No abstract available.

It is an unfortunate truth that as personal computers have become easier to use they also have become more difficult to program. Students who want to write programs that look and feel like real Macintosh applications, for example, are constrained by the time available and the sheer complexity of the application development process. We have found that several object-oriented programming systems have succeeded in abstracting out the commonalties of graphical user interfaces and can allow students to construct interactive, graphical applications at a lower cost. In this paper we describe our experiences in the use of MacApp, an application framework for the Apple Macintosh. The design and implementation of Prof, a prototype visual programming system for both educators and students developed by a final year student in a thirteen week project course, is used to illustrate the discussion. We describe the advantages and disadvantages of the object-oriented application framework approach in the expectation that our experiences will be useful for other educators who may be contemplating following this path.

In recent years, object-oriented programming languages and object-oriented program design have become increasingly popular. Dialects of many popular programming languages are now available which support the major concepts of object-oriented programming; namely message-passing, classes, generic operations and inheritance. Experience in the paradigm is increasingly supporting the view that object-oriented programming may be to the 80's what structured programming was to the 70's in terms of its influence on software development.