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Few people create programs overnight. Instead, most programs evolve over time. Because the process of actually typing programming commands can prove so tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone, programmers try to avoid actually writing their programs until they’re absolutely sure that they know what they’re doing.

To make sure that they don’t spend months (or years) writing a program that doesn’t work right or that solves the wrong problem, programmers often prototype their programs first. Just as architects often build cardboard or plastic models of skyscrapers before a construction crew starts welding I-beams together, programmers create mock-ups (prototypes) of their programs first.

A prototype usually shows the user interface of the program, such as windows, pull-down menus, and dialog boxes. The prototype may look like an actual program, but clicking menus doesn’t do anything. The whole idea of the prototype is to show what the program looks like and how it acts, without taking the time to write commands to make the program actually work.

Rather than learn programming themselves, many people hire someone to write programs for them. But take care! Freelance programmers sometimes live by a rule known as the golden handcuffs, which means that they get the gold and you get the handcuffs.

Here’s how the golden handcuffs work: You hire someone to write your program, and the programmer takes your money. Then that person writes a program that doesn’t work quite the way that you want. Rather than lose the money you already invested in developing the program, you pay the programmer more money, and then this programmer develops a new version of your program that doesn’t quite work either.

At this point, you’re handcuffed. Do you keep paying money to a programmer who never completely finishes the job, or do you give up altogether? What’s worse, you can’t hire a new programmer to work on the same program because the original programmer owns your program’s source code, so nobody else can modify it. Thus the only way that you can modify the program is to hire the original programmer again and again and again and….

After the programmer is happy with the way the prototype looks, he or she can proceed, using the prototype as a guideline toward completing the final program.

Tip Many programmers use RAD languages like Visual Basic to create prototypes quickly. After you use Visual Basic to create a prototype that shows how your user interface works, you can start adding actual commands to later turn your prototype into an honest-to-goodness working program.

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