News

Mendix Low-Code Release Targets 'Citizen' and 'Pro' Developers

• By David Ramel
• July 19, 2019

Low-code specialist Mendix announced a new release designed both for the traditional target audience -- "ordinary business users" or "citizen developers" -- and professional developers.

It's the difficulty of finding the latter group of coders amid growing enterprise app demand that expanded the movement, but low-code tools are increasingly catering to the more skilled camp.

For example, analyst firm Forrester Research recently noted "vendors removing previous limitations on low-code adoption -- even by supporting coding."

Mendix says its Summer '19 release furthers the advancement of the space in both target audience and more sophisticated features. "The Mendix platform now includes the second generation of Mendix Assist, the industry's first and most powerful AI tool for building low-code apps, and that is designed expressly for both citizen and professional developers," the company said in a news release this week.

The company also claims to be the first in the space to provide "true native mobile development capabilities." The company earlier this year announced native mobile development based on the popular, open source, JavaScript-based React Native.

Mendix furthermore said the new release provides:

• More than 50 pre-built connectors to mobile device capabilities, such as camera, geolocation, biometric authentication, and Bluetooth enablement, plus next-gen services like conversational chatbots and voice interfaces such as Alexa and Siri
• Offline-first design for building reliable apps that maintain a good user experience when network connectivity is poor or even nonexistent
• A set of out-of-the-box UI components, including maps, sliders, progress circles and bars, tab containers, and barcode scanners

Regarding the latter, the company said, "Developers can also build their own reusable components based on React Native or use a new, built-in JavaScript editor to create custom reusable device activities and application logic."

Mendix was recently named by research firm Gartner Inc. as a "leader" in a "Multiexperience Development Platform" (replacing the former "mobile" focus) report, with the analyst firm saying:

The Mendix Platform strongly emphasizes visual- and model-driven development that supports a broad range of developer profiles. It provides a separate design-time environment for citizen developers (Mendix Studio) and a more robust development environment for professional developers (Mendix Studio Pro), thereby enabling apps to be supported across the two tools. Additionally, Mendix has invested in using AI with the Mendix Assist development approach to increase productivity.

Pricing information is available here.