Coding and Non-Coding Gulf

One pattern I see in engineering companies: the tools engineering uses to create their work are different than tools every other part of the organization uses, notably, design.

Design can iterate on their mocks faster with engineering can produce results on production - creating massive friction between design and engineering.

The thing that makes this friction worse is that product tends to work with design, because design can iterate faster and screens are more fun to look at than data schemas.

Hence, the non-coding and coding gulf is large and silos between engineering and design comes up naturally.

What makes this gulf worse is engineering is not part of the discussions with product and design, creating the: “toss the ball to engineering” situation.

Fixing?

The best way to fix is to have everyone in the company code to production, such that the tools are the same as engineering. I dream of all companies like this.

The other way? Engineering collaborate with product and design constantly. Leveraging tools that make design’s life easier, such as storybook, or flutter flow - which design and product can iterate on and produce results engineering can utilize right away.

Another is for engineering to utilize tools that reduce friction, such as GraphQL - so your team isn’t spent time defining, creating, or securing API endpoints.

If you are going with REST APIs, API versioning is your friend. Disassociate the backend endpoint from the front-end client connection.

Gen AI to the Rescue?

A new tool available now that an organization can utilize: Generative AI. Tools that bridge the non-coding and coding gulf, such as: Sublayer or GoScope.

Conclusion

The coding and non-coding gulf in an organization is wide because of tooling different parts an organization uses. Engineering can utilize tools that meet it’s stakeholders halfway, like design. Optimizing internal engineering systems, so there’s less repeat work, like API endpoint creation.

Finally, with Generative AI, there are a new class of tools emerging.

It’s a great time to be in business - there’s lots of great options to use to make work easier for everyone, coding or non-coding.