No Code Court - The Trial of the Century
On the 4th of November 2021 the no code movement was hauled over the coals in the very first No Code Court event. Accused of crimes against development and technology itself, witnesses for both the prosecution and defence battled it out to decide once and for all, code or no code?
With the Rt. Honourable judge Zandra Moore presiding over discussions, we kicked off first with Frances Odera Matthews, certified notion consultant & digital product nerd at thenotionbar.com.
Odera Matthews claimed the following on behalf of the no code movement:
Faster
Cheaper
Easier
Scalable
Closes the income gap
An impressive opening statement that had the jury swung, straight off the bat.
A swift rebuttal was doled out by the first witness for the prosecution. Daniel Amini of BJSS claimed that six decades of technology failures resulting in ‘carnage, car crash and chaos’ were enough to claim a ‘hype-cycle’, overshadowing the no code movement and everything it stands for.
Amini stood his ground when being cross examined by both the jury and Judge Moore in his claims that “no code is pure evil” and that, “the history of crimes against code must not be repeated!”.
After a scathing dressing down from Amini, the court next saw evidence from the second witness for the defence, Tom Leite of Audacia. Leite stormed into his case claiming that the argument from the prosecution was preposterous! He asked well placed questions and pleaded for the jury to consider some interesting evidence as he cited Mircosoft reporting figures like a 700% growth in production apps using the Power Platform and their launch of “Loop” and posed the question, why are big venture capitalists like Andreessen Horowitz ploughing over $20m in to the UK low-code space?
Leite finished his case with a more diplomatic approach asking the jury to decide if, perhaps, there was a place for collaboration between pro-code and no code and that maybe, we’re not so different when it comes down to it.
Rounding off the evidence for the prosecution was the final witness Lawrence Dudley, director at Parallax.
Lawrence was quick to pick holes in both of the defence witness’ arguments exclaiming that “People who are selling no code are selling their own code”.
He also argued that no code methods can get you 95% of the way there in most situations but the last five percent will always need the help of a ‘grown-up’, a searing blow to the no code defence.
Judge Moore cross-examined the witness and quizzed him on his vehement defiance of the no code movement but Dudley was steadfast in his resolve, much to the shock of some of the members of the jury. His points were not all shock-factor though, there were some well thought-out, experience-led and well delivered pieces of insight from the tech leader.
It looked like the no code movement really was on the ropes and Judge Moore was about to take the court to recess to discuss their findings when suddenly, a surprise witness burst into the room! Ash Wesley of Bad Unicorn stormed the stage with a surprising update! It turns out that Elon Musk himself had tweeted just as the No Code Court was in session, with an expressly pro-no code stance! Wesley also shared evidence of Microsoft shamelessly copying no code platform Notion with their own product ‘Loop’.
With the shock of the new evidence sinking in, the jury were given a recess at last, to order another beer and discuss the nuances of the arguments brought before them.
With the fate of the no code movement hanging in the balance, court was brought back into session where every table had a vote on code or no code. As the foremen of each table declared their vote and summarised their table’s discussions, it was clear that this case was anything but cut and dry. But despite the close call, the vote did reveal that the no code movement prevailed and was named triumphant!
We want to say a huge thanks to everyone involved in the No Code Court, as much as the debate is an important one to have, it was all in good fun and there are no real enemies here! Since the event was such a success, we’re planning on running more No Code Court events in the future! If you’d like to collaborate or suggest a theme for debate, get in touch!