In the 1990s we had Visual Basic, Delphi, and then Visual Studio come along. All great tools for corporate developers who needed to build apps for their workgroups.
But since then developer tools have stagnated. Yeah, we’ve had Ruby on Rails, but that’s really aimed at web developers (Twitter was originally built in it, for instance) and the kinds of database and UI tools that corporate developers needed weren’t there.
Today Application Craft (CrunchBase info on Application Craft) is releasing a new system that looks somewhat like Visual Studio, but is completely web based. Here CEO Freddy May spends a lot of time with me showing how it works and giving me some idea of the power underneath.
Oh, and you can build a LOT without knowing any code. May says it’s not just aimed at developers, but can be used by “citizen developers.” IE, those who don’t know how to code very well. That is exactly the audience that Visual Basic was aimed at back in 1992, and it went on to be the tool for corporate developers. Will Application Craft take over that mantle? We’ll see, but this is a very interesting start. What do you think?
Scobleizer 
Looks like the idea I had about 3 years ago, out of which my prototyping tool came out, http://www.flairbuilder.com
My tool also provides various ‘real widgets’, including YouTube and GMaps, that you can drag’n’drop on design stage. Except you don’t generate code or get an working app. It’s just a prototype.
I hope that someday I will start working on a real app builder. We need that, because it’s just crazy how much time we spend building software doing the same basic things over and over again. And UI coding takes so much time, and devs get it so wrong most of the time without proper UX expertise.
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Looks like the idea I had about 3 years ago, out of which my prototyping tool came out, http://www.flairbuilder.com
My tool also provides various ‘real widgets’, including YouTube and GMaps, that you can drag’n’drop on design stage. Except you don’t generate code or get an working app. It’s just a prototype.
I hope that someday I will start working on a real app builder. We need that, because it’s just crazy how much time we spend building software doing the same basic things over and over again. And UI coding takes so much time, and devs get it so wrong most of the time without proper UX expertise.
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I think what’s needed now is a tool to develop apps. Not yet another tool to develop web apps. But a tool that doesn’t care where you want to deploy, and handles the differences for desktops, browsers, phones, pads, and even platforms that are still to be.
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I think what’s needed now is a tool to develop apps. Not yet another tool to develop web apps. But a tool that doesn’t care where you want to deploy, and handles the differences for desktops, browsers, phones, pads, and even platforms that are still to be.
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Bob – our Application Craft is set up to do exactly this. When JQueryMobile comes out (this year) , we will add in full support for all these devices. Any future device that comes out and gets traction will get support from us.
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Bob – our Application Craft is set up to do exactly this. When JQueryMobile comes out (this year) , we will add in full support for all these devices. Any future device that comes out and gets traction will get support from us.
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I’d like to compare this to ZOHO Creator, which is really REALLY easy to do. ZOHO stores all the data for you and one can build forms with drag-n-drop easily. Coding is via their deluge script, which was a small jump for me from VBASIC.
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