LLM-assisted websites may be the next Microsoft Access
Microsoft Access was a great (in some ways) tool that allowed people to create CRUD apps. Very useful for business, and some computer aficionados even dabbled for their personal use.
The use of Access faded over time for various reasons. Later versions tried to bridge the gap to web apps.
Now we have LLM tools that allow people with similar computer skills to create web apps of similar functionality/complexity. Let's call it CRUD. This goes beyond it being a CRUD app--it is just CRUD.
I imagine CRUD will be about as useful as Access was. Why spend $40/employee/month for some light-duty ERP/CRM type thing that you have to meld the business too? The dashing hero entrepreneur leader of the business can crank out something custom in three weekends! This is naive thinking in some ways but it happens. I have to respect the "keep it small/local" implication of it. Not every business needs to send 10% of profits and 100% of customer data off to a big city software shop that will eventually have a multi-million customer data breach.
Anyways--let's compare Access and CRUDs across a few different?
Learning
Access was easy--form building, database schema, and reporting tools all built in to one program.
A LLM-generated CRUD is likely to be a web app with a lot of different technologies in play. HTML, CSS, JS, certs, ORMs, SQL, web servers, etc. LLMs really help with the speed of building, but one must still understand how it all works together. LLMs are also pretty good at teaching.
Security
Security was an afterthought with typical Access use. The file itself could be password protected. No user roles.
A CRUD is unlikely to have robust access control. There will be temptations to roll one's own by doing fancy things like MD5 hash of passwords. But maybe it would use a pre-built authentication framework like is available in Django. There are good options.
Performance
It was common to store the Access file on a network share. Then any latency would cause performance issues.
In the world of CRUD, one is almost certainly going to build a web app and it will handle latency just fine.
Data integrity
Access would often crash due to network performance issues, and occasionally this would result in corruption. Hopefully you had a backup. I think multi-user access sometimes caused disasters too.
CRUD is likely to be built using a database, and probably an ORM. This type of boilerplate code is what LLMs excel at. SQLite or PostgreSQL/MySQL are going to be the backend in most cases. Data is not likely to get corrupted due to computer or network issues. BUT bad code could really mess up a database. Backups are still your friend.
Bus factor
If the Access wizard disappears one day, it is not likely that a small business has someone who can truly move the Access system along.
I think the same is true for a CRUD. Someone has to have a basic understanding of devops to properly maintain and deploy the app.
Scaling
There are rumors of Access databases that have been migrated into Microsoft SQL Server and web front ends created. And I think later versions of Access facilitated that. It is probably easier to start over and import data.
Odds are good that a CRUD is already a web app with a proper database back end and can be taken over by a moderately experienced devops person once the business grows to a certain size.
Extensibility
I don't think Access had much to facilitate interaction with outside systems. In a CRUD you are going to have many option available.
Summary
I think CRUD will fill a similar role as Access used to. But it will not reach the popularity of Access because of the proliferation of SaaS competitors (themselves built on LLMs). Gains and risks to the business are about the same. It is a powerful tool and easy to wield improperly.
