RunRev vs RealBasic (Richard Gaskin)

Frank D. Engel, Jr. fde101 at fjrhome.net
Fri Dec 31 11:29:37 EST 2004


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I have a very limited amount of experience with Visual Basic, and ran 
the RealBasic demo when trying to decide on a tool for the project I am 
doing.  I have had a little more experience with other languages, 
including other forms of Basic (Applesoft Basic, QuickBasic), C, Java, 
Pascal, Ada, etc.

I definitely agree that one of Rev's biggest advantages is that program 
"execution" can be overlapped with development.  While designing a 
program in the IDE, you can easily switch among form editing, script 
editing, and "browse" (execution) modes and not take extensive time for 
recompiling.  If there is a bug during execution, you can often patch 
it up in the script and restart the script operation w/o needing to go 
through and restart the entire program.  What traditional tools would 
provide as "Debugging" information, such as watch windows for 
variables, etc. are easily accessible through the Rev interface.  
"Immediate" command execution is possible through the "Message" box.  
There are numerous advantages to an interpreted environment, and even 
more with the modal used by Rev.

However, there are a few disadvantages, as well: some with the modal, 
and some with Rev specifically.  Rev's documentation is somewhat 
lacking for beginners, so if you do not already have familiarity with 
an XTalk environment such as HyperCard/SuperCard, it will be a bit of 
an adjustment to deal with -- of course, it would be an adjustment even 
with good docs, but it would at least come more easily.  However, once 
you have learned the modal of development used by Rev, and have some 
familiarity with how to search the docs and use this list, it is not 
difficult to pick up new topics and use them rather efficiently.  My 
own coding style and use of Rev's features is constantly improving with 
techniques I pick up on "accidentally" using this list.  Printing is 
also in need of some improvement, at least under Windows (which has 
different screen and printer font metrics).  Once a few issues have 
been worked out, and after you get on to how printing is done, you can 
access some quite powerful features rather easily, though.

Also, Rev is an interpreter, not a compiler.  Code execution is much 
slower than what you would get with a compiled language such as 
RealBasic.  This is somewhat compensated for by the fact that so many 
"slow" algorithms are already implemented and easy to access through 
simple instructions in Transcript, and can be further enhanced by using 
external routines in compiled modules bundled with your program (for 
computationally intensive tasks not easily covered by Transcript, or 
for accessing outside libraries or functions currently missing from 
Rev).  Overall though, for most functionality, Transcript is 
sufficiently fast that this is not a problem, except for 
computationally intensive algorithms.

The language itself is rather simple to learn, and allows you to write 
software quite quickly once you are on to it.

Another advantage of Rev over RealBasic is that many of the tools you 
use to develop your programs are actually included in the runtime 
engine for the programs.  Drawing/Painting tools, field layouts, etc. 
can be modified dynamically if you allow them to be, and it is possible 
to do some rather interesting things by combining the available tools.



So download the demo and give it a try.  It's not an end-all-else tool 
(nothing is), but it can be a very powerful way to create simple (and 
even very complex) programs quite rapidly.


On Dec 30, 2004, at 11:30 PM, Ken Ray wrote:

> On 12/30/04 4:42 PM, "cdunix at praevius.com" <cdunix at praevius.com> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Richard, point taken.  I'll begin by telling about myself.  I 
>> have
>> fairly extensive experience with the Windows API, Unix, and the 
>> Macintosh
>> environment.  I am very familiar with tools such as XCODE, GCC, etc.  
>> I have
>> recently (within the last 3 years) found that RealBasic strikes a 
>> very, very
>> good middle ground with power vs. ease of use; not sacrificing a 
>> great deal of
>> the former.  I can't really complain about their support either.  My 
>> only
>> knowledge of RunRev is what I'm reading from the website and hearing 
>> from
>> testimonials.
>>
>> I'm sure you're familiar with the saying "all science is magic until
>> discovered"
>> (or thereabouts), so basically I am curious as to whether most users 
>> are
>> novice
>> developers and are only "impressed" with RunRev because it is 
>> something they
>> can use, or if it really does pack a great deal of power along with
>> flexibility
>> to do the "complex" things.
>
> IMHO, Revolution packs a lot of power in an "easy to use" shell. I 
> know RB
> as well as Rev, and I would have to say that if your just looking for 
> raw
> functionality (i.e. can it "do" <x>), Rev and RB are very similar in
> abilties (RB does a few things Rev can't and vice-versa). However, 
> when it
> comes to *ease* of implementation (which applies to speed of 
> development and
> efficiency), as Richard pointed out, Revolution can be much easier to 
> use
> than RB (IMHO), allowing for one-liners that would take RB several 
> lines to
> implement (to be fair, this happens the other way as well, but IMHO it 
> seems
> that more often than not Rev can do things more efficiently than RB).
>
> Personally I think on of the biggest advantages that Rev has over RB 
> is that
> you can go from editing to running *immediately*; you don't need to 
> compile
> and run. So for example, if you're working on a dialog box that would
> normally take you 5 mouse clicks to get to from the start of your 
> program,
> you would have to run that sequence every time you made a simple 
> change to
> the dialog box. In Rev, you'd just switch to the browse tool, and 
> you're
> "running" immediately; you can test right away.
>
> Just my 2 cents,
>
> Ken Ray
> Sons of Thunder Software
> Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
> Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> use-revolution mailing list
> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
>
>
- -----------------------------------------------------------
Frank D. Engel, Jr.  <fde101 at fjrhome.net>

$ ln -s /usr/share/kjvbible /usr/manual
$ true | cat /usr/manual | grep "John 3:16"
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life.
$
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