QUICK: exploring the middle ground in user interface design tools

Interface construction kits have become firmly established and well-accepted in recent years. They offer solutions to the programming complexity created by introducing user interface operations into traditional programming languages. The authors argue that an understanding of the productivity gain afforded by construction kits must be shaped by separating programming language from programming environment. The QUICK user interface construction kit is described and used as an example to explore what the authors call the middle ground in language abstraction: the prototype model of object-oriented languages