You could also write forms by hand, the WYSIWYG editor just visually represented the code and modified it using a bunch of metadata (again just .Net attributes) to help the designer.
The GUI designer actually just ran your code to display in the designer, which mostly worked, sometimes it could break if you form relied on runtime dependencies and you could code around that by specifically checking for DesignMode == true in your code.
I am not saying this was perfect but it had a lot of advantages. Now you see SwiftUI and the like going back toward that model.
The GUI designer actually just ran your code to display in the designer, which mostly worked, sometimes it could break if you form relied on runtime dependencies and you could code around that by specifically checking for DesignMode == true in your code.
I am not saying this was perfect but it had a lot of advantages. Now you see SwiftUI and the like going back toward that model.