Gen – 1st Impressions

I asked a colleague who had never seen Gen before to write his impressions and post them here ——-

“Well, I’ve seen it so what do I think?

Having had a background in programming without the aid of some bells-n-whistle IDE or rainbow coloured syntax GUI editor, When Gen was first described to me by someone obviously very passionate about it I decided to appear interested but deep down remained a little sceptical, after all they say love is blind?

In fact I very quickly realised how ‘useful’ this environment is (I’m referring to ‘useful’ as NOT being the ability to change background colours into one of a thousand different shades, or use some fancy font first discovered by a 5 year olds first experience with a crayon). NO, I mean really useful… it provides the ability to ‘see’ very quickly how the application being analysed/designed/developed/supported is connected. My first delve into the model and the ability to see the direction the code took calling or being called when trying to understand program flow, brought an instant smile to my face. At times, when trying to find one’s way around coded modules, it can be like looking for a needle in the wrong haystack… but this was something different.

I’ve yet to use Gen in earnest, but a quick go at producing some code from the model soon had me trying to hide shouts of ‘wow’, instead choosing to mutter it under my breath, after all I didn’t want to sound too keen.

So in conclusion??? Well I wouldn’t say it was the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, but I quickly reminded myself of the phrase ‘all frills and no knickers’!! My scepticism has taken a dent since seeing the Gen Toolset in operation, as this is something that has real and tangible benefits for the entire life-cycle. It’s clever, clean, efficient and smart enough to know that humans aren’t perfect, even if we like to think we are.”