Tim Almond

The third language that I learnt to program in was a strange creature called Application Master. It was part of ICL’s 4GL system called Quickbuild.

This was something like 17 years ago, it was mainframe based and it had limitations of an 80×24 dumb terminal.

But what was striking about it, even now is just how fast it was for development of database input/output systems.  The whole system was designed around rapid development of robust, simple and reliable database input and query systems. It took a whole lot of things and just handled them for you, like error handling and database rollbacks. You could focus on what you wanted on the screen, what your data is, and what the business rules were.

It’s what I’ve always been interested in - users and their data. Presentation is important - it’s got to be done. I’d just rather get someone else to do it. I’m interested in the business need for data, and fulfilling it.

I’m now looking at Django, and I like a lot of what I see about it. It’s got that thinking of "focus on what matters". So, there’s security stuff built in. There are simple forms that can be generated by just pointing to a database table. It just leaves the developer to get on with the job in hand.

I do a lot of ASP.NET and C#, and it’s good stuff. For really detailed, complex stuff, it’s probably still a top choice. But for smaller stuff, it doesn’t have that same rapid development that Application Master gave me. And I’m starting to think that Django might give it to me.

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Tags: Software Development, Python, Internet //