Prototype or production?

[Richard Gaskin]

VHD wrote:
 > On the subject of marketing, I am amazed that I have never heard
 > of runrev before! (and I spend a fair bit of time reading various
 > news tech sites.) I "stumbled" on runrev reading comments some
 > people made on perl.com about using runrev for GUI applications.
 >
 > The sceptic in me is wondering why runrev is not mentioned more
 > frequently on the tech sites I frequent. If it is as good as it
 > claims (which I tend to believe after spending a lot of time
 > researching), why aren't more people using and talking about this
 > product?
 >
 > I think that it may be (partly) due to its "mac" background and
 > is therefore not taken seriously by windows, developers...?
 >
 > Would be interested to know what your thoughts are on this?

The Mac thang is a part of it.  In spite of its Unix origins in 1992, 
under RunRev's ownership (they acquired the engine last year) the 
product went through a bit of a Mac-centric period.  Given that Mac 
folks need cross-platform deployment (Rev's strongest feature is its 
ubiquity) and Windows developers generally don't give a hoot about 
porting to Mac, maybe that wasn't a bad priority.

Another reason is that marketing thus far has been limited primarily to 
trade shows (renowned for their low ROI) and press releases for new 
versions.  There are of course a million other ways to spread the word, 
and hopefully the product and the company are now in a position to 
better seize those opportunities.

But perhaps the biggest reason is that Rev represents a very different 
workflow from what one may be accustomed to, defying simple comparison 
or even to some degree categorization. Is it a multimedia tool?  A 
prototyping tool?  A complete software development kit?  Really it's all 
of the above, and uses a language and object model that are unique to 
the xTalk world (HyperTalk, SuperTalk, ToolBook's OpenScript, to some 
degree early Lingo, etc.).

For myself and many others here who make their living with it, Rev 
represents an unprecedented ROI.  But to realize those benefits requires 
very different thinking about the process from what developers in more 
traditional languages may be used to.

So while it has enormous value, it's not easy to convey that value in a 
soundbyte.  But items like this one from their marketing literature 
helps, a rather typical example of how simple common GUI app tasks 
usually are in Rev:

      How to make an alias to a file:

      C: 18 lines

      BASIC: 55 lines

      Java: 247 lines

      Revolution:  1 line
        create alias newAliasPath to file sourcePath


PS: I recently came across this paper from Richard Hertz on developing 
net apps with Rev which may be of interest:
<http://reactorlab.net/intro/deployment_whitepaper.html>

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  __________________________________________________
  Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev