I encounter a lot of people who think that because they took a year of Java or C++ programming in college, they know how software engineering and design works. Never mind the fact that they have never actually written any software as an employee or on their own for a hobby project. Many of them think that the basics of programming in any language has taught them all that they need to know in order to plan and design a custom software solution.
Unfortunately, there’s a whole lot more to it than that, no matter how easily romanced a person is by “AI powered solutions” such as Microsoft’s Power Apps. These are only useful if you already have a custom built integration that caches data from multiple third-party APIs into a database that these Microsoft solutions can connect to. Microsoft doesn’t even provide an integrated programming environment that you could build such an integration with, either.
Facts are facts, API communications are slow, no matter how fast the internet connection is on each end. Not only that, multiple API calls are needed to retrieve the data that you need in any given report. Pulling that data from a caching database allows you to make one API call and have all of the data you need in one shot, already formatted as needed. This is an undocumented feature that Microsoft neglected to divulge, the technical name for it is a “Power Limitation“.
Before you allow yourself to be romanced by these no-code and low-code “app development” systems, keep in mind that this is no more “programming” than what people used to do with a VCR or setting the time on your car stereo’s clock. It’s merely configuration, not programming, and any “app” that you create is not portable to any other platform. Know what you’re getting into before making a commitment to these, they’re limited and not an all-inclusive solution!
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