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> BTW, "real" programmers don't use authoring tools.
> "Real" programmers use Computer-Aided Software Engineering
> (CASE) tools. What's the difference? As nearly as I can
> determine, authoring tools generate programs in vendor
> proprietary programming languages, while CASE tools generate
> programs in accepted "standard" programming languages
> (e.g., PASCAL, C, etc.)
CASE tools are just that - tools that a programmer or software
engineer uses to aid himself or herself in building an application.
They sometimes have a GUI, sometimes not. Often they seem more
oriented towards organizing the progamming work, or diagramming it,
than actually doing it.
Authoring tools are limited applications designed toward a
specific purpose with a user-friendly interface. They usually have a
very narrow paradigm and range of operations, sometimes with a more
sophisticated underlying scripting language to extend the
possibilities.
They're similar, but they're approaching the same problem from
opposite directions. No serious programmer I've ever talked to has
had anything but scorn for computer-generated code. Computer-ASSISTED
maybe, but not computer-generated.
Then again, I don't have any serious experience with authoring
tools, just playing around with them now and again.
