programmability

The promise of Coghead, which Om Malik wrote about yesterday, is that it will broaden the base of people who can create applications for the web. Coghead, which is not yet in a public beta, combines forms development, database, and business logic, to allow the creation of line of business applications. 

Their claim is that users won’t have to write any code, nor download any software, to make this work.  It makes for good marketing.  My bet, however, is that enterprise will tell them they want the Coghead server installed on premise, and that only the simplest applications will be possible without resorting to any code.

If history is any indication, however, this will be well accepted.  The previous generation of desktop developers segmented into skilled c/c++ programmers, line of business programmers (the VB / Paradox / Access gang), and macro programmers.  The actual universe of skilled hardcore types in that world was (and still is) tiny.  The vast majority of developers in the previous generation were using tools like VB and application based macros.  Coghead is betting that this generation of web developers will segment in the same way.  It’s a good bet. 

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