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Yes, FastTrack to me was just a first draft prototype - like the first attempt of automating building cars even before the Ford T1. Today, we have fully automated car-plants - and systems that can create a fully functional CRUD application for dozens of tables in minutes... FastTrack triggered some ideas and inspired me (among many others, I think) to write a program generator, which could generate the CRUD programs, including menus, links to related tables, referential integrity and so on. That got me the job at PSC in 93!
Today, the latest version of my system includes a generator that creates a complete CRUD WebSpeed application - the UI similar to RollBase, with links to referred records in other tables, and lists for children tables (like order-lines of an order...). Every program can be customized, without loosing the ability to regenerate, which needs to be done when a new field gets added to the DB, a new process defined, or the UI changed (yes, the generator generates all HTML5/JS pages, too - which can be customized as well, of course). I like to spend as little time as possible programming, so I have the maximum time available to spend with the users figuring out what they really need, and implementing the logic that can not be automated. As life goes on - during the development process and afterwards - new insights are being found, new features are needed. I prefer the computer modify the standard programs, rather than me - it makes less mistakes. I'll do the custom aspects, it does the standard stuff... Thank you Nigel and Thomas for reminding me of FastTrack! I just realized now, how something simple like FastTrack can have such a great impact. Even though it was not really useable by itself, it was the first step to something great...
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