My theory is that it is not the existence of a wall that limits these tools - it is the invisibility of the wall. Spreadsheets have a wall too, but it is pretty clear to naive users where it is. These app-in-a-can tools hit the wall suddenly and unpredictably - you need a new UI feature, or the data model can't be generalized, or you can't connect to some silo. Perhaps a better metaphor than a wall would be a mine field.
Yeah - same story repeated decade after decade. "Build apps without coding" is one of those Siren ideas - it seems so compelling and necessary, yet everyone ends up using much the same design as has failed countless times before. I don't really understand exactly why this is so, but I'm pretty sure we need to figure that out to make progress.
These services are cloud services. They have another wall. Spiked, dark, cruel and ready to collapse on us at a second's notice. A new person getting hired at some critical services cloud company. Excellent suit. New CFO, or COO, or whatever. Nice MBA, economics degree, daddy's really important, he has been executive at some bank for decades, comes in. And something happens.
Maybe he sees pedestrian get shot on the street while he walks to his desk and smiles. Maybe a chair screeches on the floor, reminding him of the screams of some kid five years his junior he was beating up in high school. Maybe he cuts his hand on the edge of his giant mahogany desk and the drop of blood fondly makes him remember the thousands of children whose families he sucked dry, and condemned to abject poverty at his previous bank job, reveling in their inescapable fate. We will never know. An epiphany happens.
Then he proceeds to phone up some lead architect and asks the question "don't we fully control the data that these cloud 'customers' think is theirs" ? He likes the answer so much he fires the lead architect on the spot.
