In last week's blog we covered a few of our predictions/hopes for 2014. As luck would have it, shortly after that blog was posted a couple of future-oriented news items crossed our desks. We thought they would be worth a mention as they are both a little outside the box.



First up is a piece titled "IT Is Losing Control ... And That's OK." While there is a lot of truth in what the author says here here, our immediate reaction was a strong feeling of deja vu, but it took a while to realize just why. You might want to stop and read the piece now and then come back and see if you agree with us.



Back again? If you are old enough it might remind you of the situation back in the 1980s when accountants and marketing folks started sneaking Apple IIs loaded with Visicalc into the office and had to fight corporate IT tooth and nail to keep them. It took a long time and perhaps the entry of IBM into the PC market, to fully legitimize PCs as a corporate tool. IT finally gave in and PCs and data connectivity became the norm and were fully absorbed into the IT pantheon. IT appeared to have learned their lesson, and over the years PCs, and specifically Windows, became the new norm.



But of course technology doesn't stand still. This time the disruptive influence is mobile apps and the whole bring your own device (BYOD) scenario. Once again IT finds itself struggling to respond in a timely fashion while maintaining control. We suspect that, at least in part, IT will be unable to effectively maintain control of the BYOD situation in the short term. In the long term though, security of corporate data and the problems caused by trying to maintain large numbers of incompatible apps will eventually turn control of the resulting mess back to IT. There's one good comment on the post that points out many of the issues that we might raise on the subject, so we won't say any more. If nothing else the article points out that perhaps once again our users are be leaving us behind.



So if we are not being responsive enough to our user's needs what can we do to catch up? All sorts of methodologies and tools have been promoted over recent years, from new languages such as Java, PHP and Ruby, to methodologies such as agile. But while all have had an impact, they are all programmer driven and don't do a lot to involve users in the process. As a result none of them really jumped out and said, "This might be just the thing for IBM i users." Then we read this: "How An Arcane Coding Method From 1970s Banking Software Could Save The Sanity Of Web Developers Everywhere."



Interestingly there was no Web to develop for 40 years ago when flow-based programming (FBP) was first introduced, so clearly the technique has potential well beyond Web development. In fact, as you'll see from the article, one of the original apps built with this technology was a banking application that is still in use today. Fair warning, this article and others linked to it get pretty deep pretty quickly but there does seem to be something real and different there.



So why do we think it might help solve a few problems? Well it is partly the tight integration of users into the development process. We have always felt that one of the things that distinguish many IBM i developers from their brethren on other platforms is that we are more business oriented. Very few of the UNIX or Windows programmers we have met over the years had much of a clue about the way the business actually operates. Not so for the IBM i folk who sometimes know more about the overall operation of their business than almost anybody else in the company. FBP fits this paradigm well as it heavily involves all of the stakeholders in the process. Indeed in some cases the fundamentals of an application can be put in place by the users before IT even get fully involved.



So why has it taken 40 years for this technique to begin to gain momentum? It may have been a case of waiting for technology to advance to a point where the type of graphical interface needed to make the process really sing became a practical reality. To see what we mean, take a look at NoFlo, a project recently funded on KickStarter that is based in JavaScript. As you can see it takes programming to an entirely different level.



If you want more information on the history of FBP check out the website of its originator J Paul Morrison. You can also find more traditional tooling on SourceForge, which include generators for a number of languages. Sadly, but not surprisingly, no RPG yet. Any volunteers?



As usual we welcome your thoughts in the blog comments section--particularly if you have had any experience with FBP.