Popfly is dead
So Microsoft’s Popfly is dead. It’s probably for the best. The idea of Popfly - opening up mashup, game and web development for the non-technical user who does not want to write code - was okay on a philosophical plane, but I have a feeling it ran into the age-old rule of software development: if you want to create something useful, you *have* to get down and dirty with code. Popfly has gone the way of countless drag-n-drop application development IDEs, visual WYSIWYG HTML editors and every other tool that tries to hide the complexity of what is fundamentally a complex task. Maybe it’s just the hardcore coder in me talking, but the persistent failure of these “toolbox” approaches to software development suggest to me that they are not feasible. Perhaps someday something will prove me wrong. It won’t be Popfly, though.
