Built and marketed a drag-n-drop application builder, with both GUI and non-GUI components. Eliminated a developer needing to ever write an application. Instead, just put the components together and save the result. Works well for taking existing components and wiring them together in some sort of relationship, but doesn't come close to getting rid of text code. Underlying the system for each component had to be lots of code. Further, needed lots of code to manage how the
relationships between the components worked. Although it was conceivable to do flowgraph components to represent the control structures, when looking at the density of information that you can get on a screen at one time, the graphical approach was a non-starter. At the time UML was not there, but the
concepts from the "3-amigos" was. What I wanted for the tool was that it would include enough API information such that it would be intelligent about how components would be connected together, kind of like the copy&paste clipboard types we take for granted copying data between programs.
It worked very well. Had a pretty good following.
A certain company in the US northwest, squashed the competing OS that it was written for. Dejected after 3 years of work, moved on to network protocols and other things.
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Built and marketed a drag-n-drop application builder, with both GUI and non-GUI components. Eliminated a developer needing to ever write an application. Instead, just put the components together and save the result. Works well for taking existing components and wiring them together in some sort of relationship, but doesn't come close to getting rid of text code. Underlying the system for each component had to be lots of code. Further, needed lots of code to manage how the relationships between the components worked. Although it was conceivable to do flowgraph components to represent the control structures, when looking at the density of information that you can get on a screen at one time, the graphical approach was a non-starter. At the time UML was not there, but the concepts from the "3-amigos" was. What I wanted for the tool was that it would include enough API information such that it would be intelligent about how components would be connected together, kind of like the copy&paste clipboard types we take for granted copying data between programs. It worked very well. Had a pretty good following. A certain company in the US northwest, squashed the competing OS that it was written for. Dejected after 3 years of work, moved on to network protocols and other things.