NoFlo Launches Kickstarter Campaign To Make Software Development Simple, Visual

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- NoFlo (http://noflojs.org) -- an innovator in flow-based software development -- today launches a $100,000 Kickstarter campaign designed to make software programming a simpler, easier to organize and more visual process. Humans are visual. So why not transform software development from a complex text oriented process to a visual object oriented process? Then, you could see what is happening and make changes while a component is running.

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The product's goal is simple: most software starts as ideas represented as boxes and arrows on a whiteboard. NoFlo keeps it that way, but in a digital format which enables real-time collaboration and synchronization. NoFlo is based on "Flow-Based Programming". With its roots at IBM in the 1970s, flow-based programming has been widely used for the creation of 3D and special effects in movies including "The Lord of the Rings", as well as by technology companies including Apple, Facebook and Adobe.

The principle of Flow-Based Programming is truly simple: Everything in the software development process is always a visual graph. Not just your original design, but every single component is visually connected and can be reordered and reused. What could be simpler than looking at a screen and immediately knowing what every box stands for and contains? What could be more efficient than being able to add, subtract, connect and build upon each box by simply making a few thoughtful clicks?

"Every developer knows code is messed up: programming today is like navigating the subway system without a map, only those who created it can get where they want to go. Every new line of software causes an additional element of pain, as well as unintended consequence and disorganization. Because of this, adding simple features can take months, spawn new bugs and mess up days and weeks of work," said Henri Bergius, founder of NoFlo. "Flow-based programming allows you to see what's going on, see every component of the application and how they're connected. With, NoFlo, you can look at a screen, see how the software is progressing, spot and isolate flaws, and correct them without halting the flow of the whole development."

When NoFlo is successful in raising Kickstarter funds, it will build the first mainstream visual development environment for flow-based programming. Since NoFlo is already available for JavaScript development, the addition of Java and Objective-C will enable the creation of native apps for iOS and Android as well as popular browsers and Node.js servers. NoFlo's hosted development environment will feature a powerful user interface, reusable components and example graphs. 100% of the source code will also be made available as open source.

NoFlo was founded by Henri Bergius, the author of web-editing interface Create.js and O'Reilly's CoffeeScript on Node.js. Create.js has been incorporated into many popular web publishing tools. From making everything editable, Henri gravitated to making programming simple. His idea for NoFlo came from the magnitude of frustration he felt every time he began a new software project. Why did everything have to start from scratch? Why could nothing that already existed be re-used? Why couldn't any one piece of code understand another? He knew there had to be a better way. So he searched and searched and came across J. Paul Morrison's seminal book "Flow-Based Programming." Once he landed on Flow-Based Programming, he felt that he could see a future in which creating software didn't have to be maddening, and in which the load could be carried by team of people rather than an individual.

"NoFlo has the potential to bring about one of the greatest transformations in software development in the last 40 years. NoFlo's visual development environment will open up flow-based programming to new creative minds – I'm excited to see what they build using NoFlo," commented J. Paul Morrison.

Steve Jobs brought OOP to mainstream programming with NeXT Computer in the 1980s. J. Paul Morrison's concepts were in production use helping to run a major bank from the mid '70s but their importance was not more widely appreciated until early in the 2000s. Alan Kay, the inventor of OOP, knows it's time for programming to move forward again: "We're running on fumes technologically today."

NoFlo's Kickstarter fundraising campaign starts today and runs until September 15. To participate, please go to: http://noflojs.org/kickstarter/.

To share details of this new project, please tweet: "Make coding simpler: #NoFlo Kickstarter campaign - take the foreboding out of coding http://noflojs.org/kickstarter/."

A video demonstration of NoFlo can be viewed on Vimeo at: http://vimeo.com/71292493.

ABOUT NOFLO

NoFlo aims to make software development simpler, so it can become more accessible and universal. Founder Henri Bergius has brought together the world's leading Flow-Based Programming team to create an open source platform that is designed to make software programming a simpler, easier to organize and more visual process. Flow-Based Programming is already being used for the creation of 3D and special effects in movies, for automating file processing and customer billing pipelines. NoFlo wants to make this powerful, visual-based technology available to everybody.

NoFlo development is coordinated by The Grid, a company based in San Francisco.

Media Enquiries:

Jennifer Shanks
Consort Partners
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +1 (831) 334-0489

SOURCE NoFlo