How to Make Visual Modeling More Attractive to Software Developers

Visual modeling paradigm is known for a number of decades already but still vast majority of software engineers prefer traditional programming to automated code generation from visual models. In this paper we discuss several ways to make modeling using diagrams more usable for industrial software development. Specialized domain-specific visual languages could be used to make models clearer and more understandable. Also a lot of effort is required for tool developers to make tools supporting these languages less difficult to use in everyday work. We present QReal DSM platform and discuss what we have done to make visual IDEs created on this platform easier and more productive to use, and the process of their creation simpler. In particular we discuss mouse gestures recognition for rapid creation of elements and links on diagrams and a number of special features that increase productivity of modeling process.