Alpha Software Blog



Holy Grail of Development -Low Code Development:Alpha Anywhere

As most of you who have been developing custom applications know - one is often forced to make a selection between two flawed options.

Option 1) Pick a development tool/product/platform that requires low level coding.


This is an attractive approach on one hand  because it assures one, that given enough time, talent and money, one can be confident of getting the job done - eventually.

The downside of course in the real world is that there is NOT a infinite amounts of money, there are ALWAYS deadlines and there are REAL skill shortages - especially when it comes to building enterprise mobile apps - where one faces new challenges that did not exist in the desktop world (lack of connectivity, needing to run cross platform, limited screen real estate, lack of a physical keyboard,  wanting to take advantage of the camera for pictures/video/sound and wanting to take advantage of mobile devices' ability to use electronic ink for drawing and annotation.)

Option 2) Pick a Rapid Application Development (RAD)  tool/product/platform that does not require coding.


At first blush - this sounds like a compelling idea - but there is a serious catch.

Traditionally most RAD products let you get 90 or 95% of the job done but then you "hit the wall" because the app you are building needs to solve a very specific and often highly custom business requirement.  Now reality hits. You cannot complete the mission  because the tool you are using for development lacks the rich program-ability needed. The situation is akin to being in the bridge building business and getting to the 950th yard of a 1000 yard bridge, and because of the construction technique you are using, you cannot complete the bridge without abandoning what you have been working on and starting again. You are close but you have failed in your mission. This is clearly not a happy outcome to say the least!

It is with all of this in mind, that we came up with Alpha Anywhere's unique "coding optional" approach.
Check out these two video - they give a good overview of Alpha Anywhere's unique approach to minimizing coding but still allow you to code with no restrictions.



 
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About Author

Richard Rabins
Richard Rabins

Co-founder of Alpha Software, Richard Rabins focuses on strategy, sales, and marketing. Richard also served as CEO of SoftQuad International from 1997 to 2001, when it owned Alpha. In addition to his 30 years with the company, Richard played a key role as co-founder, and served as president and chairman of the Massachusetts Software Council (now the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council), the largest technology trade organization in Massachusetts. Prior to founding Alpha, Richard was a project leader and consultant with Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), and a management consultant with Management Decision Systems, Inc. Richard holds a master's degree in system dynamics from the Sloan School at MIT, and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and master's degree in control engineering from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has served on the boards of Silent Systems, Legacy Technology and O3B Networks, and is co-founder of Tubifi www.tubifi.com.

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The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components. Using the Alpha TransForm no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the Alpha Anywhere low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows (including data collected via Alpha TransForm), and add additional security or authentication requirements to protect corporate data.

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