I think this is spot-on. No-code solutions allow non-technical folks in marketing and sales to build some amazing things that would have required teams of software engineers: marketing, shopping cart, and email integrations; email onboarding workflows; complex ad campaigns; better inventory and wholesale sales management; and a lot of other things I'm not creative enough to think of. I've seen an entire application prototype built by a product manager by duct taping Google Sheets, Mailchimp, and a database together with Zapier.

However, their wants always grow just beyond the no-code capabilities, and there's still a need for software engineers for things that haven't been fully solved yet.

> I wish I could just "drop into code" to get something done.

Since you're using PowerPlatform you can prob easily do that with Microsoft's Power FX, built - I believe - especially for this.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/power-fx/ove...

I’ve had a different experience with PowerAutomate.

Both as a no-coder and a user.

As a user the UX is horrible and I’m now swamped with terrible “apps” or “workflows” that people try to get me to use and fail for arcane reasons. Or are just ugly or brittle.

As a no-coder the tools are hit or miss, the docs are bad, and widgets frequently don’t work due to my licensing and there’s no way to know other than to try and see.

It has such promise as the shell scripting equivalent for the cloud what shell was to PCs. But instead it is a costly and difficult thing to use.

> I am an engineer with 20+ years of hands on keyboard, I've got projects that are now part of Apache, 1000's of stars on github. I've been CTO at a number of startups that have got significant funding. My point is to establish some credibility. I probably still suck.

More about being in a right place at a right time, but granted.

> Having said that, I have been working with Microsoft PowerAutomate for the past 1.5 years and while it has saved a lot of time and been overall a good experience, there are times when the no code/low code gets in the way and I wish I could just "drop into code" to get something done. Examples are things like data validation. This technology is not going to replace coding, the paradigm shift is really happening for people in the marketing and sales operations parts of the business. For these folks, this tech is life changing. In a lot of ways, this tech felt like when you try a new framework in your language of choice; at first it's super easy and you get hyped, and then you hit a requirement where the nocode/lowcode environment really gets in the way.

I think higher-level languages with a dual code-graphic representation and a possibility to drop into lower level are an interesting option, but even that is not new - Unreal/Unity3D etc.