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.
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)