How to Become a No-Code Developer? Practical Guide

To become a sought-after no-code/low-code developer, you need five elements: general IT knowledge, specialized knowledge related to your chosen career path, skills in using your chosen no-code platform, a significant project in your portfolio, and a recognizable personal brand.

I wrote this article with people in mind who are not yet working in IT, but dream of transitioning and starting anew as a programmer. I have already walked this path – at the time of publishing this text (January 2024), it has been exactly two years since I started creating my first no-code applications and precisely six months since I began working as a full-time developer at havenocode.

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Introduction - Learning No-Code / Low-Code

I must, however, dispel a popular myth at the outset – contrary to popular belief, the no-code / low-code path is neither easier nor faster than learning traditional programming methods. Indeed, the entry threshold is lower, and you can start working on commercial projects much more quickly, but achieving an expert level will probably take as much time as in other technologies.

This is well illustrated by the following chart.

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There's a theory that the time needed to delve into a given field of knowledge by 80% (at the level of a school grade of "B" or "good enough") is the same as that necessary to go from 80% to 100%. In the case of traditional programming methods, the graph is slightly shifted to the right. Learning the basic concepts (variables, loops, functions) can take considerable time if you have not had any contact with any programming language before. However, further learning becomes much easier after crossing a certain threshold of knowledge because the basics are common to most contemporary programming languages.

It's slightly different in the case of no-code. You can build a real-life application or website using only pre-made components within a few weeks of completing your first course. However, difficulties will begin when it becomes necessary to implement a function that the creators of the given platform did not code, the application does not handle a larger number of users, or it stops working after a seemingly minor modification of the database.

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Anyone Can Become a No-Code Developer

Anyone can become a no-code developer in just a few months. I am the best example of this, having previously worked in marketing for several years. However, to become an excellent no-code developer, it is necessary to dedicate many years to learning and practice.

In the rest of the article, I share my experience overcoming the most challenging threshold and landing my first job as a no-code/low-code developer. As I mentioned in the introduction, to start a career as a no-code programmer, you need five things:

• General IT knowledge,
• Specialized knowledge related to your chosen path,
• Skills in using your chosen no-code platform,
• A project in your portfolio to showcase,
• A personal brand.

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How to Become a No-Code Developer - General IT Knowledge

Thanks to modern no-code platforms, you can build a fully functional application without writing a single line of code. In reality, tools like Bubble or Webflow are nothing more than code generators – invisible to the programmer but code nonetheless. These tools simplify many concepts derived from the traditional approach (e.g., you don't need to know how a data type float differs from an integer). Still, a lot has been directly copied from lower-level languages (e.g., conditional expressions or classes in style sheets).

Therefore, I encourage you to start learning from the absolute basics. This knowledge base will make the next steps much more straightforward and your progress faster. Here is a short list of topics to master at the start:

• How the network works: HTTP protocol,
• Basic concepts: variables, data types, loops and conditional expressions, functions,
• Complex data types: arrays, lists, dictionaries,
• Fundamentals of databases and SQL language,
• API as a means of communication between the back-end and front-end.

The best course that covers the above topics is CS50 from Harvard University. Lecture recordings are available on YouTube, but I encourage you to use the edX platform, which provides access to interesting practical tasks. I best remember the detective game in which you had to find out who the criminal was using a series of SQL queries to the database. It was ideal entertainment for a nerd's Friday evening!

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Specialized Knowledge Related to Your Chosen Path

If you have completed the CS50 course and regret that it ended so quickly, it means it's a good time to choose a specialization. No-code technologies focus mainly on web development so that you can select front-end, back-end, or full-stack. Additionally, there is a category for mobile app development, but I won't pretend to be an expert in that area, so I'll leave it out of this discussion.

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Front-end

The catalog of skills necessary for designing application interfaces or websites has been practically unchanged for years and includes knowledge of:

• HTML + CSS,
• Web performance,
• Accessibility issues.

The best material for learning these topics is Jad Joubran's course available at learnhtmlcss.online. Each lesson ends with a practical task that you perform in an integrated development environment – a simplified code editor, console, and browser.

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Back-end

I have yet to meet a no-code enthusiast who says that learning this technology should start with learning a traditional programming language. However, I will firmly stick to my opinion – no-code platforms allow software creation without writing code. Still, knowledge of the basic concepts significantly facilitates understanding what happens under the hood. I think a more than basic/intermediate knowledge of Python is sufficient to start. The most frequently recommended source for learning to me is the Python Basics book available at realpython.org.

I would also add the basics of working with databases and UML notation to this category, which help design data structures and algorithms for processing them.

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Full-stack

The full-stack path is the sum of knowledge and skills from both front-end and back-end. In simpler terms, a full–stack path means twice as much learning and twice as much satisfaction from the work. However, I recommend switching from Python to JavaScript to make learning more efficient. It is a language that is a bit less friendly to understand, but it is the only one used on both the front-end and back-end.

In my opinion, the most accessible source for learning the basics of JS is again a course led by Jad Joubran – available at learnjavascript.online.