Listen to the WHY of the Power Platform with Charles Lamanna

The Discussion

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  So we want people with little or no developer experience to develop applications, fair enough. However, does this look like after 1 year, 3 years etc. from a company's perspective? Are they building enterprise apps or just personal little apps to make their job easier. This looks like another cluster f**k of little apps floating around that no one is managing. What software engineering practices are these app builders following? This just feels wrong. I could be wrong though so please enlighten me with facts and no marketing crap.

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  Hi Steve,
  
  Thank you for your comment. I have been building applications on what is now the Power Platform (XRM Platform) for around 8 years now for organisations of various sizes, and how an organisation manages any sort of software development even now STILL requires a framework and excellent communication between the users of the application, and those creating the application (regardless of technology).
  
  This episode is about how the Power Platform enables more people to get INTO the development process, and to be part of that communication, building skills of ANY person and not provide a steep learning curve of some other development technologies (I learn't C# from scratch so I can speak from experience).
  
  This allows for greater scale for knowledge within an organisation and also more people to be makers.
  
  This does not mean any software development practices are thrown out of the window, and whatever apps people are building, however many environments organisations are making still needs to be communicated and agreed upon by stakeholders and the business unit who will have ownership within that organisation. The Power Platform pitches the Common Data Service as a technology to unify those applications together, but again, it requires a development framework and communication on what the purpose of those apps are and their value to the organisation.

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  As a full stack developer, my feelings are exactly the same as Steve, the previous commenter. I have watched a lot of videos under the #LessCodeMorePower. As a developer, I found some of the comments to be insulting as well. May be there are places where it would take an engineer 2.5 years to get things done :)
  
  I am full stack developer with 20 years of experience primarily in the MSFT stack. Over the past 20 years, I have been fortunate enough to develop enterprise class applications spanning across Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, Windows Forms, Windows Phone, and the latest advancements in responsive web. Please convince me that Power apps is the way to go to build enterprise class multitenant applications. As an early adapter and someone who developed apps for the windows phone platform, I know very well about the origins of this platform that got folded into the azure/power bi suite of products and rebranded as the power apps. I hate to say, it didn't save the Windows Phone platform. I wish it had.
  
  In my personal opinion, in 10 years from now we are going to be in the same boat with little power apps floating around the enterprise. Vast majority of them will be utter garbage. Like how the android store is now. Look at all the apps developed for windows phone using the no code tool. Currently at work, I see the spreadsheets and MS Access apps developed by the so called Citizen devs hanging around with no one to even maintain it. There is a place for Citizen developers and I have no issues with empowering them to do better things with technology. I can see this empowering the mom and pop stores, who can't afford to have a dedicated IT person. But saying this is going to be the future of software development, I don't know about that. Sorry. But please enlighten me.
  
  CRMCAT, I have no doubt, all the software development best practices and methodologies will be followed if the apps are handled by the IT folks. It becomes a touchy subject when we add "Citizen Developers" to the mix. I am sure there are places where the Citizen devs adhere to the software development principles and methodologies, but I have yet to see one.
  
  One of the foundational principles of object oriented design is "Simple responsibility" principle. Everything has it place for a reason ;)

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  Does not everyone learn C# from scratch or is the patriarchy born with that knowledge, I can see why this industry needs tearing apart and rebuilding

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  Regarding SteveG comment. The language isn't the issue C#, java, python etc. I guess the fundamental issue have we reached a point in time where anyone can create an app. The answer is probably yes. However, in the business world do we want everyone creating an app? Then what apps can they create, how does the business manage that catalog in a SDLC type way etc. What about security etc. What happens when people leave and we have to hire new people who just wanted to do the normal job and not do power platform? I could go on and on by applying critical thinking to the issues we already have with legacy apps and technical debt.
  
  Engineering is engineering and to do it right you should have a good knowledge of it. There is no engineering when end users create power apps. That is it's strength, and weakness. It is up to the business to manage this space which will be critical to doing this successful.
  
  Not sure how SteveG thinks anything about this subject is patriarchal. People have different interests. Some like the Arts and others Engineering. Stop trying to interject your emotion into a logical discussion.
  
  
  
  

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  @Steve:
  
  As with most things there's a spectrum; you take the good with the bad. If you're meeting business needs, or 'personal' needs that help drive business goals... What's the actual issue here? Let's say I make something that is crap, then stop using/updating it. I'm missing the part where this is horrible. Alternatively let's say I make something useful.
  
  One important audience I feel is being left out in all of this is those with 'some knowledge'. Some people know some things, and can leverage the Power Platform (including some adjustments etc. to the 'code'). Stopping here as this discussion is relatively 'dead' anyways =).