016 by a market research institute as a generic term for a number of providers, the idea behind low-code is not new. In this post, we’ll see how this paradigm developed over time and which problems it has faced.
Table of Contents∘ 1970s - 1990s: 4GL
∘ 1990s: Rapid Application Development (RAD)
∘ 2001: Model-Driven Architecture (MDA)
∘ 2007: Mobile Platforms
∘ 2016: Low-Code & LCDP
∘ 2020: An Urgent Need For Digital Transformation
∘ Has Low-Code Learned From History?
1970s— 1990s: 4GL
Low-code development platforms trace their roots back to Fourth-Generation Programming Language (4GL) — a concept that was developed from the 1970s through the 1990s, overlapping most of the development of 3GL.
- 3GL examples: C, C++, Java, Python, PHP, Perl, C#, BASIC, Pascal, Fortran, ALGOL, COBOL
- 4GL examples: ABAP, Unix Shell, SQL, PL/SQL, Oracle Reports, R
In his 1982 book “Applications Development Without Programmers,” James Martin argued that 4GL technologies (such as RAMIS and FOCUS) open up the development environment to a wider population and enable non-programmers to create applications themselves.
The fourth-generation programming languages refer to non-procedural and high-level specification languages and include support for database management, report generation, mathematical optimization, graphical user interface (GUI) development, and web development.
1990s: Rapid Application Development (RAD)
As a response to the Waterfall Model, we’ve seen Rapid Application Development (RAD) gaining momentum in the 1990s when the concept of visually “assemble” desktop applications by using tools like Visual Basic, Delphi, and Oracle Forms became popular.
