ce magazine january 2018 issue

If businesses truly want to truly become innovative app companies, they need to turn every
department into an IT department and make every employee part of the innovation process. If
someone in marketing or finance or HR has an idea for a new app, they should be able to take
matters in their own hands.
Having Everyone Learn to Code is the App-Dev Equivalent of
Creating ‘a Faster Horse’
While everyone today needs to be an app developer, is learning to code really the answer?
Henry Ford said that, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster
horses.” I view everyone learning to code as app development’s version of a faster horse.
What we all really want — and need — is a car.
The industry is falling back on code because for most people, it’s the only thing they know. If
you want to build an application, you have to code it. And if you want to build more apps, then
you have to teach more people how to code, right?
Instead, shouldn’t we be asking whether coding is really the best way to build apps in the first
place? Sure, code will always have a place in the world, but is it the language for the masses?
Is it what we should be teaching everyone, including our kids? Or are there other, easier and
more intuitive ways to build apps? In order to empower everyone to build apps, we need to
focus on bringing greater abstraction and automation to the app development process. We
need to remove code — and all its complexity — from the equation.
My advice? Don’t teach everyone how to code. Teach them how to identify and understand
needs, as well as how to visually express logic. Teach them how technology works, so they can
understand the realm of possibility and then envision game-changing innovations. And then
create an environment where they don’t even have to think about writing code — where
building great apps is as easy as using iTunes. Just drag and drop.
Once we remove the friction from building the next killer app, we’ll finally make the leap from
a horse to a car. And then the innovation race will be on.
Gottfried Sehringer is vice president of marketing for Mendix.
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