Presumably "graphical" programming tools like labview and gedae. But I'm not a fan of them as they are very mouse-dominated which doesn't do my RSI any good.
I'm specifically not naming what I'm talking about because I didn't have it in 1996, when I started; I just had the anger and frustration. That's where you start.
You can't get a solution before you realize there's a problem.
What is this solution then? (It better not involve XML or Excel spreadsheets).