On the "Look Ma, No Code!" Approach
time to read 2 min | 261 words

Just a few words about this issue. As you can probably guess, I'm not an advocate of this approach. The problem I see with this is that the code exists, it is just not code as you normally think about it. But it is there, and it will have bugs, and you will need to fix it. I'm suspicious of the whole deal because it is a leaky abstraction at best, and highly rigid most of the time. It also tend to break down when things gets complex.

The WinForms designer and ASP.Net 's markup are two cases of very well done designer that are very leak-proof, and they still break down when you are doing complex stuff. In WinForms it is easier to handle, since dropping to code is natural if you know what you are doing. In ASP.Net it is more complex, because of the page lifecycle issues, but very possible.

The problem starts when the designer is the only way in. Take SSIS for example. It is pretty easy to grok when you have a few steps. I have a project that has ~100 items in a single package, many of them include more items in them. There are arrows all over the screen, and I usually can't really understand the flow without a lot of effort.

I see a big push toward "no code" approach, and this is fine and dandy for demos. But I don't write demo software for a living.

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