Disagree RE GUI development
I can write the GUI faster than I can draw it in nearly every environment. I learned this from some guys on a team I worked on long ago. I always used to think GUI's were too expensive to write by hand. Some guys on our team who were responsible for the UI eschewed GUI builders - they said that GUI builders only seem more productive - if you measure the actual amount of time they take to use its longer. They told me to sit down and try it - I found they were right.
The only ones I consider an exception is using InterfaceBuilder on OS X. That's because nib files are so thoroughly baked into the toolkit that its harder to do things without them.
The rest of them generate code which violates Blanchards Law - code generation is to be avoided at all costs. IB serializes object archives (ditto Morphic - the UI toolkit in Squeak).
