Programming by design

IBM's WebSphere Business Integration Modeler is a good example of where software development should be headed. Too often the business analysts (who understand the business process) and the coders (who understand the programming tools) are not in synch, resulting in bad software. Modeling tools provide a simple, visual interface for flow charting business processes, and the tool generates Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) compliant code. Microsoft's "Whitehorse," which will be integrated with the
Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net development environment, will provide a visual interface for constructing applications out of Web services.

On the more cutting edge, Charles Simonyi's company, Intentional Software,