i think the nature of GUI programming hasn't been well enough characterized, and thus the tools we use for building them aren't adequate. it's a bit like trying

i think the nature of GUI programming hasn't been well enough characterized, and thus the tools we use for building them aren't adequate. it's a bit like trying to do DB programming before transaction, and relational algebra were invented. Gui has a lot of conceptually complex properties : - it has both synchronous and asynchronous behaviors ( drag vs trigger an animation or loading data for the next screen ) - it has i/o (the screen) - it is interactive (a user can click at any point in time, interrupting the process) - it has transactional properties (you sometimes want a whole set of changes to be performed atomically, with nothing interrupting it). -it is working both in diff mode ( change just the color of that button) and in whole state change (load a new screen) all of this make the problem quite challenging.