No-code has arrived properly now, and most of the designers I know are quietly wondering whether it's coming for them.
I've been turning it over, and I don't think it is — at least not the way the worry assumes. If anything I think it's good for the trade, and I think it will be uncomfortable for a while, and I don't think those two things cancel each other out.
Here's what no-code actually takes away. It takes away the value of knowing how. It removes the advantage of being the only person in the room who could make the thing exist. If my worth rested only on knowing where the buttons were, that worth was always going to thin out, and probably it should.
What it doesn't touch is knowing what. Which thing to build. What to leave out. What the person in front of you actually came here to do. Why the obvious third option is a dead end. No tool hands you that, and the more people who can build, the more it matters to have a sense of what's worth building.
So the floor has come up, and I think that's a good thing. Someone with a real idea and no money can now put a decent thing into the world. That's a lot of people who were shut out before, and I'm not going to mourn a gate I only ever stood on the right side of.
The ceiling hasn't moved, though. It's just easier now to see who's working near it. When everyone can produce something, what's left is a feel for what's actually good — and that seems less like a threat than the part of the job I'd want to be doing anyway.