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do any software design programs exist? (for people who don't know code)

Posted 9 years ago

hi, i was wondering if any software design programs exist similar to website creators making it easy to design a website by other means than writing html code. do any programs make it easy to design software?

my goal is to design a program that can either be viewed on a website or downloaded to a computer. The program would ask the user to input some information like their height, weight, age, BMI, and some other relevant questions, and then there would be results including which vitamins and minerals they need, how many, how frequently, which foods include the nutrients and how many are included per serving. then i would like them to be able to select ingredients from the list of foods supplied and then display a list of recipes they can make with the selected ingredients, as well as a display of the nutrient totals given from the ingredients.

If anybody is interested, I would appreciate help developing the program, as I haven't made any programs before. However, any advice or references to free software to help with developing such a program would be appreciated.

POSTED BY: Isaiah Girard
4 Replies

I have to second what Sean said: Creating a program is programming. (And software design is much more than just programming.) Actually writing the code yourself will give you a lot more freedom in what you can do, you're not limited by whether or not the person who wrote your design tool anticipated that you might want to do this or that. With websites, that's not always a big issue, because most of the time people want to do the same simple things with their sites. (Although I find it hard to imagine that there is any professional web developer out there who never looks at the actual code.) You shouldn't see programming as a chore that you have to get past in order to create a program: It's the very process of creating a program. Also, it's a pretty useful skill to have in a lot of professional and personal contexts, so just give it a shot. It's not scary, and who knows, you might actually have fun.

With the Wolfram language in particular, you'll find that you can already do a lot even if you're just beginning, because a lot of "boring stuff" is already built into the language, whereas some other languages will require you to do all of that yourself... There are people who would probably describe Wolfram as a "so-quick-and-easy-it's-almost-not-programming" language, which is why they use it to prototype things that will later be implemented in a different language (for various reasons). In a sense, it already is what you're asking for.

POSTED BY: Bianca Eifert
Posted 9 years ago

awesome reply thanks, ill look up some tutorials for Wolfram language.

POSTED BY: Isaiah Girard

Programming is how you design software. If you didn't need to program to design software, people wouldn't program.

Desiging software in general is not easy. It requires a fair amount studying to learn how to do it.

Mathematica and the Wolfram Language are a good choice for you. You can create a basic version of what you are describing with only a couple of lines.

CloudDeploy[
    FormFunction[{"Height"->"Integer", Weight->"Integer", Age...}, ...
]

Please see this introduction to programming with Mathematica (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPaLAS9-nBg)

POSTED BY: Sean Clarke
Posted 9 years ago

Thanks for the reply. I wonder why programming is required to design software? Similar to html not being required to design websites, shouldn't they be able to simplify programming in a similar way?
Also, since you already know how to make a basic version of what I'm describing in a few lines, can you possibly consider helping me develop the software? I plan on making the software available for free on a website, but I will also have a place on the website to accept donations to help pay for the domain, so I can pay you some of the extra donated amounts if you want. I also may want to add advertisements since donations don't seem like they'd be very likely to be reliable for paying domain fees. Personally I'm very poor so I can't promise pay, but it seems like everybody, including yourself, would want access to software like I have described. What could be better than making sure you get all of the nutrients you need, and in the right quantities and frequencies?

POSTED BY: Isaiah Girard
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