Retro Vibes and the Rise of the New CASE Age

I’ve been digging through the archives recently. While pondering a style refresh for this blog, I found myself searching for the exact vivid colour scheme used for the classic Synon manuals and diskettes back in the day.

That trip down memory lane reminded me of a post I wrote way back in 2010: A Retro Look Back. 

https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2010/07/retro-look-back.html

Looking at those original hues now... wow. You might need sunglasses for this one! They are incredibly vibrant—and perhaps a little too garish for the modern update I have in mind—but time will tell.

(Side note: I’m also looking to co-host away from Google soon. No matter what I try, the site isn't indexing properly, which I suspect is a legacy Blogger template issue I've been battling for a year. Stay tuned for moving plans!)

Re-reading that 2010 post, something specific caught my eye. Near the end, I predicted an uptake in "code generation tools." At the time, my mind went to snippet generation, CRUD automation, basic auto-complete improvements, and deeper code generation within CA Plex and Synon 2E.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have foreseen the current boom in AI-centric development. Tools like Lovable, Cursor, Claude, and Base44 are achieving staggering levels of abstraction.

It makes you wonder: with business users now able to describe what they want and watch systems generate in real-time, are we finally witnessing the true realisation of what the Synon pioneers dreamed of in the 80s and 90s? The ultimate promise of CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering) might just have become our daily reality.

Thanks for reading,
Lee
The Synon 2E and Plex Emporium (A Developer Blog)

2E Hidden Gem - Action Diagram PARMS

It's always nice to learn something new every day!

Today, whilst navigating a functions' action diagram, I was presented with the following screen showing numerous NLL fields.

Usually I page down looking for the field I wanted to view or update, and as you all know, on some files this can be quite cumbersome.  That is until I read a request in the 'Ideas' section from Broadcom's support portal. A user had requested a filter for NLL's or in Peter's parlance "Meaningless" :-)

I thought to myself, that's a neat idea I'll up vote it!!!!

After clicking the "Thumbs Up" button and anticipating the AI to build the feature and email me a PTF, I noticed that the idea had already been implemented......  I quickly fired up a 2E session and went looking for it!!!!

"Lo and behold" (The English equivalent of "Mamma Mia"), there it was, albeit slightly hidden.  You see the toggle is F15 and the label was stating "Undefined parms only" (First image).  However, the toggle is a triple toggle and a third option to remove the NuLLed fields was just another key press away!  

This little feature makes scanning for used data fields way easier.  What do you think?

On a side note, this also works for unentered fields during file maintenance or if PARMS have been added to a function.  The F15 options' initial toggle will show any unmapped fields.

Thanks for reading the Synon 2E and Plex Emporium by Lee Dare (A developer blog). 

Lee.

p.s. Perhaps I should start a hidden gems series in the blog.