The Parts Workbench from Digitalk is perhaps typical of most
commercial visual environments in that they were designed to solve a
specific set of issues, most of which are unrelated to the more
general topic of visual programming environments. This fact makes
them more interesting to look at from the perspective of understanding
current art and practice as it relates to visual programming. It is
so easy to get caught up in the theoretical and technological nuances
of an evolving art and as a result lose sight of the relevence of the
state of the art in application. Real constraints of developing and
shipping products have a way of cutting through to what is
important. But perhaps more important are the insights gleaned in
examining such efforts in that they can lead to clearer indications of
where the art needs to evolve in the future. This balance of
retrospection of a design in which I played a major role and
introspection about the what the successes and more importantly the
failures of that design portend for the future is the subject of this
talk. The focus is not on that design, but on designing and not on
evolution of that product but evolution of visual pogramming.
Keynote
About the Author
Document in PostScript (compressed, 4723 bytes)
