Most rapid RAD environment for prototyping

Question

What do you consider the most rapid RAD environment for a working prototype? Not for debate.

• language
• platform
• IDE
• DB
• (personal note)

Thank you.

P.S.1 I was pretty happy with PERL for back-end prototyping... I get stuck when dealing with the UI... it doesn't seem to come as easy...

Answer 1

For prototypes on Windows, Visual Basic is hard to beat. If you need to suppoort another platform (or multiple platforms), then Tcl/Tk is fairly productive, as well.

Answer 2

I've always considered Perl to be my prototyping language of choice, for a few reasons:

1. CPAN - There's a module for just about anything.
2. It's easy to create hacks to mimic, fake or do something quick and dirty.
3. It works everywhere.

Answer 3

I think "most rapid" is heavily subjective. A developer with many years in VB will likely be fastest at prototyping in VB. A Java developer in Java. Ruby in Ruby. The "most rapid", then, is going to be heavily skewed by the assets (code libraries, developer experience and tools) you already have in house.

What you define as a "prototype" also heavily affects things. Is a set of pseudo-working screen shots mocked up in Flash to have some clickability for navigation enough? What is the required feature set and what is the target audience for the prototype?

As you can see "best" is going to vary pretty widely. It's probably close to certain that the language will be high-level and the IDE tools are going to have nice UI designers (assuming the prototype has a UI). If you have a lot of DB work, then database wizards that do the SQL grunt work for you will save time and generate reasonable, if not optimized, objects. The platform would likely be whatever platform the prototype should be for - after all prototyping a Windows app under Linux or a Symbian app under Palm OS probably won't give you too much benefit.

Answer 4

I'd say Python with wxPython

Answer 5

I find that prototyping using the Netbeans GUI builder gives me a great start. I'm a Java programmer mostly though.

Answer 6

It's all pretty subjective I guess, but as you asked 'what do you consider', so...

• Delphi 7 onwards (technically object pascal or Delphi language, I guess)
• Windows 2003/XP
• version 7 is the classic, newer ones don't seem as easy to prototype stuff in (to me)
• SQL Express
• in comparison I've used VB6, MS VC++ (from a long time ago), FoxPro/Windows and Visual FoxPro, and a very small smattering of VS2005 (C#). For me, Delphi is the all-round king every time. :-)

Answer 7

VFP is great for prototyping. I've seen posts (sorry, don't have links) from Microsoft teams where they say WPF allows fast prototyping for them.

Answer 8

Enthought Python Distribution. You create the model of your problem in python and then you say "create a UI for that" in one line of code. If you don't like some parts of the UI, you override the defaults for those parts (and nothing else).

Doesn't get faster than that if you're doing a Desktop app.

The resulting prototype will work on Windows, Linux and Mac.

If you're looking for a web RAD, I suggest to give Grails or TurboGears a try. TurboGears is easier to use, Grails gives you access to the vast space of Java web frameworks (hard to beat).

Answer 9

Try out Axure RP Pro.

We did give it a try and found that it to be really very good. It generates the whole prototype in HTML with a few JavaScripts so it becomes easy to distribute prototypes.

Do check it out.

Answer 10

http://quplo.com

When you prototype any GUI interactively in the browser, you can go from as low or high fidelity as you want. Quplo is focused exactly on prototyping, so it does a whole lot less than IDE's intentionally.