Why Pro-Code Developers Are Turning to Low-Code Tools in 2025?

Here’s an interesting (and somewhat outdated) perspective on low-code platforms: they were initially targeting junior programmers and citizen developers. At least, that used to be the pitch, and the idea was simple. People who couldn’t code finally have the tooling to develop fully-fledged applications with ease, automation, and innovative approaches, without requiring prior technical know-how. However, we’re now observing a new trend in low-code development: pro-code developers are adopting low-code tools more readily and with less hesitation than before. 

What has changed in their mindset and development philosophy? What has earned their trust in low code? Could it be the steady integration of AI? Or perhaps the delivery of increased security and no vendor lock-in over the last few years? Is it the general capability of these technologies to accelerate mundane processes and eliminate entire phases, like the designer-developer handoff? There are many factors to consider, but, in reality, it’s the combination of all these influences. 

Let’s figure them out. 

First Things First: What Do We Mean by Pro-Coders? 

Almost everyone can code today. However, pro-code developers refer to software engineers who ship production systems with traditional stacks: typed languages, full IDEs, Git, CI/CD, containerization, and cloud services. They design architectures, handle performance and security, write tests, etc. In community surveys (e.g., Stack Overflow’s annual report), this group is described as professional developers or people paid to code full-time across roles like backend, frontend, mobile, data, DevOps, and SRE. 

Typical projects they take on: 

• Internal tools (ops consoles, support dashboards, finance/rev-ops workflows). 
• Customer-facing web/mobile apps and APIs. 
• Data pipelines, integrations, and automations. 
• Modernization of legacy systems and line-of-business apps. 

Typical toolchain they implement: 

• Languages/IDEs: VS Code/JetBrains suites; JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Java, C#, Go. 
• DevOps: Git, GitHub/GitLab, containers, K8s, IaC. 
• Testing/obs: unit/integration tests, monitoring, tracing, feature flags. 
• Cloud and integrations: AWS/Azure/GCP services, queues/streams, identity, payments, analytics. 

In dev communities (Reddit forums and vendor communities that pro developers use), conversations are increasingly focused on best practices for treating low-code projects as real software, including code organization, component reuse, code reviews, and CI/CD hooks. These are clear signals that professional engineers are no longer just commenting from the sidelines about low-code platforms. They’re actively building with them. There are various discussions about Git branching, CI/CD, and code reviews in low-code forums; questions on maintainability, modularization, and API-first design; and also best-practice guides and threads on how to structure low-code projects so they integrate with the rest of the engineering stack (logging, testing, development environments, and so forth). 

The Shift in Perception: From “Citizen-Dev Enablers” To Part of the Pro Toolbox 

As already mentioned, a few years ago, low-code platforms were mainly introduced to business users, C-level executives, and junior developers as the right means for crafting lightweight apps and reinforcing business strategies for digital innovation.  

In 2025, professional engineers are adopting them just as much for speed, control, flexibility, enhanced developer productivity, and customization. And here’s why. 

The Quest to Outmaneuver Their Competitors 

Backlogs keep growing while teams are pressured by legacy systems and increasing technical debt, which initially slows down innovation and significant advancements. Surveys highlight widespread frustration with slow, brittle systems. Every week lost to fixing outdated stacks is a week that competitors use to ship new features, capture customers, and build momentum. 

This is why more pro-coders have started implementing low-code tools as they promise to simultaneously streamline app development by providing a UI component library and code generation, making room for innovation. Instead of spending months building internal dashboards, workflow automations, or CRUD apps from scratch, developers can now spin them up in days or even hours with the help of low-code solutions. 

Inevitable Evolution: Meeting Enterprise Engineering Standards 

Modern low-code platforms have matured beyond drag-and-drop editors. Some of the platforms today ensure version control, testing hooks, extensibility, and better integration with existing tools. 

Enterprise tools, such as our App Builder, emphasize production-ready code generation, OpenAPI-based data integration, GitHub publishing with automated gh-pages deployment, Azure DevOps repository publishing, built-in testing hooks for both GitHub and Azure pipelines, platform APIs, and code reusability. These capabilities connect low-code UIs with pro-code workflows, enabling teams to move faster while staying aligned with enterprise engineering practices. 

Earlier low-code platforms often produced unstructured, hard-to-maintain spaghetti code, which pro-developers distrusted. Platforms like App Builder are so advanced today that they generate clean code for the most popular frameworks like Angular, React, Web Components, and Blazor.  

Another example is Retool, which added event-driven automation, native SQS/SNS/Kafka integrations, and multi-step workflows that allow engineers to wire real backends and queues without scaffolding from scratch. 

Security As a Turning Point 

Historically, security has been one of the biggest concerns about low-code. The 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey highlights that security concerns remain a top reason developers abandon technologies, including low-code platforms, as seen in earlier years. Engineers distrusted black-box hosting, unclear data handling, and weak compliance controls. 

But the situation is changing. Let’s take App Builder as an example again. The low-code platform now allows enterprises to run low-code platforms fully inside their own infrastructure using App Builder On-Prem. That meets stringent security and data-sovereignty requirements, which are critical for finance, healthcare, and government teams. 

At the same time, serious security challenges still exist, and every organization must approach them carefully. While compliance standards such as SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR, along with SSO, MFA, and external key vaults, can significantly reduce risks, they don’t eliminate them entirely. The real advantage comes from giving customers control, enabling them to configure, host, and secure their own environments. This shift in responsibility helps minimize exposure and ensures each company can apply its own policies, audits, and monitoring frameworks. 

Together, these changes mean that the low-code integration no longer feels like a security liability. Experienced engineers who once dismissed low-code as risky now view it as a safe addition to their toolbox because the pereption has shifted from “trus us” models to “control it yourself”. And isn’t that the point of the low-code evolution? It needs to grow and adapt to the most critical and current requirements that teams, companies, and sectors demand. 

The Adoption of AI 

Moving on to the next one. If there’s one thing that influenced the 2024-2025 period dramatically, it’s AI. Everyone talks about it and its rapid integration across industries, companies, and purposes. The AI jump into low-code, however, is a trend that is now transforming into one of the reasons why professional developers are turning to low-code platforms. There’s no longer a low-code vs pro-code binary. The powerful combination of AI and low-code, two technologies that redefine the landscape, is accelerating app creation to a level of speed and accessibility that was unimaginable just a few years ago. With tools like App Builder, teams speed up app development by 80%. 

But how is AI used in App Builder, and what do we automate in particular? 

With the introduction and the continuous enhancements in App Builder AI, we are actually extending the usage to best practices, generating UI components, common web patterns, and functionalities from natural language, and so on. For pro-coders, AI tools in low-code platforms can automate repetitive tasks like Form validation or API integration, freeing them to focus on complex logic and architecture. 

Users can now generate data sources, views, images, and complete apps just by providing simple and descriptive text prompts. Then, with a single click, everything comes to life fully fledged and fully featured. It’s ready to use. 

In the second part of our App Builder Survey Report: 2025 Trends in App Development, we highlight that 87% of the surveyed companies use AI as part of their ongoing low-code development processes. This number is expected to grow even more as nearly half (45%) of the tech leaders who aren’t currently using AI say they are likely to start leveraging the technology in 2025. With more than half of the year already behind us, it’s safe to assume many of these organizations have already taken steps towards adoption. 

Interestingly, AI is also considered capable of addressing some security concerns. 

For instance, nearly all companies that use AI in app development processes also utilize AI tools for security purposes (99%). This only proves that AI goes beyond being just a productivity-boosting tool. As AI-driven low-code tools continue to advance, they will become increasingly capable of identifying malfunctions and detecting bugs early in the low-code development cycle, while also complying with industry standards. And that’s another reason for pro-code developers to rely on low-code platforms. 

Wrap Up… 

The low-code development is changing fast. That’s for sure. Pro-code developers no longer view it as a practice that only empowers citizen developers or junior programmers entering the industry. With better security measures, AI-assisted development, GenAI capabilities, and the competitive advantage they bring to the table, low-code platforms like App Builder become game changers. 

Do you want to give it a go? You can try App Builder for free. See how you can implement low-code development, leverage framework-agnostic components for a full design-to-code story, start from scratch, use the Figma plugin, which converts designs to code, or simply try some of the customizable sample apps. The options are there.