Marimba (iirc!) was a Java startup by a Java insider set. It was definitely promoted/hyped along with Java. Bongo was this cool fun silly thing that I can only

Marimba (iirc!) was a Java startup by a Java insider set. It was definitely promoted/hyped along with Java. Bongo was this cool fun silly thing that I can only describe as a kind of REPL for UI :) You basically started out with a blank canvas for your app, and could switch between design mode and run mode. In design mode you would layout widgets (box layout with springs and stuff iirc) and you could script its actions with Java (fill in the callback blank, etc.) Components were named and one could invoke e.g. disable a sibling component, etc. Then you went to runtime mode and voila, you had a working GUI. I also vaguely recall a 'bongo' sound that it actually made when you switched to run mode. It was designed by Arthur van Hoff (who also designed Castanet). (Not sure why refs. to this company and its products are so obscure now. It's almost memory holed.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_van_Hoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_van_Hoff Yes, he wrote AWT (not mentioned in wiki /g): https://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/doc/api/awt.ContainerLayout.html https://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/marc/hotjava/doc/api/a... p.s. Old brain. I actually prototyped a SPA with Bongo in late 90s for a telco company. I was pushing them to have their apps -- think network cabinets, field engineer control panels, etc. -- ported to the browser. They thought it was a very strange idea.. p.s. this is fairly representative of the coverage they were getting back then: https://www.wired.com/1996/11/es-marimba/ https://www.wired.com/1996/11/es-marimba/