Got a nice bit of feedback from a user:

I am becoming addicted to your tool ;-)... I really like the automatic update of diagrams when saving new symbol definitions, or during drag-and-drop operations. Very user-friendly.

I told him we'll shortly be adding a health warning to the tool: "Danger: this tool may be habit forming" :-). Still, it's especially gratifying when you know that the people giving positive feedback are themselves very smart: some kind of indication that we've been on the right track for the last 15 years or so.

At the Oregon Music of Science and Industry event at OOPSLA I had a nice chat with Cincom's Travis Griggs about the benefits of direct manipulation UIs, such as those the user above liked. It makes such a difference if when you change something it is updated instantly and visibly. The more extra button presses and in particular waiting that happen between the operation and seeing its effects, the less inclined you are to make changes and try things out. Or to remember what you were doing so you can check it worked!

That gives two reasons why I feel it's so important that in MetaEdit+ you can edit the metamodel and see the changes instantly. Firstly it saves the metamodeler's time, and secondly it encourages him to press forward in improving the language, further than he would go if it was harder. The first point is nice, but the second is vital: the first only gives a time saving for the one metamodeler, but the second gives time and quality improvements to the work of all the modelers.

Mind you, if MetaEdit+ were too nice to use for the metamodeler, he might spend all day playing with it and never actually deliver the language to the modelers. That's my excuse why we've left bits in that aren't perfect yet ;->! If you're feeling helpful, or just enjoy a nice bit of Schadenfreude, why not download the pre-release and send me a list of those bits? From the look of the comment above, our existing customers might be getting too happy to be good beta testers (actually they're great, but I can always hope!).