Legacy fuel, modern low-code hybrid or hyper agile electric?
Carlos Costa, March 10, 2021
Nicolas Tesla allegedly told Henry Ford that he did not believe that people wanted to travel with an explosive liquid tank next to them. He was wrong. Profit from oil dictated the rules and convinced people that there was nothing to do. For over a century! Strange, isn’t it?
During the last 100 years, combustion engine cars have dominated the world. They have fed and continue to provide many businesses and families, but the environmental damage they have done and still do is incalculable. Toxic fumes, noises, oils, many mechanical parts, heavy maintenance costs… The list is endless.
For many years, we have had the technology to change this, to make our car fleet simpler and more environmentally friendly. But the “interests” installed in this industry have stopped this change via all marketing means at their disposal. Over time, they have managed to adapt to the constant threat of electric vehicles (EVs), which, I am not sure if you know, were invented first than combustion engine cars.
With quieter engines, less polluting fuels, and, in the last few years, even with a start-stop, to give the idea of environmental friendship, legacy fuel cars have recently reached the maximum exponent of this schizophrenia with hybrids. Yes, a car with two energy sources and two types of engines, with significant autonomy and low consumption, to shut up once and for all those who defend this EV thing. They were wrong. The founder of the company Tesla, producer of the most famous EVs globally, is today the richest man on the planet. And the entire automotive industry is in an unprecedented deep wave of accelerated electrical transformation, trying not to lose the comfortable position it has held for so many decades.
“I HAVE 200 PROGRAMMERS, AND I NEED 300!”
This is what a CIO told me some time ago. “No! You only need 100!” – I answered him. And while I briefly explained the advantages of model-driven hyper agile development, he gave me his card to set up a meeting.
The software industry is also experiencing a similar situation. The “combustion software” will be all that software made in ancient languages. That is the case with Cobol, Clipper, Fortran, and more updated languages, such as C++ and Java. These are often delivered in fixed packages that evolve very slowly at the producers and will not meet the client’s specificities.
That is a massive business of resellers and integrators who give a few touches around them to provide the illusion of customization. With the constant changes in business and technology, everyone (as in the software producer market) wins more money. The client believes there is nothing he/she could do and pays what is necessary without protesting too much, just like endlessly sitting on a deposit of explosive fuel protesting, but without leaving. Recently, just like in hybrid cars, some fast development platforms, better known as low-code, have appeared to create these customizations around the packages.
A schizophrenic state which keeps the whole software business ecosystem on the rise, with low efficiency, high costs, and rigidity of change for the primary and most important stakeholder: the client. Suffocated by the pressures of digital transformation, the CIO calls for more money and resources for its software development teams, when it should and could substantially reduce them, increasing the application development and upgrade process’s effectiveness.
For many years now, there have been modeling and automatic code generation platforms that allow a different approach to delivering software solutions, as is the case with Genio from Quidgest – just like EVs, who are much faster at start-up, and more user and manager friendly. This platform has more than 30 years of continuous improvement, using artificial intelligence, modeling, and automation concepts that make it unique in the market. The solutions produced by Genio, from a model, can be more easily and quickly modified, both during the creation process and when already in production in critical environments. This is probably the only company in the world that does this and resists the traditional approach of core package software with “hedgehogs” of applications around it.
A more conservative banking manager, for instance, continues to look for peripheral software solutions and apps for smartphones without considering changing the banking core or its ERP, where the highest costs and risks grow – in other words, where there is more combustion. Probably only Quidgest has the technology to propose such a change. Without great risks. However, only the most daring reach the stage of asking for a proof of concept. The others prefer the old pistons, connecting rods, exhaust pipes software, or modern tools like low-code and invest in hybrid software.
But free competition does not forgive. Sooner or later, those who can do more with fewer resources will pass before them. And we will all live in a more efficient, higher quality, more sustainable, and user and business manager-friendly hyper agile software development environment.
It is worth noting that model programming is a disruptive leap of innovation, just like EVs, and needs to be looked at differently.
As Professor and author Oren Harari said, “electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles”. Candles have their own space and so do the hybrid lighting processes of wax and electricity. In the world of software, it’s the same. It’s time to jump into increasingly efficient and economical electrical lighting. That is, by analogy with automobiles, to hyper agile electrical software.
