There's long been a notion in enterprises and small to midsize businesses (SMBs) of the ' power user' or ' citizen developer (Opens in a new window)' : the business users taking it upon themselves to create their own apps, often dabbling in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming in Excel. Part of the value for businesses is in citizen development. The term 'low-code app development' didn't exist until a few years ago but the concept isn't a new one. We took four low-code tools ( Appian (Opens in a new window), Microsoft PowerApps (Opens in a new window), Salesforce Lightning (Opens in a new window), and Zoho Creator (Opens in a new window) ), put them in a room with four developers from our Ziff Davis Tech team for one hour, and watched them try to build a basic app and customize it-without writing a single line of code. How do you build an app without any coding, anyway? This new mode of app creation comes with a lot of questions, and PCMag put the idea to the test.

Is it possible to build a working business application in an hour? Low-code app development platforms like Appian Quick Apps and others are designed to do just that, but how well does the app work on desktop and mobile? How advanced are the features? Is there actually zero coding involved? Are these app builders geared more toward everyday business users or developers? What kinds of tasks are these apps suited for, be it basic collaboration and project management or more complicated use cases? How to Set Up Two-Factor Authentication.How to Record the Screen on Your Windows PC or Mac.How to Convert YouTube Videos to MP3 Files.

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Apps without code