FlowCode Development

Retroactively posting this update; not sure when exactly I launched the landing page. And it should definitely be a better landing page, but you know - sometimes you've just got to get 'er done. So, I got something up, with a mailing list signup form.

After several years (5-6) of learning software development on my own, in addition to some dabbling in code in the 1980's and '90s, I have decided that we (I, at least) need a better tool for the job.

My game, Super-Tic-Tac-Toe, was the most complex project I've created thus far; and it reinforced my frustration at the difficulties of reasoning about, and keeping mental track of, the various states and data flows within the app and between the components.

The only solution I can see to this is a visual tool in the form of a kind of flow chart; and amazingly, after quite a bit of searching, I have not found such a tool in the space. The closest thing I've found is FlowCode for embedded software (yes, I chose an identical name; it is the only logical name I could come up with, that had a domain available), and learning tools like Scratch.

I really believe this tool, if implemented well, could dramatically improve the development experience, effectiveness and efficiency of any software developer.

There are various stages of functionality I envision; at its most basic, it is a visual tool for flowcharting (like LucidChart, Visio and many others) dedicated to and optimized for reasoning about data, state and components.

However, I have a much bigger vision for it than that; and ultimately, I think this tool can have a two-way connection to the filesystem, with custom extension for different frameworks and languages, thus producing file/folder project structure as well as actual functioning boilerplate code!

That, at least, is what I hope to eventually accomplish with this project. I do not expect to be able to do it on my own, and am open to partnerships and support/investment. I expect that I'll first need to produce a more detail specification of the app and a working, useful MVP prototype.

I should also note that there are several other tools that I have in mind to produce which would integrate into a software development workflow, with the same aim of making things more visual, easier to reason about, easier to make complex projects work, and reducing time spent on repetitious and redundant tasks.