Greening Low Code

Environment Variables

In this episode of Environment Variables, host Chris Adams engages in a fascinating discussion with Marjolein Pordon, a quality consultant at Praegus, about the exciting synergy between sustainability and low code platforms. They explore how low code tools not only streamline software development but also play a crucial role in reducing carbon emissions. Marjolein shares insights into the early integration of sustainability considerations in the development cycle, and together, they demystify the misconception that companies' unique needs necessitate custom software solutions, highlighting the efficiency and environmental benefits of leveraging shared components in low code environments.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Marjolein Pordon: LinkedIn | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

News:

• Introducing Flowty - Build low carbon, self-hosted Webflow sites - Fershad Irani [23:22]
• Data Center Factsheet [29:36]

Resources:

• Introduction to ESG [11:51]
• ESG and Climate Change | Coursera
• Mendix [14:32]
• WordPress [14:39]
• Zapier [14:49]
• Creatio [14:50]
• N8N [15:39]
• Windmill.dev [22:42]
• OutSystems [34:15]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!

Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Marjolein Pordon: With all the emails we send, inclusive, reply all, the, "yes, I'll see you in a minute." All those kinds of emails, there are 12 000 times from earth to the moon with a car on carbon emission. That's huge.

Chris Adams: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software.

I'm your host, Chris Adams.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Environment Variables, the podcast where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Chris Adams. When we talk about green software, we often talk about optimizing code we already have, or finding out ways to make the energy we use less carbon intensive.

So for the computation we do end up using, we end up with less pollution in the form of greenhouse gases and so on being emitted as a byproduct of our work. However, there's another way to look at this. If we accept that the most efficient database query possible is one that you don't have to make because you've designed a system not to need them,

then you can argue that the most efficient system can be one that you haven't had to spend loads of time, energy and money building, building an entirely custom version of, because you found an existing set of components that work well together. This is essentially the argument made when people make the case that a technology stack containing open source software can be more sustainable than a closed source one.

In that the cost gone into building the various components is shared across all the millions of people who would otherwise be duplicating all this effort, building their own versions of these open source, the components. But does this apply elsewhere as well, though? Low code and no code environments have grown in popularity over the last few years, and one argument in favor of using them is that by building the system, or building any system from a set of existing components offered in a kind of visual, low coding environment, you avoid the need to spend so much time, money, and yes, energy, building your own custom software in the first place.

This brings up all kinds of interesting questions. Does this just mean that we end up with more software in total, because more people are building their own software, rather than a relatively small number of professional developers? And are the needs of organizations so sufficiently generic that you can use low code environments for this kind of stuff, to avoid needing all that custom code?

And if you're stuck using providers who are moving slowly to transition from fossil fuel in their infrastructure, what are your options? With me to explore these ideas today is Marjolein Pordon, one of the few people I've seen talking about both sustainability and low code at the same time. Thanks for joining me today, Marjolein.

Marjolein Pordon: Thanks for having me, Chris.

Chris Adams: Okay, you're welcome, Marjolein. Can I give you a few minutes to introduce yourself and what you do? And because you're the first Marjolein I've ever met, if I'm mispronouncing your name, could you please just share the pronunciation so I can use it properly when I'm later on the call? Because I'm trying my best, but you're the first Marjolein I've ever met.

Marjolein Pordon: Yeah, Marjolein is a Dutch name and you're pronouncing it correct. It's like Mar and then Yo from the rapper, Yo Yo, and then a line, like a thin line. So, Marjolein, that's, that's completely correct. Well, I'm Marjolein Pordon. I'm, 38 years old. I live in the Netherlands and I'm a quality consultant for the company Praegus. Praegus is a test consultancy company, and we also have a branch that looks into low code. And one of our CEOs is very much into sustainability. So I'm really in my place there. She also thinks that we should move to an office with sun, sunlight energy, and wind energy. So it's not just me, but also in the company I work for that we have these standards and I'm now, I think eight years in the business and I really love working in IT, testing and things like that.

So yeah, I'm really happy to be here. Oh, and within low code, I've had a few assignments in low code and it got me the name, nickname Lady Low Code, because I'm so passionate about low code and talking on conferences about it.

Chris Adams: I'm glad you mentioned that actually. First, for the breakdown of Mar-yo-line, that's very easy to understand, but also having an alter ego like Batman is also very interesting and useful to have. And that makes it really easy to find as well for the website. That was one way that we came across you actually.

So, and you mentioned a couple of things that were quite interesting there. So, oh, let me just quickly introduce myself for people who've never listened to this before. So my name is Chris Adams. I am the executive director of the Green Web Foundation. It's a Dutch-based non profit focusing on a fossil-free internet by 2030.

I also work as one of the policy chairs for the Green Software Foundation's policy working group where we basically do work at the intersection of policy and green software. If you are new to this podcast, folks, we will share a transcript of everything and we also, we cover, we mentioned quite a few projects and we'll be listing those in show notes.

So we'll share links to that at the end of that. So if you're listening and there's something caught your eye, please do take a look out for that, because that's one thing that we have available. Finally, okay, back to the podcast. Marjolein, I think you're sitting comfortably?

Marjolein Pordon: Yeah, I am.

Chris Adams: Excellent. Okay, so you mentioned that you didn't always work at this intersection and you worked in a couple of fields where you might specialize, before specialize in this niche, and you said that they've kind of influenced your thinking today, like, could you maybe elaborate on some of that?

Because you spoke about, say, testing and stuff like that, and we know that some of the tools people use for testing end up being the same tools you might use for driving certain activities, driving a browser and stuff like that. So yeah, maybe if I just give you a bit of space to expand on that, then that might help listeners understand some of the connections here or how you got here.

Marjolein Pordon: Yeah, I started as a software tester in 2017. My boyfriend is also a software tester and he said, "yo, you, you would be perfect for it." I started on high code, traditional projects, worked there for, I think, a year or two. And then in 2019, I was available for new assignments and I get really obnoxious then because I don't like doing nothing.

So then a coworker said, "well, you can fill in for a week and a half, it's low code, it's easy. Just do your thing." And then it seemed to be not so easy because low code platforms have standards. You need to use them as required. And people didn't do that. So instead of a week and a half, I was there for a year and a half.

Yeah. So, and then I noticed that if you use low code well, the reusable components make the time to market quicker, but also your energy use lower. And the platform that I was working on then, also now doesn't refer to itself as a local platform, but a sustainability platform, because they say even more important than a quick time to market is that we even can go to market.

Because in the Netherlands, we see that the energy use is that high that companies are not allowed to be connected to the energy network. So that local platform said, "we need to change our way of working, because if we do not do that, we cannot make new apps. Because they're simply not the energy to do that, we'll be cut down.

So we need to do this something. And if other companies don't, then that's up to them. But we make the change because we see that it's necessary for the environment." And I really like that. So I got passionate about low code on the one side and sustainability became a thing. And then in 2022, I was asked for QA&TEST to speak there on green IT. And then I got in contact with professors in Spain and in Portugal, not only on sustainable green IT, but also on the connection with low code. And, well, it got me convinced that we really need to do something because it's, it's scary how much energy resources we use, but also hardware resources we use, because if we make quicker apps, heavier apps, we need new hardware, but we are losing also those resources.

So we need to change the way of thinking and low code, I think, is a good way to help us change the way we feel and think about software development.

Chris Adams: Okay, that's actually... so you said a couple of quite interesting things that I haven't heard people mention before. One of the first things you spoke about was this idea that, okay, given the fact that there's, there are limits that we need to stay inside, the thing we need to do is actually, if we're going to increase the kind of utility of the services we need to do, then we need to make them more efficient.

So we did, a couple episodes ago, we did one all about multi-tenancy, about the idea of like multiple people sharing the same platform and using it in a more kind of efficient way, rather than having the equivalent number of like multiple separate platforms which aren't used very much. And it seems like you're touching on some of those ideas there, because this is actually the first time I've heard groups actually take the kind of limit thing more quite seriously, because you often see folks talking about, "okay, well, we're going to make things more efficient."

But if you look at the large providers, say, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, all of these providers seem to have plans to massively increase the energy use they're using. So this is actually quite a different approach that you've been laying out here. It's like, "well, actually, we're going to use efficiency to kind of book those savings rather than just use it to sell more stuff" basically. Okay. And that was actually quite cool. And the thing that you also mentioned as well was this idea about the testing aspects. Now, I think that there's a term that we spoke about before in the kind of preparation session for this. You mentioned this idea of like shifting left. So, there are things that you would do when you're a tester to make sure you can meet a set of standards.

And it seems like, there's maybe some ideas about applying those things as part of a kind of process, so that you kind of maintain a certain level of efficiency or a certain level of accessibility or sustainability as well. Maybe we could just expand on a little bit of that before we move to the next point.

Marjolein Pordon: Yeah, because if we look to, to testing, usually we come at the end of the development cycle. The things are made and then we test it and then we say, "well, we trust this to work or we not, and" then it needs some rebook. But what we believe as test consultants is the sooner we, the earlier we are connected, then we can think ahead.

We can look to the requirements, but, and not only about the product, but also about the sustainability. Because if we create awareness with the developer. How to make his application more energy efficient, it's better to be done before he starts building. Same with the product owners and the designers and the architects.

They are the ones that should design the system to be energy efficient. And if we all work together and if I as a tester know what they have done, then I can also check that. And it's going to be important because at least in Europe, we have the ESG legislation. And what I hear a lot is that small companies say, "Oh yes, but it's only for the big companies."

Is it? Because if you supply to a big company, you're part of the chain.

Chris Adams: Yeah.

Marjolein Pordon: and you need to also document and let know that you are efficient. And it could be that you lose some big clients because you do not have the things that they need for the legislation.

So

Chris Adams: Yeah, I see.

Marjolein Pordon: So, in the whole chain, we need to shift left.

We need to use sustainability as a nonfunctional. And it works broader than just environmental sustainability. Because on the marketing part, we all know that, especially the youth want a better world. If you want those as your clients, and they're gonna grow up, they're gonna work in companies, you need to be green, then you need to show that you care for the world. So, it's not just that you save the planet, but you also save your brand, you save the way people look at you, and you make sure that you are there in a few years.

Chris Adams: I see, okay, so you're referring to like, essentially retaining talent and actually attracting people who are basically looking around and thinking, "hey, we should probably be doing something on this climate thing." And if a company is not kind of living those values, that's going to make them think twice about even, "should I join this organization?

Should I choose to work in this field?" And so on. Okay, thanks, Marjolein. Okay, so we've spoken about low code and no code, and you mentioned that there's like one, you're working for one provider. Maybe it might help to just get a bit concrete, because it's quite a wide ranging term. So when we talk about things like, say, low code, maybe we could talk about some of the kind of better known services, so people get an idea of what they might look for.

So what is, like, a low code system in this case, or who are the companies that do this kind of stuff, perhaps? If you could talk about that, and then maybe we might see if there's any open source equivalents that might be useful for developers who are listening, or people who might want to take some other steps into this field.

Marjolein Pordon: I'm not connected to a particular platform. I have worked, I think, with five platforms, but as an independent tester, what we see is you have different kinds of low code. So some are in the workflow management, you have CRM systems. Webpages, ERP systems, all based on reusable codes and those can be modular.

So like Mendix likes to call drag and drop.

I have a component, I drag it and put it in. WordPress works the same way, but then you build a website. Those like Workflow and Aden, I think is a one, and Zapier,

Chris Adams: Mm.

Marjolein Pordon: and for CRM you have Creatio, and all that I mentioned are open source tooling. And I think that's important because like you said, if you share that knowledge and share those, that code, people don't have to make it their own and they don't have to invent the wheel again.

That's I think important because you don't have to know everything. You need to know where to get it. But also, the energy efficiency and the environmental impact is way lower if we reuse code.

Chris Adams: Okay, thank you for that. So to reiterate, so when we're talking about low code and no code, we might be talking about, so you mentioned a few platforms that people may have heard of. So one is Zapier, which is very, very common that will basically plug into an existing software as a service and then let you make a transform.

And then, and there was another one you mentioned, which was N8N, which is a little bit like a kind of open source, well, open source like equivalent. I'm not sure if they're technically using an open source, it's more like source available, but the general idea is you can run it on your own servers, so you can have a similar idea of pulling information from one place and having little bits of javascript or something like that you run there, with the idea being that you have multi-tenancy, lots of people using the same things, because you'll need a little bit of code rather than having a whole running one.

And you also mentioned that Mendix, which is a more visual option, and, okay, and some of them which are more specifically tied to an existing, say, enterprise system or something like that. Okay, thanks for that. Okay, so we spoke a little bit about, in the intro, some of the arguments people use about where low code might fit into this kind of, into this world of green software and reducing the total resource requirements of, of anything like this, and we've spoken about the idea of lots and lots of people using, say, shared low code.

Shared components in a centralized service. Now, this implies that lots of companies have problems which are similar enough to each other that you can actually solve something like this. And when I've spoken to people in various organizations, they often, one, a common kind of theme is, "oh, our stuff is so unique that the only way we could possibly do this is by hiring a really, really expensive specialized developer because only they, only they could possibly capture the uniqueness of our organization." And this seems to suggest that's not the case. Maybe we could talk a little bit about that, like, is it that companies are over indexing on how unique they are, or where does this fit in, or are there some parts that you can do, but there's still places where you might need a specialist, for example? Maybe you could kind of share a little bit about that, actually.

Marjolein Pordon: Yeah, well, it might not be a popular opinion, but I feel that companies need to convince themselves they're unique because how else are they going to stand out? And what I see with companies that embrace low code is that they say, "well, we choose to look for the components we have in common with other companies. And if we build those components, those modules, those parts that we need in low code, we have time left, we have money left, we have expertise left to build those few things that are customized." So we all know software projects takes ages, deadlines are never met, but what if we use those components that are alike, because every company has parts that align. If I sell something, I need a cash register.

I need a website, all those things align. And if I need a small part that's not aligned that I want different from my competitors, then I can build, let that build by that said expensive developer. But that developer only has to do that little part for maybe a week or two weeks. And the rest is built in low code.

It's energy efficient. I save money. I save time. And I invest for just those parts that I really want to stand out in. And it can also mean that you think that you're just like everything and you build everything in low code and what you save in money, you can add to invest in your company, add new products, do your marketing. So there, the, the low code embracers, I feel say, "yes, we are unique, but we use what we have in common to do in low code and what we do not have in common and stand out, we invest in that."

Chris Adams: Okay, I can follow that argument now, actually. And there's maybe one question I have for you, is basically how these platforms are built, because usually, like, rather than paying to have an entire server or something like that, you might pay for kind of per use, and this is like an argument people make with serverless computing is like if you're paying for the requests or you're just paying for the amount of computation on a kind of per second basis, then you have an incentive to reduce the amount of computation you're using because you have it linked much there, there's a much clearer incentive for you to do this.

Are, is this common? Do you, are there, is it fairly common for, say, low coding tools to bill for, like, provide granular billing in terms of, like, a request made or a kind of run or a workflow? Like, what are the units that people tend to use when they're looking at something like that?

Marjolein Pordon: The bigger platforms I noticed have trouble or are not quite there yet to do that. But there are smaller platforms who say, "well, this is the way we do it." And I think that that's creating of awareness. What does my system do? Because I pay for it. And we all know money is a big, big incentive to say, "Oh, wow.

Why am I doing this?" And when I did my, my talk in 2022, I did some research and what I noticed is what we do in social media every day. And I had a thing that if the miles from earth to the moon with all the emails we send, inclusive, reply all, the "yes, I'll see you in a minute," all those kinds of emails, there are 12 000 times from earth to the moon with a car on carbon emission.

That's huge. Every single day by every mails we send and that are sent. 12 000 times, so 6 000 times to the moon and back again every single day. That's huge. When I knew that I was going through my newsletters, which one am I reading? Actually reading. Not reading? Sorry, I unsubscribe. And that's only maybe a hundred emails in the year, but still it's a hundred less. So that was for me an eye-opener. But if I had a bill every month of a hundred euros because of emails that were polluting and that I wasn't even reading or even opening,

Chris Adams: Then you're going to think about that,

Marjolein Pordon: then the awareness would even bigger. So I think that's it. Yeah, so I think that the platforms that are doing that billing are really good. Because that's the best way for awareness.

Chris Adams: Okay, all right, thank you for that. That makes sense, and there are a few cases that, a few of them, I do believe, expose some of these metrics to you like that. At climateaction.tech, one of the communities I run, we use N8N that provides some of this for some of these things, and I've seen similar things with windmill.dev, which also gives some of these, exposes some of these numbers. So we spoke a little bit about the efficiency part. There's also one thing that came up, is, okay, if you're using one platform, for example, there's going to be there'll be things that you cannot change because they are kind of with the provider's decision.

For example, if you're, like one example I can think of is, there's a service called Webflow. This is a kind of low code tool for designing websites. And they run on AWS, who for the last few years have been less ambitious on climate in terms of greening their own supply than say Microsoft or Google, based on like the things that we see in the public domain, for example, and I know there was one example, there was a project called Flowty by a chap called Fershad Irani.

One thing, one thing he basically did was he looked at where you could do this, and because the thing that gets built is maybe a, say, a static website that's created by Webflow, he was like, well, if you've got this, maybe you can move this to a greener provider, for example, and, or maybe you can apply some kind of digital sustainability techniques to reduce the size of the page and do things like that, right?

Now, this was one example of like a low code service, which was like, if you're going through maybe Webflow, for example, you're tied to kind of infrastructure which where, the people providing that are not as ambitious as some other groups, for example, so you're kind of stuck there. There are cases where there are options.

So you can say, "well, I like what you're using, but can you move to another provider?" Or, "If you don't do this, then I will move to another provider" themselves. Maybe you could talk a little bit about like what your options are if you are using some of these tools. Because one of the things I've heard people say about no code or low coding tools is like, "yeah, they're great, but now I'm stuck inside this specific environment where I have no other way of moving away from that."

Maybe you could touch on what are your options if you do want to ask your provider to improve the sustainability further down in the stack, for example?

Marjolein Pordon: Well, what I noticed is one of the big platforms, Mendix, has made it a big issue. And that's because a lot of their clients pushed them and then the majority counts. Then they need to do it because they don't want big clients to walk away. Again, they are part of the chain of big companies, so the ESG legislation is probably also haunting them, which is good. But yeah, vendor locking is a big issue in low code because for example, I have an application built in Java, C#, whatever. The developer that I have or the service that I use or the company that I use, I don't like, we have issues, we part. And I just hire another Java developer, but if I do not like the platform, same with if I wouldn't like Excel or if I wouldn't like Word, everything that I did in there, I need to migrate. And it's not easy. I mean, I could open things in Google Docs, if I went from Word to Google Docs. But still, I could have issues with the outline, with the layout, things like that. So migrating from one platform to another is not easy. And the integration with platforms, like if I had used one platform and then I think, no, I don't want it, but the application can stay there, but I built something new in another platform. The connection is, is really hard because I always say, Lego wants you to use Lego and not K'nex.

So, and maybe you can connect K'nex to Lego, but it won't be easy. It won't be good on usability. So yeah, the vendor locking is definitely a thing. So before you start with a local platform, wherever you need it for, do your research search on, "is this the platform I want now and in the future?"

And not only on, "does it work for my company," but also "what legislations are coming, are they sustainable, what is my client group wanting?" Things like that.

Chris Adams: Okay, so there's not just, so there's, you're talking, there's almost like some, a case of about alignment you need to be checking for, but also kind of influence you might have as well as actually just saying, is this really convenient for me right now, for example. Okay, all right. That's actually quite helpful.

The one thing I can share with you when I was looking through this that other listeners might find interesting, especially if they are developers, there's, we've come across some tools which are open source. They provide kind of low code like environments, but they also allow you to kind of drop down into your preferred programming language.

One thing I've really been quite impressed with is one organization, one project called windmill.dev. So it's an open source, kind of low code platform, but it's more like a... it's a platform where you have visual ways of working, but there's also a way that you can drop into pretty much your own language, or use any kind of docker container.

And that, because the actual platform itself is open, that's one thing, but also the fact that you can drop down into languages that maybe developers might be familiar with, means that you, that reduces some of the lock in to an extent. And I think that's actually quite a promising path to go down, because yeah, you, have that separation that we know in other, in other kind of sectors.

Having separation of different layers does allow for you to have more options on the table. Okay, so can I, if I can, can I just come back to one thing that you spoke about before? Because I was really surprised, and actually quite impressed by the whole thing about saying, "well, okay, we're going to use this as a, as a absolute limit in energy we can use.

So the only way we can do this is by increasing, if we want to grow, then we need to make more efficient use of this rather than just say, we're just going to keep growing as fast as we can, and we're not really going to think about the resource requirements." So we spoke about this idea of, and this is one thing, an ongoing discussion in green software, which is about basically growth and the idea of the rebound effect.

Are you familiar? There's a term called the rebound effect, which basically refers to this idea that if you make something more efficient, you can increase the total usage of this just because it's become more accessible to more people. And one of the key things around tools like low code is that yes, you're democratizing access to computation, but it also increases the number of people who might be making systems as well, which can have some similar effects.

So maybe you could talk a little bit about the conversation and how you've seen that evolve in the Netherlands specifically, because that's somewhere where you have seen, like moratorium on new data centers being built, which has meant that you've had to, it's forced some of the conversations that are probably not happening quite so quickly in other parts of the world.

And this was, yeah, you brought this up at the beginning of the podcast, so it feels like it might be worth just spending a bit more time looking into that.

Marjolein Pordon: Yeah. Because if you look at data centers, we have, I think, three big ones in the Netherlands. And the one I think in Lelystad uses as much energy as the whole of Amsterdam. That's huge. One data center takes up the same amount of energy as the main city of our country. And that's huge. That's crazy if you think about it, because we cannot build at the houses we need at the moment because of the nitro legislation, because there's not energy, there's not enough water, and those data centers use water and energy of a complete city. So if we do not have that data center in the Netherlands, then we could build a complete city of Amsterdam. Think of all the houses we could build. So this is quite a discussion in the Netherlands. Arjen Lubach is a guy who makes, is a television presenter, and he makes those kind of reports on this.

So also to make us aware, because they are built for a part with our money from the taxpayers. So we are aware that it gives jobs, a data center. We need it and that it's good for Google and AWS to be here, but they're not energy efficient. And well, one of the politicians said, we need them to give back because they're here in the Netherlands,

they use, okay they pay for the energy and for the water, but they need to give something back also for sustainability. And what we now are looking into is that they heat water to cool down their data centers. But we could use that water to heat cities with city heating. So then we, then they should make sure that there are pipelines to the city next to the data center. And then the warm water from the data center can flow through the houses and heat them. And then when the water is cooled down, it can go back to the data center and then you have the rebound effect and you can reuse the hot water to heat the houses and the cool water can go back to the data centers. And data centers said, "no, no, that costs too much money." And we are in the Netherlands now working on a legislation that will make sure they have to do that. If you want a data center in the Netherlands, then you need to build it, and you need to build the system to heat houses. And I think that's good because then you're cooperating, then you're working together and making sure that we need the data centers, but they can give back and work together so that we can still have a better environment because if we go on like this, they had, I think, requirements for 2030 in the Netherlands. Well, we're not going to meet them. And then they said, "well, no, but we'll make them in 2040." Yeah. And in 2030, you'll say 2050. We need to do something now. And I think that by making this happen, saying to a big company like Google, "fine, you have your data center, but these are the requirements or else." It's just necessary to do this.

Chris Adams: Okay, that's a very different take that we've seen in other parts of the world when discussing this actually. And what we can do is we can share some links to some of those points because I haven't heard those stats and those numbers presented in that way before actually. Marjolein, I just want to check up.

So we've spoke, we've covered quite a lot of ground. We spoke about like low code and things like that. If people do want to, if they found some of this interesting and they are, they're looking to take some of their first steps into low code, into the set field. Could you maybe just like suggest a few places where people should be looking to either get either learn in their own time with some like training or if there are any particular projects that you would want to draw people's attention to for this?

Marjolein Pordon: Well, for the low code part, most applications have their own playground and learning environments, which are quite good. So I would start there on the low code part. There are not many general courses on low code, but I'll check them after we're done with the podcast and then I'll, we'll add them to the show links.

Chris Adams: And if there was maybe one platform people might work with or start with or is there one that you would suggest people take some of their first steps with for example or something like that if they're coming in to begin with they just want to start kicking the tires and trying it out, for example?

Marjolein Pordon: Well, I would start with like a Mendix or an OutSystems or things like that, where you have a lot of information and a community behind so that you get the hang of what is low code, what are the standards that you need to work with. And if you have done like one or two of those, then you see the common grounds and then the other platforms will be a lot easier.

Chris Adams: I see. Okay. All right. Well, Marjolein, thank you very much for that. If we're just coming to the end of our time now. So if people have found this interesting and they want to follow what you're doing, where would you suggest people look? Is there a website or is there maybe a pro, is there like, where, where are you online for people to follow your updates and see what you're, see what you're doing going forward?

Marjolein Pordon: I'll follow LadyLowCode at my tag at Instagram and Twitter is @LadyLowCode. LinkedIn is Marjolein Pordon and my website is www.ladylowcode.com.

Chris Adams: Brilliant. Okay, well, Marjolein, thank you so much for giving the, making the time to chat with us today. As we mentioned before, we'll run through this to make sure we've got show note links for all the things that we discussed here. And yeah, have a lovely week, all right? Take care, Marjolein.

Marjolein Pordon: Thank you, Chris.

Chris Adams: Hey everyone, thanks for listening. Just a reminder to follow Environment Variables on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please, do leave a rating and review if you like what we're doing. It helps other people discover the show, and of course, we'd love to have more listeners.

To find out more about the Green Software Foundation, please visit greensoftware.foundationon. That's greensoftware.foundation in any browser. Thanks again, and see you in the next episode!