To me, this is the essence of a useful tool, or what we are striving towards with our useful tools. It is a piece of software that is a combination of two or three useful pieces of software, but when combined and integrated, they create a great way for students or programmers to understand the concepts that they are working with. An OMT diagram creator would be a nice useful tool, and a great way to explain the relation of objects.

This makes me think of all kind of useful tools that would be fantastic to have to help people design and program. Something like an accessor maker that takes a class name and the type you want to be changed (the instance variable name too) and it makes the method for you. Or a text editor/compiler at the same time (kind of like basic) that does not allow you to write code that is invalid. That is difficult becasue some things in Object Oriented Programming are done before say other methods are created, but a real-time compiling editor could help save simple errors and large amounts of compile or programming time.

These are all useful, but I see the OMT as more of a behind the scenes tool (as I see design). Most lay people only look for what kind of output or functionality a program has, but this is more of an inside the field tool that makes work much easier. Bravo for brown university!!!