Factors that affect the utilization of low-code development platforms: survey study

Abstract

: Low-code development platforms were introduced as a solution to the dilemma of the gap between the high demand for applications and the low number of developers available to meet this demand. The low-code development platforms help the developers to build fast, efficient, and scalable applications with a minimal need for coding, which introduced the concept of citizen developers in the field of application development. This study explores the factors that attract the developers and programmers to utilize LCDP and discusses some of the problems and challenges that prevent other programmers and developers from using it. An online survey was conducted in Saudi Arabia among 49 respondents of professional developers from different departments of Information Technology in several kinds of businesses as well as students from the Computing and Information Technology faculties to understand the developers’ motivations to adopt low-code development platforms. A total of 19 respondents were using LCDP, while the other 30 were not. The paper also highlights the reasons why some developers are not interested in moving toward low-code and commit to the traditional programming approach. The results of this study explain the factors and advantages that prompt developers to use LCDP and identifies the concerns that prevent them from using it. Reducing development time is considered as an advantage by the majority of the sample that used LCDP. Additionally, the Minimum coding needed reduces the development time and make the application development much easier. On the other hand, some of the reasons for not using LCDP by the developers were the low level of scalability in these platforms, and a lack of knowledge about these platforms and how to deal with them.