The interesting part has changed
I vibe coded my ideal charting tool, you can see it working here.
The thing is that these direct manipulation interfaces used to be a design exercise for teaching object-oriented programming and design patterns (see HotDraw by Kent Beck).
I was fascinated by JHotDraw (the Java port) in college and built a CASE tool for my final-year project. That was 25 years ago đź‘´.
Fast forward to today: in three frigging focused sessions over two weekends, I built something I never could have dreamed of, even if you had given me 6 months. No underlying framework. I just asked for what I wanted and let the agent decide what it thought was best.
I spent 100% of that time explaining what I wanted to see, trying and polishing. The technical advice I provided was literally, “Can you make rendering charts faster with GPU acceleration?” or “Move the provider code to its own folder since more providers are coming”. Seriously.
68,458 lines of Rust, a language I don’t know, across 83 files.
Believe me, I know my stuff. I’m a seasoned software engineer. But this is happening, and I have zero interest in debating which framework is better. “Whatever the agent chooses when I explain my needs and context” is better.
I love Rails. I hope I get the chance to help ensure it remains the best answer in many scenarios. But spending energy on the “best framework” debate when we suddenly live in a science fiction movie feels wrong at many levels.
For the first time, the technology feels secondary to what you want to build. It is liberating once you accept it.