And three months ago, OutSystems waved cash in my face, begging me to review their product. I resisted for exactly zero seconds and threw all that dogma out the window. “Hybrid? Best thing since sliced bread, I’ve always said!” I’m a sucker for cash.

They wanted an honest opinion of their upcoming platform update from a native developer’s perspective — and I kicked the living sh*t out of it. More on that in another post, perhaps.

I’m Not Easy to Convince

I came from a hands-on background. And I love, as most coders do, to get into the weeds and hack away at problems. But OutSystems is a “low-code” platform. I could’ve named three Kardashians sooner than telling you what the hell a low-code platform was — Kylie, Khloe, and Kim Jong-Un.

Exactly how low was this code? Was it depraved? Did it scurry off into the night and perform repulsive sexual acts? Was it willing to sell priceless family heirlooms just to pay off its gambling debt? No. Apparently, low-code referred to the amount of code you wrote, as in, low…

I learned how to build apps the OutSystems way: by dragging stuff and dropping it onto other stuff. And while I enjoyed my experience and the speed at which I could build things, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was producing scum of the Earth hybrid apps, you know? Apps like this TechCrunch RSS reader:

I was surprised by how well OutSystems simplified, and at times annihilated boilerplate work. But one feature in particular won me over. After a long web-only preview process, I installed the tutorial application on my Android device.

And as I trudged through the next checkpoint of their developer course, I experienced something incredible. As soon as I committed new changes, the app updated itself.

This is known as hydration, a process originally coined by PhoneGap. Hydration updates the front-end mobile client much like we refresh a web page to see the latest changes. This meant that I could improve the experience without sending users a massive app update — and that’s a big f@#king deal.

Let’s Re-crap App Updates

It’s like recapping, but about crap. For those who aren’t familiar, publishing a mobile app to either primary portal is the opposite of fun.

Assuming you get past the Orwellian bureaucratic nightmare that is Apple’s signing certificates, you then submit your app to the App Store. Then you have to wait for the review process to complete. The quality assurance overlords take anywhere from days to weeks to review an application before giving it the green light. And this happens every. Time. You. Update.

On Google Play, you generate the signed APK and after you submit it, you wait anywhere between 30 minutes and 6 hours for your update to go live. Both delays suck, but Google’s is arguably preferable.

This delay was so business-critical to Zynga (my first employer) that each deploy went through meticulous testing for bugs and adherence to content policies. Botching an update was so costly, they couldn’t afford even one.

And to avoid screwing an update, Zynga, and many modern developers hide new features inside each release. On the surface, a user might read that the app update comes with “bug fixes.” But in reality, two to three new features sneak in along with it, Trojan Horse style.