Low-Code vs High-Code – Key Differences Explained
Caught in the dilemma of choosing between low-code and high-code? We’re here to help you better understand each approach to coding. That way, you’ll be able to reach your goals quickly, effectively, and with confidence.
Let’s start with understanding what is meant by low-code and high-code.
What Is Low-Code?
Low-code development helps save time and money. At the same time, it makes collaboration, customization, and maintenance easier. Typically Low-Code application builders are hosting in the cloud and are usually available through a web-browser.
What Is High-Code?
The benefit of high-code is that anything you create is exclusive to you and your business. There’s also plenty of room for creativity, innovation, and unique features.
Difference Between Low-Code vs High-Code
From ease of development to customization scope, development speed, and level of expertise, here are all the major differences between low-code vs high-code.
Ease of Development
High-code is difficult and complex. Only professional IT developers, with knowledge of different programming languages, can use high-code platforms. Citizen developers cannot take part in the development process.
On the other hand, low-code is an easy approach to coding. It can be used by individuals with little or no coding background. Most low-code platforms have pre-built components that are easy to use and time-saving.
Scope of Customization
High-code offers high levels of customization. This is because high-code developers are writing custom code from scratch. There’s plenty of room for creativity and innovation.
Low-code offers medium levels of customization. These platforms have pre-built features and customizations that you are able to customize but not rewrite. The features you can integrate into the apps you build are limited by the low-code app you use.
Development Speed
When it comes to speed, high-code is time-consuming. Developers have to work on extensive coding right from scratch. They also have to go through several iterations. All these manual processes take a lot of time.
Low-code is a fast approach for developing websites and apps. It features drag-and-drop editors, ready-to-use code components, reusable layouts, and ready-made templates. Together, these help speed up the development process.
Technical Expertise
High-code demands a high level of technical expertise. That makes it suitable for IT professionals who have knowledge of different code programming languages, like JavaScript and Python.
In low-code, little to no technical expertise is needed. Citizen developers can create apps and websites with ease. This makes low-code a more handy platform for businesses without a dedicated IT team that nevertheless want to have greater control over assembly and development.
Cost of Development
High-code solutions rely on professional developers. This shoots up costs. A business building a high-code app needs to hire professionals, set up the infrastructure, and ensure proper management and coordination between different teams.
Low-code platforms are more cost-effective. They free up time and resources for other tasks, making them a more effective choice for businesses with more limited budgets. In addition, low-code makes scaling back easier than high-code.
Reusability and Scalability
High-code is not reusable. It’s not feasible to reuse code from one application to another. It’s also limited in terms of scalability, proving to be expensive in most cases.
Low-code is reusable. You can reuse different features from one app to the next. Low-code is also highly scalable and is suited for large-scale applications.
Ease of Management
For high-code management and support, you will have to rely on a dedicated IT team. Although apps can be managed and updated remotely, they can only be controlled by developers.
For low-code, management and support are provided by the low-code platform itself. This makes updating the apps and fixing bugs in low-code platforms way easier and quicker.
Low-Code vs High-Code – What’s Best for You?
The answer to the low-code vs high-code depends on the type of app you want to build. High-code will offer you a platform to write your own code and build unique apps and websites.
Low-code, on the other hand, will offer a way simpler approach to development but with fewer customization options.