Differences between version 2 and predecessor to the previous major change of RAD.
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| Newer page: | version 2 | Last edited on Thursday, February 27, 2003 8:49:28 am | by DanielLawson | Revert |
| Older page: | version 1 | Last edited on Wednesday, February 26, 2003 10:06:19 pm | by GlynWebster | Revert |
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[Acronym] for __R__apid __A__pplication __D__evelopment. Usually means an [IDE] with a point-and-click tool for building graphical user interfaces.
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+There are at least two schools of thought regarding the usage of [RAD] tools.
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+One says that [RAD] tools are best used for rapid prototyping of an application, as they have high-quality form builders and allow fast development of complex interfaces. However, they are not quite good enough for final products, as the code bloat that comes with the abstraction that [RAD] provides is detrimental to the performance of the final product.
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+The second one says that they are perfectly fine to use for all tasks.
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+Regardless of which school you follow, you should always be aware that simply because a tool is abstracting away some of the complexities of the underlying language, it doesn't mean you can get away without knowing how things work. Sure, you can design SQL queries visually, and drop a database component onto a form and have it populate a grid of values: if you don't understand SQL or how database connections are made, chances are you'll have problems one day. Or you'll find you can't quite do what you want, or even that there are heaps of better ways of performing a query that you didn't even know existed.
