Beyond Citizen Development: Exploring Low-Code Platform Adoption by Professional Software Developers

Low-code development platforms (LCDPs) significantly increase software development productivity by enabling users to develop and deploy applications with minimal coding required. However, despite LCDPs' productivity benefits and widespread adoption by individuals with no formal coding background ("citizen developers"), professional developers remain skeptical about implementing LCDPs for their own tasks, questioning LCDPs' capability for "real" development. This study explores this skepticism through 18 interviews with professional developers. We find that professional developers' willingness to adopt LCDPs can be explained by constructs of established technology acceptance theory and by different types of software development tasks that professionals believe LCDPs can take over (namely repetitive and conceptual tasks). Based on our findings, we contribute to LCDP and technology adoption literature and provide recommendations to make LCDPs more appealing to professional developers. These guidelines aim to assist LCDP providers and organizations in broadening LCDPs' appeal and encouraging adoption among professional users.