OpenLampTech - Developer and Founder Interview with Dominik Keller
With the rise and wide-spread use of low-code tools, Australian-based Five have created an IDE that enables developers to rapidly build out and deploy web applications on a MySQL database.
Welcome to this OpenLampTech text-based developer interview.
Co-founder and CEO of Five, Dominik Keller, shares some exciting information on the low-code IDE and how it can help developers rapidly build and deploy web applications on a MySQL database.
Needless to say that I am super-excited Dominik agreed to participate in this developer and founder interview for the OpenLampTech readers.
And now without any further adieu, on to the interview.
Q: Please introduce yourself and tell us what you currently do for a living.
My name is Dom, and I’m one of the co-founders and CEO of Five, a low-code company headquartered in Brisbane, Australia.
At Five, we are a team of three co-founders: together with Mark, our Executive Chairman and Product Architect, and Jason, our CTO, we have built a low-code IDE to help software developers rapidly build and deploy web apps on a MySQL database.
A lot of applications, especially those that are used as back-office apps or internal tools, use a lot of boilerplate code. With Five, we’re giving developers an IDE that lets them rapidly develop a full-stack web app. Developers can use Five to model their database, add their logic, create a web front-end, and push their application into production - all from inside one platform.
Q: Why are low-code/no-code applications so important in this day and age?
Now, first up, no-code and low-code solutions are not the same. No-code platforms eliminate code and replace code with visual WYSIWYG interfaces. Low-code platforms reduce but do not eliminate code. Five is a low-code tool solution.
As a company, we believe that sometimes there is no better way to give a computer instructions than writing code. And we don’t want to take the freedom of writing code away from developers.
This brings me to the second part of the question: Why are low-code tools so important in this day and age?
The question really is this: do developers need to write code for everything? Developers are usually swamped in work. And let’s face it: not every part of a back-office or database application is terribly exciting to build. Usually, the exciting parts are in the application logic, which makes an application unique.
Low-code tools come with a lot of useful pre-built features so that developers can focus on what’s exciting without sweating the small stuff. This accelerates and simplifies application development.
Low-code tools also enable back-end developers to build full-stack applications, which is great if you’ve ever felt the frustration of waiting for your front-end team to build an UI. Five gives developers a pre-built UI, so there’s not much front-end work to be done in order to deliver a production-ready application to end users.
Q: So Five is a low-code tool. What makes Five different from other tools in the industry?
When developers use Five for the first time, they are usually pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to write code in Five. In a lot of low-code tools, the ability to add code feels like an afterthought. We deliberately made it such that developers can write SQL queries or create JavaScript and TypeScript functions right inside Five.
Anyone who has ever tried to build a complex “If This, Then That” conditional statement in a visual interface can understand the frustrations of being forced into a no-code interface. In Five, this is just the opposite: our default for logic and processes is code.
This gives developers maximum flexibility and control over how the critical parts of their applications work. But if they prefer a visual approach, they can use a visual query builder or a drag-and-drop function builder.
Last, Five is designed to support WebAssembly. In the future, developers will be able to write code in almost any language right inside of Five, building in-browser apps in their preferred language.
Q: Do you have a book, newsletter, blog, podcast, or other resource you would recommend to other developers?
Absolutely. I love listening to software engineering podcasts while running, and my go-to podcast is Software Engineering Daily. I enjoy the technical depth of the discussions on the podcasts. Their line-up of guests with a technical background is quite unique and they cut straight to the engineering challenges, rather than talking fluff.
The podcast also led me to discover some really good books on software engineering, including “Software Engineering at Google”, as well as “Move Fast: How Facebook Builds Software”.
Q: Where can readers go to learn more about you and any projects you may have going?
I suppose most of your readers here are the type who likes to be hands-on with technology, so instead of encouraging them to follow me, I’d like to encourage them to visit our website https://five.co and sign up for a free download. I’d love to hear what they think about Five.
My email is dominik@five.co
Thank you, Dominik Keller, for sharing your knowledge and insights with the OpenLampTech newsletter readers and community!
Thank you for reading. I hope you have a great rest of your week.
Take care.
Josh Otwell