FNR PEARL Chair Jordi Cabot has just released the low-code handbook aimed to unlock faster and better software development with low-code solutions.
Low-code development represents a paradigm shift in software creation, aiming to expedite application delivery by minimising manual coding. Indeed, in a time when software demand is escalating across all research fields, we need strategies to deliver the high-quality software we need in a more efficient way and without having to rely completely on the availability of professional programmers.
Low-code is especially suited to building research software where a key requirement is the management of the experimental data (from sensors, human participants, lab results,…). This data needs to be collected, cleaned, digested, analysed, displayed in interactive visual dashboards and, more and more, be part of a machine learning training process. Low-code techniques will help to achieve all this starting from a simple schema of the data (i.e. a description of the information pieces you need to collect as part of your data).
In the book, Jordi Cabot seeks to unravel the intricacies of low-code development. The book addresses questions such as: Who is it for? What types of applications can be developed using low-code? How to select the most suitable tool, or even create your own tailor-made solution? How to create software applications that need also to embed, or be linked to, artificial intelligence components?
The book is a direct result of Jordi Cabot’s work on the BESSER (Better Smart Software fastER) FNR PEARL project, coordinated by the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology in collaboration with SnT (the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust). The book aims to bring some of the results of the project closer to an audience of non-programmers who would like to create and maintain their own software tools.
To complement the book, readers are encouraged to try out the BESSER platform, a free and open-source low-code tool developed as part of the same project. Researchers interested in understanding better how low-code in general, and BESSER in particular, could help them in their daily work, are welcome to contact Jordi Cabot to explore possible collaborations between the teams.
(photo by LIST)