VisualAge is a family of computer integrated development environments from IBM, which supports multiple programming languages.
Such tools allow for building user interfaces by WYSIWYG composition of UI widgets which can be "wired" to each other and to application logic written in the system's native object oriented language, or possibly with no coding at all.
By the time VisualAge was released as a product, much more emphasis was placed on visual construction of application logic as well as of the user interface.
This emphasis was in part due to the "positioning" for "strategic" reasons of Smalltalk as a generator rather than a language within IBM's Systems Application Architecture.
This is the eventual total of supported languages, variously available depending on the platform: BASIC, COBOL, C, C++, EGL, Fortran, Java, Pacbase, PL/I, IBM RPG, and Smalltalk.
This bundled SDK adaptation includes CommonPoint's frameworks for desktop (infrastructure for building unified OCX or OpenDoc components), web (called WebRunner, for making drag-and-drop compound documents for the web, and server CGIs), graphics for 2D GUI, international text for Unicode, filesystems, printing, and unit tests.
An all-encompassing OOP framework has always proved a difficult ideal to realize, but VisualAge's Open Class Technology Preview is by far the most credible attempt we've seen.".
[7] Instantiations continues to offer the “enhanced product” named VA Smalltalk (VAST Platform).