Re: What is wrong with OO ?

[Tansel Ersavas <tansel@deep.net>]

Samuel S. Shuster wrote:

>  >It also fails because it is 'visual'. People think building the UI is
>  >building the system. Building a model is not the usual disciplined
>  >approach taken with VB. You can do this with VB, but I haven't seen
>  >many examples.
> 
>   Ok, but only to a point. There is nothing inherently wrong with Visual
> programming. Read on. There is significant problems with 99% of the tools out
> there that are "Visual" today. The problem is that they focus the Visual stuff
> totally on the "View" - User Interface. There is no Visual Application Modeling,
> there is no Visual Domain Modeling (well, no Dynamic stuff, just static CASE -
> ER Modeling BS), there is no Visual Persistence Modeling, there is no Visual
> Coordinator Modeling, etc.

That's quite right. The object model can be represented, as well as the
existing code can be visualized with the right visual tools, and this
can be very enlightening. In fact I have been using visual tools to not
only program, but teach OO and Smalltalk. Have you ever seen the entire
class structure of Smalltalk visually? It is quite a sight. Logical
grouping to categories, viewing a small part of the class hierarcy,
visually adding, deleting classes, changing the inheritence structure in
your favorite notation right on the spot? These are very powerful
features, and allow you to model your system, not only the UI, with the
user. 
  
> The fact that these tools don't exist
> commercially, 

This statement will not be true after we release our new OO modeling
tool "Snowball Rapid Systems Engineering Tool" very soon.
...
All deleted stuff, very much agreed
...
>   Because of this, Visual/Declaritive development probably won't see it's full
> potential. This is sad. I just don't believe that it's a fundamental problem of
> "Visual Development"... any more than it was a fundamental problem of the IDE
> tools of the previous generation.

Times are changing. We have such a tool, and we are very convinced that
this is the way of future. However, our approach to the problem is quite
different to most other people's approach. First of all, we didn't
invent a visual programming language. What we did was to take an
existing language, and create a visual layer (aka a visual editor) on
top of it. This language had to be very flexible, so most of the current
populer languages didn't qualify, except Smalltalk. 

Our approach to visual programming is to visualize the system in any of
its canonical forms the developer requests instantly: class diagrams,
category diagrams, std diagrams. We are also adding to this list object
diagrams that are dynamically generated while your program is running,
and you can use them as visual inspectors-debuggers. We use a trademark
techniques that we developed to visualize the system and create source
from the system we call "Instant Reverse Engineering(tm)", and "Instant
Code Generation(tm)". With these techniques, the moment you draw a class
on a screen, your corresponding Smalltalk class is ready. You can switch
between the textual and visual views of the system within seconds, and
work at the level you feel comfortable. If a class represents a window,
then you can switch between the class diagram view, window design view,
stm view, or source code. You can create an instance and test it at any
time. You can also create documentation related to not only visual parts
of the system, but for non visual parts as well. 

I think, we can now show people how visual programming can really bump
up their productivity. It also accelerates learning, and promotes more
high level thinking. Visual programming is to textual programming what
is textual programming to assembly language.

>                                 And So It Goes
>                                      Sames

Tansel Ersavas
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