Developers are Sleeping on No-Code Automations.
I just pissed a developer off with that title… I’m aware, go ahead and flame me and discredit me as a software developer. However, I think a lot of developers are SLEEPING on the power no-code automation tools can bring into your workflow.
Swallow Your Pride
I know developers are generally naturally curious people who want to tinker and develop their way into success, however, we loose massive leverage if we develop every little thing. Let’s think about what writing a basic piece of software involves:
- You need to have the problem and the solution clearly defined
- You need to have a plan for executing this software solution (this is often times in our head because hobbiest hate documentating their thoughts)
- You need to actually create a way for this code to run: open a git repository if it needs iterations, fire up your IDE and set up a project, download a serverless function template to run on the Internet…
- You need to test the code before deployment, and make sure the code runs as intended. This leads to bug fixing.
Folks, software development takes time and effort. No matter how great you are at programming, or how much experience you have, you are still going to need to write, test, and fix your code. If you can perfectly architect a bridge between two separate APIs using Postman and your noggin, that’s awesome, but I think the rest of us can benefit from a little help.
No-code Is a Big Space
I should clarify, I am NOT saying to write your product in no-code tools. I’m not saying to develop your business around no-code tools (although you probably could). In this article, I am not talking about Bit.io, Bubble, Webflow, etc. Although these tools are great for product validation, they aren’t really powerful in the hands of an experienced developer. I’m talking about Zapier and similar services that provide a simple node-based editor for developing and defining processes.
I am advocating for is the utilization of no-code tools as a supplement to your existing development process, not as a replacement. These platforms allow you to flexibly automate routine tasks through a simple, intuitive interface and have the power to streamline your development tasks in many ways. No-code tools are not here to devalue your coding expertise, but rather serve to optimize your time and efficiency.
Scripting of the Past is No-Code of the Future
Back in the good ol’ computing days, scripting was the magical wand that turned tedious manual jobs into automated processes which could save countless hours and significantly improve productivity for both individuals and companies.
We later turned a lot of this scripting work into software and services which could be plug-and-play solutions, and now we are in the world of software services that are designed for pretty much every task on Earth. In this process, we lost the customizability of a personal script. Sometimes, you just want something that does exactly what you want it to.
Scripting had the same problems I listed above about writing software and testing it, but ultimately, what sucked before no-code automation software was that the feedback cycle for developers was slow. With no-code tools, you can run each node and test each node in a given larger process to make sure you receive the designated results from each component. Each functioning node feels like completing a level in a video game. Your feedback loop is strengthened considerably, and your confidence increases.
All Code Speaks the Language of the Webhook
You can interact with almost any system with webhooks, and almost every tool you use (at least in a web software context) will have an API of which to communicate with the app and perform necessary functions.
Webhooks represent a simple way to establish data flow between applications. No matter what language you’re coding in, they all speak the universal language of the webhook. The application, server, or service may be written in completely different languages, but they communicate using the same protocol, ensuring the efficient and immediate delivery of data.
This simple fact gives you a lot of leverage bringing all systems into a cohesive piece of customized software. Combine it with no-code automations to transform data from Webhook A to Webhook B, and you have integration super powers.
All of a sudden, a lot of the software you pay for in your business is now effectively useless. There are a lot of companies helping you get data from Point A to Point B as integrations. You can save yourself a lot of stress and money by scripting these integrations yourself.
Personal Anecdote
We recently migrated GoalSumo.com’s billing systems between vendors. There were multiple pieces of this puzzle, but basically we moved Zoho Subscriptions to Chargebee Subscription management. All customer payment information was stored on Stripe. All customers had corresponding accounts on these tools, and we had to move over 2000+ user accounts worth of data. Doing this by hand would have been a nightmare, doing this with a CSV file would have been risky and complicated, and doing this with a migration team would have cost $$$$.
Instead, I downloaded the API specs for Zoho Subs and Chargebee, and we moved the integrations 40 accounts at a time, and my involvement was basically monitoring outputs for any irregularities.
We moved 2000+ customer accounts in 14 hours (we could have done it faster, but I wanted to make sure each account was setup correctly), how did we do this? We did it with a no-code script that I built over 2 weeks or so to move 3 or 4 accounts successfully (you need to have a few different cases considered). Once the code was done, it was basically “Watch it run”, and I binged Seinfeld on one screen while clicking “Execute Workflow” on the other. By the way, if you are running a B2C business, run away from Zoho Subscriptions, you’ll thank me later.
Given the stark differences in APIs between Zoho and Chargebee, I don’t think I would have been successful attempting this transformation with code (at least not in the time frame of 2 weeks). I needed the ability to see each step of the transformation process, and verify each step as it proceeded. This was a perfect use for no-code.
Why Developers are the Biggest Beneficiaries of No-Code
As a developer, you understand already how to architect processes, and how to split logic up into smaller workflows and pieces. You are a super-human on a no-code tool because you don’t need (potentially expensive) ready-built integrations, you can simply just use the webhook node in any automation tool to get to where you’re going, and the other nodes provided by your automation tool to transform the data between APIs.
The conversion script for our Zoho -> Chargebee integration probably would have taken someone with zero code experience quite a while to develop. It was fast for myself as a developer, becuase I understood the logic that needed to happen in-between steps. Processes that would have taken hours to create a completely loggable and repeatable process in code, took minutes in an automation tool.
No-code platforms democratize software development to an extent, but they also reinforce and amplify the value that skilled developers bring to the table. They take the superpowers that developers already possess and dial them up a notch for certain scriptable tasks.
My No-Code Setup
Many no-code tools are expensive and provide vendor lock-in. Those who are familiar with my writing know that I am against vendor lock-in and that alone is a detriment to using them. However, this is a fantastic time for No-code open source resources.
N8N
N8N Automation Tool is very similar to Zapier, albeit with a lot less ready-built integrations and a less intuitive user interface. N8N is open source, so we simply just host it ourselves on our own servers and pay $0 for it (other than hosting charges).
We went with N8N over Node-red because it was easier to setup and use for us. Node-red requires a lot of configuration and is a bit less user friendly. N8N allows you to create workflows, test those workflows, and setup webhooks. It also handles easy authentication between APIs for you.
I prefer to do most software integrations directly with their APIs after testing their APIs in Postman. Once you have the API call created in postman, simply copy the curl command, and import it directly into N8N’s webhook node.
Utility Tools For N8N
Some things are a bit of a pain in N8N, like error-handling and storing temporary data. With a few extra utilities, you can go pretty far in customizing N8N to do pretty much anything you want.
Postgres Database
We fixed the error handling issue by creating a Postgres database specifically for utility storage of information of N8N executions, and other utility access.
N8N makes it easy to update a Postgres table with the Postgres node. So, we store the stop and end data of each execution in this Postgres table, and anything that needs further error handling, we just setup a table for it so that we can track certain execution data throughout the process.
Redis Database
The Redis database integration in N8N is also pretty good. We store any temporary auth tokens in the Redis database hooked up to our N8N instance, and simply create a workflow to get the most recent token.
Conclusion
Don’t be afraid to use automation tools to script out solutions for boring and monotonous tasks. If you find yourself having to do something over and over again in your development/business process, reach for no-code to help improve your workflow and go take a walk with the extra time you save :)
