A need is identified and a solution is proposed for a novel set of software tools to facilitate the visual composition of technical software design documents as schematic diagrams consisting of predefined software components, and the automatic deployment of runnable software systems from such design documents.
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| The logo from Visio version 1.0 |
This post is intended as support material for another post of mine; see michael.gr - The Deployable Design Document.
One day back in the early nineties, when people were using Windows 3.0 and programming with the Microsoft C/C++ Compiler, a colleague showed me a software design that for the first time he had done not on whiteboard, nor on paper, but on a computer screen, using a new drawing tool called Visio.
He showed me interconnected components laid out on a canvas, and as he moved one of the components, the drawing tool re-routed the lines to maintain the connections to other components. This meant that Visio was not just a pixel drawing utility like Microsoft Paint; it had some understanding of the structure of the information that was being displayed.
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| Logos of various visual programming languages |
This post is intended as support material for another post of mine; see michael.gr - The Deployable Design Document.
The idea of creating software using visual tools has existed ever since the first aspiring programmer was bitterly disillusioned by discovering that programming almost exclusively entails writing lots of little text files containing nothing but boring and cryptic text.
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| The UML logo, by Object Management Group®, Inc. from uml.org; Public Domain. |
This post is intended as support material for another post of mine; see michael.gr - The Deployable Design Document.
It has miserably failed.
