Software Development At Heart

Today is a big day for me and for ABSE: This is the day that shows to the world, through its official site at abse.info, what ABSE is all about, and what it can bring to the software engineering community. It has been almost three years since I started working on the definitive implementation of an easy and productive way to develop and maintain software.

OK, so the current website is a little short on details, but not short on propaganda ! That’s because the first task will be to evangelize the developer community and not to have the technology reviewed by industry experts. ABSE is still in its infancy, and a lot will evolve and change in the coming years. However, ABSE 1.0 will give you plenty of rope to play with (and hang yourself as some would say) and give you a glimpse of the future.

Some people in the software engineering community are now saying that model-driven software development will be mainstream in three years from now, and I am happy to be one of the visionaries that is working on that edge.

For now the ABSE website contains a lot of details about the methodology’s meta-metamodel, the Atom, and many application scenarios. I guess explaining a new philosophy to the crowds will require lots of tinkering with the message I want to pass on, so I’ll have to keep working on the site’s content improvement.

Also AtomWeaver is not far away. Participants in the Early Access Program will receive an alpha version in November, while a beta/CTP version is expected for January 2010.

The start of the coming decade will see a turning point in software engineering. I am happy to be contributing for that with ABSE and AtomWeaver.

I’ve started the ABSE/AtomWeaver EA (Early Access) program a few days ago. This is a restricted group of people that I considered to be relevant to have an early look at ABSE and AtomWeaver. This group is composed of industry-recognized professionals, research people at big companies, but also independent professionals.

People on the Early Access Program can have a first look at this new technology. In return I ask for some neutral feedback.

The first material to be available was a combined slide-style presentation of ABSE and AtomWeaver. The presentation gives a rather limited view of ABSE, and trying to understand ABSE through some slides is still a challenge at this point. However, feedback has been essentially positive, with some people having some doubts about its effectiveness due to their lack of understanding of ABSE’s mechanics.

Most feedback ranges from “promising” to “impressive”, which leaves me confident about ABSE’s official debut in Q1 2010. Stay tuned!

This is my historical note about ABSE, Atom-Based Software Engineering, and how a simple idea evolved into a new Model-Driven Software Development methodology.

I’ve been for years researching ways to develop software in a way that I would be more productive, more organized, more effective. After a first attempt in 2000-2001, and with limited, isolated ideas for a couple of years, a “click” came around 2005 that took me on a trip to a new way of thinking about software development.

I was thinking of a more declarative way to do things. I was thinking in not doing the same things over and over again. I was thinking of transforming my development experience into an automated library. Essentially, I wanted to duplicate myself. I wanted to have the work strength of a small team.

This was the initial rationale behind the development of ABSE. I wanted to have a model of my software project and then, by the switch of some buttons, I would be able to change code, and this code would adjust itself to the specification I ordered. And things could be specified at an unlimited higher- or lower-level. A project would be made of some or millions of small things… and the ABSE Atom was born.

ABSE first evolved as CodeGen4, a simple string-substitution template-based system. Then I thought it would be much powerful if each Atom could be a program in itself. This way the model could “think” according to the specification. Cool! Many new things could now be done.

In January 2007 I started building an IDE that would help me fulfill this dream of mine. A few months later I abandoned the IDE’s development and started again. But this time I wanted to do it right: The IDE should be built using an ABSE model! But how? I didn’t have a tool to build an ABSE model… So I used Leo, a scriptable outline editor. After many hours building scripts and auxiliary tools, I was able to develop AtomWeaver, an IDE that implements ABSE, using ABSE!

I knew that many hours would be spent developing code and scripts that would be thrown to the electronic dumpster once AtomWeaver would become usable. But software development is sometimes like that: you must give one step backward so that you can give two steps forward.

ABSE and AtomWeaver are currently being polished to a point that they can be understood, used, supported, (and I hope) loved by the community. The initial release is near. Stay tuned!

In these last years, I have been actively working on a new Model-Driven Software Development technique.

I’ve started research on this subject around 2000. In 2006, I’ve finally developed a generic modeling methodology that I labelled ABSE (Atom-Based Software Engineering).

What could be the most curious aspect of ABSE is that it was developed isolated from the global MDSD circles: I’ve learned about stuff like DSLs, DSM, DDD, Sofware Product Lines and Software Factories *after* I devised ABSE. So ABSE is probably unlike what you have seen so far in the MDSD scene (whether that is good or bad remains to be seen).

For now, ABSE has its home, at www.abse.info. Keep watching that space for new developments that will happen in the next months!

At least that’s what Stefano Mazzocchi says (via Bob Walsh’s mISV Digest):

At the same time, I found the “960 Grid System“, a kind of “CSS Framework” that lets you easily create a homogeneous design through columns. It’s also good for prototyping.

The 960 Grid System is free to use, and may be adapted to meet your specific needs. Several projects have already spun off, including versions that were built to be fluid and elastic.

Check out a tutorial of the 960 Grid System, written by Adam Hawkins.

You can easily create a grid system using an online tool, at The Grid System Generator where you can simulate some designs. The site itself was built upon the grid system and looks great!

It’s no match to a good designer, and to use this system you still need to apply some design work and some good taste, but for those that want a simple and good looking solution, I hope this helps.