SUIT allows students to rapidly develop programs that include graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Many of the students who use SUIT are less interested in the GUI than in other parts of their programs. Systems such as Microsoft Windows and Motif are much more complex, if more powerful, and typically take weeks or months to learn. It takes less than three hours to learn SUIT. A ten-page tutorial has proven effective. SUIT is C-based and is portable across DOS, Macintosh, and UNIX/X. It includes a user interface management system, an interactive layout editor, and a standard set of widgets such as buttons and sliders. The paper describes the architecture and data model of SUIT and some novel implementation features. An important design objective was “making the easy things easy and the hard things possible.” Choices are obvious and simple, allowing even average students to rapidly learn SUIT.

The idea of something simple and easy to learn certainly is laudable, but SUIT’s utility beyond academia is questionable. The authors assert that professional programmers have similar needs for rapidly developing GUIs without taking the time to learn complex development tools. Professional programmers, especially those writing applications, may be able to justify an extensive learning cycle if it is repaid by subsequent productivity gains, reduced errors, easier debugging, or the ability to produce a sophisticated GUI. Professional programmers would use a higher-level language than C (like NeXTStep, Visual BASIC, or an application generator) except where portability, object code size, or efficiency are critical.

SUIT is available free to academic and nonprofit organizations. Over 100 sites have obtained SUIT using the Internet ftp protocol. Information on how to get and run SUIT is available by typing finger suit@uvacs.cs.virginia.edu on the Internet.