Link Details

Some useful ideas, though I can't imagine doing all that in paint, excel, and powerpoint.

What's wrong with making click-through dummy apps using HTML? If you have a good wysiwyg tool you can whip through interfaces (and forms simply submit to HTML pages, etc.).

And Paint... I just tried it to see if it's progressed, and it HAS, a bit, but still... just painful. Maybe if you aren't already used to Photoshop or something similar, that saves wasted time in the learning curve... but no layers? No mouse-wheel zooming? No antialiasing? If you add text, the whole block behind it wipes out the background? Ugh.

Some of these tools do cost money (though Photoshop Elements covers the base, for example... no need for the full thing) but hey, MS Office is far from free. I simply don't have a copy of that.

So summary: good ideas, but the tool selections smacks of the programmers who code only in plaintext because they never took the time to realize the enormous gains of mastering an IDE -- not as a crutch to avoid properly learning the language, but to add huge leverage especially for those who already know what they're doing.