Can’t code? There is hope

No-code tools enable non-technical people to build software. However, no-code usually means hardly-any-code. There is a certain limit one reaches when trying to build anything on the internet without composing a line of code, and that limit is reached quicker than one may think. One of our marketing interns had issues executing semi-simple tasks due to these limitations. Luckily, one does not need to become a programmer to go significantly further past these obstacles. With an introduction to the fundamentals of coding, our intern was able to finalize his tasks in a matter of days. There is hope.

With the corona restrictions slowly easing, we thought it could be fun and helpful to facilitate a small event for anyone interested in learning the fundamentals of building things on the internet or at least doing some experimenting. Thus, following our philosophy at Sampo Accelerator, we said “Fuck it, let’s do it” and asked Ignite to join us. We scheduled the event to happen on the 12th of June at the Maria01 facilities.

The aim was for this to be a self-learning experience supported by facilitators, who would prevent participants from getting stuck. On the sunny morning of the event’s day, we met in the Maria01 yard, had a quick intro, and got started. We divided the participants into groups smaller than 10 due to the restrictions as we understood them at the time.

We got the participants started with an intro to coding, the material used was from Hello Ruby. Because when starting to look into a subject a grasp of the basics is needed, rather than being pushed into the deep end. Everyone worked fairly efficiently and the facilitators walked around offering help to anyone that needed it. At noon, everyone met outside for a lunch break, we enjoyed some bagels thanks to AaltoES. We planned a couple of breaks to get away from screens and get outside (where it is safer to have conversations).

After a highly social lunch break, participants became more talkative, which might have slowed down the learning process. However, this was totally understandable, considering the social isolation we all have been practicing. Anyhow, we continued by suggesting a no-code tool. Bubble.io was picked, as it has many different tutorials and examples. At 15:00, we had a small coffee break and some of us enjoyed the remaining bagels.

To finalize the event, we moved on to automation via tools such as Zapier and IFTTT. And at about 17:00 participants started to call it a day. We had lots of interesting conversations and witnessed the participant's progress throughout the event. Based on the comments on the day from everyone involved, we plan to improve the event and have it redone soon.