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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:30:46 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>
>> I'll never find it now, but there was a Daily WTF article where someone
>> asked for a product feature to be added and some manager said "my
>> sources tell me it only involves adding 1 button", as if programming is
>> only about putting buttons onto a screen or something. (!)
>
> In fairness, there have been rapid-development tools to do this. I used
> to use one called Visual AppBuilder (which then was renamed "Microbrew")
> that consisted of designing a UI in a UI designer, and then building
> program logic flows by building a flow diagram. There was no actual
> coding that took place, and you could do some pretty involved things with
> it. The functionality could be extended by a real developer as well, so
> you weren't limited to just the modules included in the box.
The point being, just because you only have to add "1 button" doesn't
mean it's "easy". There still has to be a whole stack of control logic
behind that one button, you might have to radically restructure the
innards of the program to add this feature, etc. But hey, "anything is
easy for the person who does not have to implement it". ;-)
FWIW, I used something called... uh... I think it was Rational Rose UML
or something. Draw various UML diagrams (class diagrams, use case
diagrams, event and state diagrams, etc.) and it builds runnable code
that does it. (At least, if you pay out enough money.) It's nowhere near
as easy is just *typing* the code yourself though. (Probably makes
refactoring much easier though...)
I think it would be quite neat (and in principle easy) if Haskell had
such a tool. (I.e., a "draw boxes and lines and it makes a runnable
program".) However, there is no pre-existing Haskell compiler or
interpretter that could be easily linked to such a system, and I'm not
aware of any toolkit for doing the whole "drawing boxes and lines" part.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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