At the beginning, IT code was king. Every application was
carefully hand crafted from scratch by developers who knew the
black art of writing code.
As with any industry things have moved on rapidly and now we
have an array of application development languages, applications,
platforms, tools, cloud services and a whole host of other choices
when it comes to delivering software applications to users.
An interesting article spiked my attention the other day that
discussed intelligent platforms where business users write their
own applications using 'drag and drop' controls. It gleefully
proclaimed the demise of traditional development approach and
presumably the redundancy of leagues of developers.
We all know the march of technology invention is relentless.
There may come a day when developing complex applications is as
simple as clicking a few buttons. However, I wonder if we
will ever eliminate the need for bespoke coding completely?
Sure you can buy an off the shelf apps that delivers most of
your requirements but there is always something specific that the
application can't do. These bespoke elements can be
straight-forward user interface bells and whistles.
At the other end of the spectrum bespoke code can be used to
write entirely new modules or interfaces between systems. You
can take data from your internal customer databases and put them
into you cloud application. Or write a helpdesk application
that allows analysts to update hosted services at the click of a
few buttons.
The other main reason for bespoke coding is ownership of the IPR
and the application. Developing in the cloud or on
application platforms is great until you want to licence and resell
your masterpiece. If you don't own all of the code that runs
your application then licensing will be a complicated legal
problem. Depending on the other vendors it might be
completely impossible or at least result in lengthy negotiations
and cost.
One key consideration with writing bespoke applications is to
ensure that the development is supported by a robust development
process. If it is, then the end result will be a quality
application that is tailored to the needs of your users.
This article was written by Steve Hicks, Delivery Manager, MSM
Software.