Flow based programming

[Tom Locke <tom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I stumbled across this a while back via del.icio.us

"If you are wondering how a revolutionary new approach to application 
development, which has won acceptance from some of the leading thinkers 
in the IT industry, can have been in continuous use for almost 30 years 
in one of Canada's major banks, read on! "

 http://www.jpaulmorrison.com/fbp/

They seem to have discovered the CPA style of programming entirely 
independently from the stuff we're familiar with, and used it in a 
business programming context with great success, e.g. (sorry for the 
long quote, but this is exactly what I've been claiming about CPA 
programming for years, so I found this very exciting):

"Imagine that you have a large and complex application running in your 
shop, and you discover that you need what looks like fairly complex 
changes made to it in a hurry. You consult your programmers and they 
tell you that the changes will probably take several months, but they 
will take a look. A meeting is called of all the people involved - not 
just programmers and analysts, but users and operations personnel as 
well. The essential logic of the program is put up on the wall, and the 
program designers walk through the program structure with the group. 
During the ensuing discussion, they realize that two new modules have to 
be written and some other ones have to change places. Total time to make 
the changes - a week!

"Quite a few parts of this scenario sound unlikely, don't they? Users, 
operations people and programmers all talking the same language - 
unthinkable! But it actually did happen just the way I described."

That's from the book, which is available in full on the web-site.

I'd be very interested in your comments. Did you know about this 
already? I did make a note of some of the differences between their 
programming model and CSP/occam, but I think that file is currently on a 
disembodied hard-disk, while the host computer is journeying the high seas.

Tom.