No-Code App Builder Article on Medium

There's an interesting 2-part article by Serhii Pospielov on Medium about creating no-code mobile apps. The first half is titled Best No-Code App Builders (Part 1) and if you have a membership on Medium, it's a good read. The author's goal was to create a clone of the IMDB app without using custom code if possible.

The article covers the author's attempt to build his app on five different no-code/low-code platforms: Appery, AppGyver, Thunkable, Adalo, and Microsoft PowerApps. In addition to being able to create an app with all the features of the IMDB application, each platform had to be able to create an application that could be exported to Android and iOS, in order to publish it to the market.

You can read about the author's attempts to build the app at:

https://medium.com/swlh/best-no-code-app-builders-part-1-97e70b67769f 

A Belated Welcome to Zoho Creator 6

In October of last year, Zoho introduced Zoho Creator 6, a new version of their no-code/low-code application development platform. C6 includes an extension of some existing features and a number of completely new features. Here's a quick summary of what's available in the new version 6:

• Even more APIs (now over 600 of them) to allow developers to connect to almost any external web service.
• The ability to allow teams to collaborate in every stage of application development. Features include different permissions for different team members, change logs to keep track of who changed what and when, the ability to send notifications to other team members, and separate testing and production environments.
•  A "blueprint" screen where you can build a flowchart defining how to automate a particular business process, including decision point criteria, responsible parties, possible options, and connections to other business processes.
• Zoho's new conversational AI assistant "Zia".
• A business analytics builder designed to provide meaningful insights on real-time information and help automate tasks on the go. In addition, you can utilize Zia to get immediate answers to your questions and auto-generate visualizations.
• A robotic process automation feature to help businesses automate repetitive  tasks, such as moving files from one digital location to another without human intervention. Just define a set of instructions for the bot to carry out.

You Don't Need to Start From Scratch - Use a Template

You've got an application you want to build using a no-code platform - but you're not really sure how to design the app. That's where app templates come in. They provide you with a blueprint of what data tables, forms and reports you may need and how data should flow through the system. 

But what if you can't find a template that matches up with the type of application you want to create? A template may still be your answer. Just look for one that includes the same basic functions that you need in your app. For example, Caspio has a detailed video tutorial on how to build their "Patient Portal" app that allows patients to self-register, log in, check for messages from their doctors and review their prior visits including who they were seen by, what medical information was recorded and what comments were left by the doctor who examined them. In addition the Patient Portal allows doctors to log in, see a list of their patients, filter that list in different ways, track patients by status or number of visits, and edit patient detail information.

But what if you need to create an app for a cardiac rehabilitation facility? That's an application that's really very similar to the "Patent Portal" in many ways. To use the patient portal template all you really have to do is make a few changes to the "Visits" data table. You still want to keep track of a patient's temperature, weight and blood pressure for each rehab session, you just need to add a few items relating to the individual's workout on equipment like the treadmill or stationary bike. 

Just add fields to the "Visits" data table for time spent on each piece of equipment, the patient's RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) and their METs value (exercise rate) for their time on that equipment and you have the basic information (along with blood pressure readings) that needs to be recorded for a given session. The rest of the framework for the Patient Portal template can be used pretty much as is, with only minor modifications.

But what is you want to build an app for Rottweiler owners to share stories about their dogs, plan events and communicate with vets and dog trainers? Even though the Patient Portal seems like an unlikely match, the basic functions aren't all that different. Instead of doctors you have administrators, club members instead of patients, and member or administrator posts instead of visits. Club members should be able to log in, check for messages, ask questions, share stories and, if their dogs compete in canine sports, keep track of their dog's performance in competitions like agility or lure coursing. 

If you're stuck as to exactly how to get started on developing your app and don't immediately see a ready-made template for your particular type of application, stop and think. Consider what functions your app needs to perform and what types of programs might utilize those same functions, then go back and take a second look at the available templates. You might just find what you need after all. 

Amazon SageMaker Canvas

The two biggest trends in no-code right now are office automation and machine learning applications. The ability to predict business outcomes is extremely important to any organization and the ability to build the models to generate those predictions is driving the surge in no-code machine learning application development. 

Recently, Amazon released SageMaker Canvas, its new platform that's designed to allow every decision-maker in an organization to create predictive models based on the data they work with every day, without the need to be a data scientist. SageMaker Canvas lets the user gather data from different sources on-premises or online, choose which datasets to import into Canvas, pick the columns to use as input and correct any missing or inaccurate records. Once that's done Canvas uses the imported data to generate and test multiple predictive models and recommends the best performing model to the user. Users can select to make changes as far as which dataset columns to use for training and Canvas will continue to run tests until a final model is chosen.

As of last November, SageMaker Canvas was only available in certain areas in the U.S. and Europe but that should change in the near future. You can see an actual  example of how to use Canvas in making shipping predictions at:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/announcing-amazon-sagemaker-canvas-a-visual-no-code-machine-learning-capability-for-business-analysts/ 

Airtable Adds an Interface Designer

In November of last year Airtable announced a major new feature, a visual interface designer. In the past, the methods for presenting an interface other than the spreadsheet view were pretty limited. Now you can use a simple drag-and-drop builder to create a user interface and connect it to your data, so any user action on the interface automatically updates the data in your base. You just choose a layout, import a table from your base and start adding design elements to the interface.

There are four layouts to choose from for your interface:

• Record Review - All the records in the base are shown in summary on the left side of the screen - clicking on any one of them displays the entire record so it can be edited. You can also filter the data sent to the interface so that only the records you want to show are actually displayed.
• Record Summary - If you want to work with one record at a time without rapidly moving back and forth between records, this layout allows you to use the entire screen to display all the detail for a given record.
• Dashboard - The Dashboard layout focuses on presenting key data visually primarily in the form of graphs and charts. 
• Blank - If you need an interface that doesn't fit into the other three categories, you can choose the blank layout and create a custom interface by adding whatever elements you want.

Elements that you can add to your interface include:

• Text boxes to hold text content
• Dividers to separate sections of the interface screen
• Charts
• Number boxes
• Grid elements to hold table data
• Timeline elements
• Comment boxes

You can find additional information at: 

  https://www.airtable.com/guides/collaborate/getting-started-with-interface-designer 

Another Bubble.io

 Anyone who has been exposed to world of no-code is probably familiar with bubble.io, one of the most popular no-code development platforms. Yesterday I ran across another Bubble.io though - an award-winning augmented reality app developed for the 2018 Seattle AR/VR Hackathon. The app isn't a "no-code" product but it caught my interest because of the name and because augmented reality is rapidly making its way into the world of no-code.

What exactly is "augmented reality"? It's loosely defined as digital information superimposed on real world objects. If you watch college or NFL football you're familiar with that yellow "first down" line that you see on your TV. Or maybe you've used an app that shows how different pairs of reading glasses would look on your face in real life. Those are both examples of augmented reality and there are more examples popping up every day. 

If you look at most lists of emerging trends in both the private and business sectors, you'll find augmented reality as one of the main areas to keep an eye on. No-code platforms are also adding AR features, one example being Appy Pie's built-in AR/VR App Builder. Other platforms may not have integrated AR into their system yet, but you're starting to see AR plugins and I expect that trend to grow significantly in 2022.

What can you create with augmented reality? The Bubble.io app is a great example of the possible uses for AR applications. People like myself who have suffered significant hearing loss can find it really difficult at times to understand what other people are saying. Bubble.io utilizes augmented reality to provide real time closed captioning for individuals who are hearing impaired. It differentiates between speakers and displays speech "bubbles" showing what each person is saying as they say it. 

You can see an example of the Bubble.io app at work at:   https://eskandari.me/bubble-io

New Series on No-Code Coming Soon on Webflow TV

Webflow TV is planning to launch a new series on the growth of no-code, beginning in early 2022. The announcement reads:

No-code web development is changing the game and helping people close the gap between idea and impact. Generation No-Code, goes behind the curtain to tell real stories of how agencies, entrepreneurs, and creatives are becoming more empowered on the web — and using no-code tools to pursue their dreams. See firsthand the impact no-code is having on today’s visionaries and get inspired by their passion and drive. Generation No-Code is directed by Matthew Encina and the first episode will premiere in early 2022 on Webflow TV. (https://webflow.com/tv)

Stay tuned for further information...

A Template for Designers, Writers and Developers

Zeroqode (www.zeroqode.com) has an interesting no-code template that could be useful for anyone who wants to build an app to display their projects, including things like other apps, books, artwork, etc. Here's the description for "Archimist":

Archimist no-code template is designed to help you build an app without code which allows you to showcase your works, add and delete projects, add team members, design articles and more. This fully functional and responsive template is suitable for architectural, interior design, construction practices etc. It will make your work look more impressive and attractive to viewers and potential customers.

Features:
- Filterable & Integrated projects/portfolio
- Newsletters subscription to mailchimp
- Micro Blog/News page
- Well designed dashboard
- Fully responsive pages
- Sharing buttons for blog
- Minimalist Design

GPT-3 Now Available to All Developers

OpenAI has just made GPT-3 generally available to all developers (in supported countries). What is GPT-3? Wikipedia defines Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 as an autoregressive language model that uses a deep learning neural network to produce human-like text. In other words, GPT-3 can automatically write news stories and articles, create blog posts, compose poetry, and more, in addition to generating working program code in more than a dozen programming languages. GPT-3 is also being used to develop conversational models which can respond to comments or questions with replies that fit the context of the conversation.

The potential for GPT-3 continues to grow with new applications showing up almost every day. For instance, one developer has combined Figma's user interface prototyping with GPT-3 to create websites just by describing the desired type of website in a couple of sentences. Another example of GPT-3's flexibility is its ability to convert program code from one language to another using CodeX, GPT-3's code generator. Mark Ryan has even been able to use CodeX to convert old COBOL legacy code into usable JavaScript routines (https://towardsdatascience.com/codex-translates-cobol-into-javascript-266205d606c0). You can find dozens of other examples of what's possible with GPT-3 by going to:https://gpt3demo.com/. 

There are a number of known weaknesses in GPT-3 though: 

• The model is pre-trained - it doesn't continue to learn from each interaction.
• If the Internet material that was used to train GPT-3 included biased content, GPT-3 will tend to exhibit those same biases.
• GPT-3 can only accept a limited amount of input for each interaction, so the input has to adequately describe the desired result.

Plus GPT-3 also has a dark side. According to an article on VentureBeat.com, "the Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism found that GPT-3 can generate “influential” text that could radicalize people into far-right extremist ideologies. A group at Georgetown University has used GPT-3 to generate misinformation, including stories around a false narrative, articles altered to push a bogus perspective, and tweets riffing on particular points of disinformation."

OpenAI does have guidelines that specify what type of content GPT-3 can and can't be used to create and filters to try to detect models that violate those guidelines. However, like many other advances in technology, it's still an open question as to whether tools like GPT-3 can be supervised effectively and what their overall effect will be. 

So what's the future of GPT-3 and similar deep learning models? The best answer  is that OpenAI and other organizations specializing in neural network applications are already hard at work attempting to develop even more advanced deep learning models. There's no turning back at this point, so hopefully GPT-3 and its successors will avoid the "AI is going to take over" stigma and turn out to produce more benefits than problems.

Glide Pages

 Glide (www.glideapps.com) has been one of the top choices for anyone looking to create mobile apps without coding, but they have just added the "missing piece" to their platform. With the introduction of "Glide Pages", you now have the ability to create responsive web apps and websites in addition to native mobile applications. 

You build Glide "pages" by dragging and dropping "Collections" onto the design screen. There are different types of Collections for different types of data - "cards" for images and "grids", "table b" and "lists" for tabular data. You can also attach "actions" to collection objects, items within a collection and other design components. Actions include updating records, showing notifications and calling webhooks (webhooks are a mechanism for applications to communicate with each other). 

Since apps created with Glide Pages are actually web-based, it's easy to provide people with access to your application just by setting up a web "portal" and providing users with the URL for that web page. Setting up a portal also allows you to create a secure environment by requiring user logins, where each user only has access to the data specified for their particular group or role.

You can find more detailed information on Glide Pages at:

"https://docs.glideapps.com/all/courses/introduction-to-pages"  and 

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhGbbUUFzVk"

Data Cleaning with No-Code

What is “data cleaning” and why do it?

Almost every organization has missing, incomplete, duplicated, inaccurate or otherwise unreliable records in their spreadsheets or database. In order to work with that data to produce meaningful information those records have to be repaired or deleted - “cleaned” in other words. Doing that by hand is time-consuming, error-prone and expensive and creating a program to do the work requires coding expertise.  Now however, there are no-code platforms that can help businesses repair their data automatically, without doing any program coding. 

What is “cleaned” data used for?

In recent years more and more organizations are using their accumulated historical data to create data visualizations and to train machine learning models. Errors in the input data due to missing, incomplete or invalid fields will lead to invalid or inaccurate results from machine learning models trained on that data.

How does a no-code data cleaning site work?

Generally you import your raw data, make sure all the columns are showing with the correct type of data in each column, and then you select to start cleaning. At that point you can normally set up cleaning rules or "transformations" for each particular column. A cleaning rule might be "Remove duplicate values" or "Replace any missing values with the word 'Unknown'" or "Remove any rows with a value over $999 in this column". Once the data has been cleaned you can visually spot check it to make corrections manually or to make sure that you didn't leave out any necessary transformations. Then you should be able to export the cleaned data as a CSV file that can be used as input for a "no-code" machine learning platform.

Where can I find a no-code data cleaning platform?

There are a number of platforms that allow you to clean raw data without needing to do any coding. Probably the most complete platform at the moment is Amazon Web Services' Glue DataBrew; you can find a detailed explanation of how it works and what options you have available with it at:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/announcing-aws-glue-databrew-a-visual-data-preparation-tool-that-helps-you-clean-and-normalize-data-faster/ 

Walmart Joins the No-Code Revolution

Walmart is in the process of acquiring Botmock, a no-code startup that has developed specialized software that allows anyone with a little technical knowledge to build and deploy conversational apps. Botmock's interface creates program code automatically as the user constructs conversational flows.

Walmart's customers rely more and more on being able to shop using voice and text apps, which normally take a lot of trial and error to develop. Cheryl Alnoa, a senior vice president with Walmart presented this example:

“Building seamless interactions for voice or chat is a rather difficult design problem where we have to consider all kinds of conversational flows that depend on the individual situation and customer needs,” said Ainoa. “For example, if a customer uses their voice to create their weekly shopping cart, they could say, ‘Add milk to my shopping cart.’ The correct action and reaction to the customer will depend on several factors, including if the customer has bought milk in the past, what type of milk they prefer (e.g. 2%, non-fat, etc.). Do you already have a type of milk in your shopping cart? If so, should we ask if you want to change the quantity or let you know that you already have it in your cart? “

With Botmock's technology, applications like this one can be put together in days rather than weeks or months. Considering the savings in time and effort that are possible now, Walmart hopes to have the new voice and text app features available to all the companies in the Walmart family in the very near future.

Zoho One - Zoho's "Business Operating System"

I've posted before about Zoho Creator, Zoho's no-code/low-code app development platform. Creator is one of the oldest and easiest platforms to work with, but it's just one of numerous products in the Zoho family, which includes Zoho CRM, Zoho Forms, Zoho Sheets, and Zoho Books among others. Back in 2017 Zoho combined access to these applications in a single product called "Zoho One", which they refer to as a "business operating system". The latest version of Zoho One was released earlier this month and it offers a truly integrated package of applications - and what's really nice is that wirh Zoho Creator you can create custom apps that can exchange data with Zoho One applications.

Zoho One now includes over 50 applications and services, all available in one unified user interface. In addition, there is support for adding third party services by means of API connections. Here are a few of the applications and services in the suite:

• Sales
• Zoho CRM - A Customer Relations Management app that can be used by any size business.
• Zoho Bigin - A CRM for small to medium sized businesses.
• Zoho Sites - Build no-code websites.
• Marketing
• Zoho Forms - Simple mobile form maker.
• Zoho Survey - Create online surveys and questionnaires.
• Zoho Commerce - Allows users to build a website/store, take orders, track inventory, process payments, manage shipping, market products or services and analyze collected sales data. 
• Support
• Zoho Lens - Provide online support for users with the help of a  smartphone camera and augmented reality software.
• Productivity
• Zoho Mail - Provides email services for personal and normal business email.
• Zoho Projects - Project management software.
• Zoho Connect - Team collaboration software.
• Zoho Learn - Knowledge management and learning software.
• Finance
• Zoho Books - Online accounting software.
• Zoho Invoice - Online invoicing software.
• Zoho Inventory - Online inventory management software.
• HR
• Zoho People - Online human resources management software.
• Business Process
• Zoho Analytics - Business intelligence and data analysis software.
• Zoho Data Prep - Data cleaning software.
• Zoho Creator - Develop custom applications without coding and interface with other Zoho products and third party services.

Interfacing Zoho Creator with other Zoho applications does require some (small amount) of JavaScript or HTML coding, but there are lots of examples online to guide you. Even when you need to modify the coding in the examples the changes or additions are normally self-evident. Overall, Zoho offers an interesting option for customers looking for a comprehensive, integrated business management system that can be customized with no-code apps.

By the way, if you're wondering how popular Zoho and Zoho One are, here are some figures about how many people use Zoho:

"Zoho recently celebrated its 25th anniversary and has grown to over ten thousand employees in the last twenty-five years. Zoho has seventy million users in one hundred and eighty different countries. Zoho One has over forty thousand customers, with the largest customer having thirty-two thousand employees.

You can find out more about Zoho One on YouTube at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dgn9rIKLDI 

Building a Predictive App with Zoho Creator

Zoho Creator is another no-code/low-code app builder that allows you to create machine learning apps. You can find an example of how to make use of Zoho's AI features by going to:

https://zoho.com/creator/newhelp/forms/fields/prediction/add.html

I decided to go through the steps to build a simple machine learning app to estimate the selling price of a home, given certain information about the home. Starting with a blank app design, I added fields for the estimated selling price, the age of the house, its size in square feet, the number of bedrooms, the number of bathrooms and the exterior (brick, wood paneling, or rock). Then I selected a “Prediction” field which started the Prediction Builder. The Builder asks you to select the fields for estimated price and for the different parameters or fields that would affect the price:

Next, you define your training data – whether you want to use all records or just specific records. In my case I went ahead and chose “All Records”:

Choosing “Specific records” will make the AI use only those records that satisfy the criteria for building the predictive model.

Next, the Builder displays your choices and prompts you to add a Prediction field:

To train the machine learning model to estimate a selling price you need to supply the model with data by importing appropriate records or entering records manually. It can take quite some time for the model to assimilate enough data to make predictions about an estimated selling price. In the meantime, you can check on how the prediction field's training is progressing by editing the input form, clicking on the prediction field and scrolling down the field properties to “Model Details”.

In my case, after entering 20 or so records, the description under “Model Details” reads “Model training is in progress”:

Once the model absorbs enough data, its Accuracy rating will be displayed under “Model Details”, along with a “Retrain” button which you can use to retrain the model if necessary.

Zoho Creator offers several other AI fields in addition to the Prediction field:

• Keyword Extraction field – This type of AI field analyzes the text in a single or multi-line text field and extracts one or more “keywords”, which are stored as a comma-separated list. As an example, you could use keyword extraction to search through customer comments and find particular words such as “happy”, “great”, “unhappy”, “flimsy”, and so on. It could also be used to scan the text in a webpage for references to a subject you're researching, such as “dark matter” or “no-code programming”.

• Sentiment Analysis field – A sentiment analysis field is used to scan a single or multi-line text field and determine if the tone of that text is positive, negative, or neutral.

• OCR field – The Optical Character Recognition field allows you to extract the text from an image stored on Zoho Creator. It can recognize JPG, JPEG and PNG image formats and can be used to do things like extract the text from a picture of an invoice or a business card.

• Object detection field – An object detection field can identify the type of objects in a Zoho Creator image field. The objects detected will be displayed as a comma-separated list (for example: “clock”, “table”, “chairs”). The OCR field is capable of detecting a variety of objects, ranging from cats and dogs to stop signs and traffic lights to laptops and microwaves. You can find a complete list at: https://www.zoho.com/creator/newhelp/forms/fields/object-detection/

Creating an Online No-Code Course

What does it take to create an online course that has something to do with the no-code movement? It takes time, patience, and several other things: 

• Do some research. Explore the popular online course websites like Udemy,  Skillshare, Thinkific, Simplilearn, and Teachable and look for areas of no-code development that aren't well represented (or represented at all). For example, Kintone is a highly-rated no-code/low-code app development platform, but currently there are no English-language courses on Udemy dealing with Kintone. You may also come up with a twist on the usual tutorial courses. There are a number of courses on Mendix on Udemy, but there's also a course that's simple a set of 3 practice tests to help you pass Mendix's "Rapid Developer" certification test.
• Find out what subjects are the most popular before you decide on exactly what your course will cover. Of course you'll want to check on the number of people signing up for similar courses on platforms that host online courses, but don't stop there. Look at books on Amazon related to your course content and see how many reviews those books are getting and how high they rank. Do the same thing with no-code blogs and forums, as well as any no-code Facebook groups.
• Find a niche. Once you have a general idea of what type of course material you want to cover, consider narrowing it down to a more specific area and still attract students. It's somewhat similar to publishing a book on Amazon - if your subject is too general it can get lost in among a lot of other books (or courses in this case) that are covering the same material.
• Make sure what each platform provides. You're going to want a platform that:
• Allows users to access your course on the web, by phone or on their tablet.
• Provides a forum for the people enrolled in your course.
• Offers polls and surveys to provide feedback on how people rate your course, both the content and the presentation.
• The ability to have students upload course materials.
• A built-in mechanism to handle payments and refunds.
• Build the course. Don't be concerned about making the perfect version of your course right way, follow the same procedure that you would when creating a no-code app and start out with a Minimum Viable Product. You can add all the extras once you get some feedback on what your students like and don't like about the course. Here are some additional tips to keep in mind:
• Micro-learning is a popular concept now for a reason. People tend to learn more easily when information is dished out in small bites. Do the same thing with each lesson in your course - keep the lessons short and focused on one specific topic.
• To some extent use the method of "say it, then say it again" (or "show it", then "say it again") to try to emphasize main points in your presentation.
• The majority of people who sign up for an online course never complete the course. Try to gamify things in some way to keep students engaged, maybe offer some special tips or advice for those who reach certain points in the course or points that can be used to purchase additional material.
• Make sure you have a discussion group for students who have questions or feedback or just want to talk about things that sparked their interest.
• Don't let inexperience stop you. If you're not sure how to put together an online course there is (somewhat ironically) a course on Udemy on creating online courses, plus there are a number of websites like Snapcourse that can help you build your presentation (or build it for you for a fee).

Guest Post: Reasons for Becoming a Freelance Coder and How to Succeed in This Competitive Field

Normally we focus on "no code", but it doesn't hurt (and in fact it can help) to have a background as a "coder". Today's post is a guest article from Chelsea Lamb, co-founder and head tech writer at Business Pop. She provides some valuable advice for anyone interested in becoming a freelance software programmer.

Observers of employment trends have noticed an enormous surge in freelancers. Today, freelancers account for approximately 35% of the world's workforce. At the same time, businesses and customers are becoming increasingly connected with technology. Now is the perfect time to establish yourself as an independent programmer. Mastering No-Code shares some essential information about making the leap into coding for a living.

Why Businesses Need Coders

These days, every company needs programmers to thrive. For instance, having a presence on the web is vital no matter what you're selling. Website building services are okay for personal sites, but they can look amateurish. They also limit you in terms of design choices and the implementation of cutting-edge features.

Further, companies are constantly going paperless and doing more virtually. Therefore, having a debugging expert on speed dial has become particularly valuable. If you have the skills to go further, you might be the person that gets hired to implement companywide upgrades.

How to Become a Coder

The first step toward becoming a successful coderpreneur is learning multiple programming languages. Seek out coding schools where you can learn the ones that are the most in-demand. If you lack experience coding professionally, start by contributing to open source projects. Stay current with everything new in coding; read newsletters, join coder forums, and subscribe to the biggest tech-oriented publications.

How to Market Yourself as a Coder

As with any other business, you need to sell your services. Start with creating an online presence that breaks down your skills and shines a spotlight on your achievements. Don't forget to include a prominent, easy way for browsers to email you. Remember that your site needs to appeal to a wide array of customers, so stay away from jargon. Explain every industry term you do use so a general audience can understand your message.

Advertise your abilities on social media by creating highly shareable posts. Keep in mind that video content has become increasingly popular. Purchasing banner ads is another excellent idea. Never forget about the importance of search engine optimization. 

Follow up with every satisfied customer and request referrals. This technique offers one of the most effective ways of maintaining a steady coding business. Lay off high-pressure techniques and incentivize customers to send people your way by extending a future discount. Remind clients of your availability by leaving business cards or hanging flyers on corporate bulletin boards. Drop off extras for people to distribute with friends and family who might need your high-tech services.

How To Work With Clients as a Coder

Finding success as a coder is about more than excelling as a programmer. You also have to charge the right fee. Decide on your rates before meeting with potential clients. Compare yourself with other coders around the world to figure out how much you should be billing.

How you engage with customers has a massive impact. Take the time to improve your communication skills. Avoid talking in ways that non-coders can't understand. Learning to anticipate client needs is also incredibly important. This skill alone vastly increases how much people want to hire you.

Becoming a freelance coder can be personally satisfying as well as lucrative. Gaining a foothold in this field, however, requires the right approach. Map out a plan that preemptively squashes any bugs you're likely to encounter.

Appian is Adding an Important New Feature

Appian acquired process mining start-up Lana Labs recently, in order to add an important new component to their low-code platform. "Process mining" looks at the work people are doing in an organization and tries to find repeatable processes in that work, processes that can be automated to improve efficiency and accuracy. By adding Lana Labs to their system, Appian offers the ability to determine processes that can be automated and provide the low-code tools to create those automations. 

For anyone looking to provide business automation services Appian is now one possible platform that you can use to identify and build those processes in an integrated environment. The pandemic spurred the move to "digital transformation" of business workflows and systems like Appian's offer an inexpensive and efficient way to help businesses join that movement.

The Ultimate No-Code Platform

Recently I wrote a post about OpenAI's "Codex", which translates natural English language into ready-to-use program code in any number of different programming languages. Codex is currently in beta release and is still in its infant stages, but eventually OpenAI hopes that it can be used to interact with existing program code simply by issuing spoken instructions. That would open up a lot of possibilities - including one that caught my attention over the weekend.

There are still millions of lines of COBOL code out there in the business world, running thousands of major software systems. Converting all those programs to a more modern platform would be a huge task. However, I came across a video this past Saturday about using Codex to automatically translate between Python and COBOL ("Codex translates COBOL to Python", by Mark Ryan, Oct. 3, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTIk2fifO50). As somebody who has done considerable programming in COBOL over the years, I was really interested in whether Codex could manage to actually translate COBOL code into Python program code (and vice versa).

To test the ability to convert back and forth between the two languages, Mark went to the Codex "playground", entered a very basic "hello world" program in Python and had Codex generate the equivalent code in COBOL. Running Codex's generated code in OpenCOBOL's IDE showed that Codex can indeed handle very simple COBOL programs. However, Codex failed to convert a slightly more complex Python program into valid COBOL code - but it did manage to successfully convert the COBOL version of that program into a valid Python program.

That's a really intriguing result, considering the level of interest in translating a lot of COBOL legacy code into Python or some other language that's in common use today. It's probably still a way off into the future, but Codex could eventually turn out to be the answer to modernizing a lot of those COBOL programs that are still running some of our most important business systems.

Making Money with No-Code

 For most of us the question comes up at some point: how can I make some money working with no-code? The answer is there are quite a few ways to monetize your interest in no-code - some with more earnings potential than others, but they can all bring in some extra dollars. Here's a short list of possibilities:

• Create a business-oriented web app and market it to local businesses.
• Create a mobile app focused on social networking and market it to local organizations.
• Create a website for a local business.
• Create an online course on websites like Udemy, Udacity, or Skillshare.
• Offer your services as a tutor for others trying to learn how to use a no-code platform.
• Create a YouTube channel to discuss all things no-code.
• Start a blog about no-code.
• Offer to provide guest posts about no-code programming on other people's blogs.
• Write an e-book about visual programming and no-code platforms.
• Volunteer to help a non-profit develop a no-code app or website to build your portfolio and attract paid jobs.
• Provide assistance to other developers on how to make an app that they can market successfully (including App Store Optimization tips for mobile apps).
• Create an account on Fiverr and market your services, explaining how you as a no-code specialist can create an app much faster and cheaper than a traditional programmer.
• Offer to help local businesses automate their business processes to cut down on duplication of effort and reduce errors.

Have an Idea for an App but Want to Make Sure it Looks "Professional"?

Maybe you have a great idea for a no-code app but you're not sure you can make it look "professional" enough. One answer is to try starting from an app template. Most no-code platforms offer at least some customizable templates that provide well-designed page layouts and a slick-looking user interface. Bubble for example has dozens of templates available and you can additional samples on Zero Quode (www.zeroquode.com).

Keep in mind, you don't have to find an exact match with the application you're planning. One of my favorite examples is Caspio's "patient portal" template (https://www.caspio.com/apps/patient-portal/).  It's designed as a communications center for doctors and their patients and includes:

• A new patient registration form
• Patient and medical personnel login pages
• A patient profile page
• A patient information page (showing the patient's prior visits along with any doctor's notes and recommendations)
• Message center for exchanging messages between doctors and patients
• A doctor's dashboard showing data such as visits and messages by patient and a chart of patients by medical status
• A patient list page where each doctor can see view details on the status of each of their patients

That same design can be used for other applications though. For instance if you wanted to build an app for a fitness center that offers guided fitness plans for members. You could use the same basic layout except that:

• The new patient form becomes a new member form
• The login pages are for members and fitness center staff members
• The message center allows a member to exchange messages with the personal trainer assigned to them
• The patient (or "member") information page shows each visit to the center by that member and what they did on that visit (what exercises, number of reps, dietary notes, etc.)
• And the doctor's pages become the pages for the center's personal trainers or "fitness counselors".

You can use a similar approach to almost any app, you just need to find a template that covers the same basic functions as the application you want to build. Some of the templates available for no-code projects are free, others may cost a few dollars or a few hundred dollars. In the long run even an expensive template may be worth the investment if it saves you considerable time and effort and provides the professional look you want for your application. Check out a few of the ready-made templates available online and see if one of them can work for your project.