Let’s be honest: “low code” usually gets a bad rap with devs—myself included.
Most of the time, it means sacrificing flexibility for speed, or getting stuck in a no-code UI that feels like training wheels you can’t take off. And don’t even get me started on the boilerplate you still end up writing just to get an API up and running.
But a few months back, I tried out Martini, Lonti’s low-code API platform. Not because I thought it would change everything—but because I was tired of spending 30+ hours building every new internal API the same way over and over.
What happened next? Kind of wild: I built the same API in under 5 hours. And it wasn’t a toy. It was production-ready, secure, versioned, and hooked into real data.
Here’s what changed.
1. The Old Way: Hours of Boilerplate and Setup
- Schema design → 1–2 days
- Auth and security config → another half-day
- API endpoint scaffolding → hours
- Testing + docs → more hours
- Deployment and monitoring? That’s a whole extra step
It works. It’s clean. But it’s slooooow.
2. The Martini Way: Visual Where It Helps, Code Where You Need It
With Martini, I:
- Imported my data or modeled it visually (hello, Negroni for API-first data models 🙌)
- Dragged in the backend logic I already had as reusable services
- Bound them to endpoints instantly (REST or GraphQL? You choose)
- Set up security with built-in modules (OAuth2, tokens, the works)
- Published and tested from the same workspace
That’s it. No YAML wrangling. No Postman-fueled madness. Just clean APIs with actual reuse.
3. Reuse > Speed
You know what’s better than saving time building one API? Reusing it 10 times across apps.
Martini isn’t just about building fast—it’s about building once and reusing everywhere. Services, workflows, endpoints—they’re all versioned, callable, and composable. That’s where the real ROI kicks in.
4. Real Dev Tools Included
What really sold me was that I could still use code where it made sense.
Need to add logic? Inject Groovy or Java.
Want to extend something with a library? Go for it.
Need to version an API for a breaking change? It’s already baked in.
Low code doesn’t mean giving up control. At least not here.
TL;DR: Stop Copy-Pasting the Same API Logic
We’ve all got that one internal API we’ve rebuilt five different times in slightly different ways. Stop it. 😅
With a tool like Martini, you get back your dev time, keep your flexibility, and don’t sacrifice maintainability just for speed. Honestly, that’s the dream.
Original source: Measuring Developer Productivity Gains with Low Code APIs
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