Visual Programming
So this past weekend I learned a thing or two about new technologies (ORM) for bridging the gap between programming data and database data. I figured out how to solve my problems I had yesterday with inheritance using subclasses within Hibernate.
Today, I spoke with my manager and we discussed that the ORM and MVC technologies that I was looking into was only a first generation approach. We went into a brief history of the second and third generation of this technology. The third generation tools that are available actually do most of the work for you. You visually setup your business objects, and the program creates/updates your database, sets up your data tier, and models your business objects for you. I was just a bit stunned.
My managers argument in support of this technology was that most of my time is spent going through the same process on the database and the business logic. Granted that I did make a ton of little utilities to help me out along the way, there are programs out there that walk through the whole process.
There were some tools that we talked about and I started looking into one called DeKlareit. It took a little getting used to, but by the end of the day, I got most of the main concepts of how it worked and the intelligence behind it. Each time I understood another feature, I was just impressed. Most of it is just visual. I don’t write much code at all except for a few formulas or rules.
It is amazing that my manager is suggesting these kind of tools. I feel like it is taking me out of the classical erra of programming, bypassing the industrial age, and going strait to the modern age (if I was comparing it to Civalization IV, of course). I can not say that I no longer need to worry about the database at all, but I feel that this is a huge step in increasing my productivity. The price of this tool can’t even compete with the number of hours I would be doing the same thing by hand.