Architecture and Dynamics of Smallkit: An Easy-To-Learn Application Framework

Programming highly interactive applications with graphical user interfaces is an expensive task. In order to shorten the development time, several approaches are known and proven. If one wants to have strong support as well as high flexibility, application frameworks seem to be an appropriate solution. But they often suffer from incomprehensible complexity which hampers learning and using them. To defuse these problems, we advocate a concentration on the essentials. The architecture and dynamics of a new framework—Smallkit—which has been designed for ease of learning and using is presented. Experiences in teaching object- oriented software construction with Smallkit have shown its suitability. Within a few weeks inexperienced programmers were able to implement small-sized applications with state-of-the-art user interfaces.