[protomyth]

I knew some folks in the 90's that prototyped in Shockwave. They did UI and animated uses cases. I was impressed by how quick people got their blob-type people animated use cases that were basically little cartoons. Seemed like way too much work, but I guess it worked for them.

[TeMPOraL]

I've learned the hard way just how effective such prototyping tools can be if you only care about... prototypes. Or the visual stuff. Seeing a designer whipping up a running example in 15 minutes in Construct2 that was equivalent to what me and two of my friends spent last 8 hours coding has taught me to respect those tools, at least in particular use cases.

And my point is, if we're focusing only on short-term client-recognizable value, we may as well just make shiny prototypes. Who cares about the pesky internals anyway.

[protomyth]

To be fair to them, they were hella good C++ programmers and used Shockwave to prototype and lock down the business requirements. You can do an amazing amount of specification like that. It was basically CRC cards put to animation as people and things interacting.

They provided quite a bit of short and long term value by being better at giving clients an understanding of what they were actually getting. They cared about the internals and making sure their clients understood the logic the internals would use.

If I was skilled in some animation tool like they were I would do the same.