Why isn't Rev more popular?

[Bob Hutchison]

Hi,

Being new here, and a professional programmer for getting  
frighteningly close to 30 years now, maybe I should say something...

There is no such homogeneous group as "professional developer/ 
programmer" (and you clearly understand this on some level because  
you wrote "developer/programmer" and "professional" :-)

It seems to me that there are a few obvious kinds of programmer that  
will find Rev very useful:

a) users whose primary job is not programming but who have occasional  
need
b) solo programmers
c) exploratory programmers in internet based applications
d) programmers responsible for content-creation-heavy web-applications
e) corporate IT

So why is Rev not more prominent? From what I've seen:

1) where will the users with better things to do than programming  
have heard of Rev? This is really difficult thing for RunRev to  
address (i.e. expensive, hard to get attention) even though the  
vehicle is well known (the web). Training materials do not seem to be  
sufficient (for example, I've read Dan Shafer's ebook and thought it  
was excellent but it won't work for the kinds of people I'm thinking  
of when I look for examples of users in this category).

2) the solo programmer survives these days largely because they can  
make use of libraries and open source software. It is not obvious to  
the solo programmer that Rev is going to play along with that  
strategy. RunRev can counter this with some clear statements and  
demonstrations. Being new here I can't say if RunRev is okay here,  
but it looks as though, worst case, something could be done easily.  
That RunRev itself is closed source isn't going to be that big a  
problem initially, that'll be countered by its value.

3) the exploratory programmer in internet based applications probably  
just hasn't heard of RunRev or they are trapped into web based  
applications somehow.

4) the content-creation people in web-applications either have not  
heard of RunRev or feel some (intense) pressure to do it in the browser

5) the corporate IT users either have not heard of it or can't get it  
past the internal auditing groups (that kept Java out of corporate IT  
for a few years)

So what does this come down to? First getting users to pay attention  
to or just notice Rev. Second some demonstrations for the benefit of  
the solo programmer. Getting the word out will, I think, clearly lead  
to more widespread successful use and that will attract still more  
attention. Solo programmers are a vocal bunch these days in the  
development community. They've always been disproportionately  
important but with weblogs they can make some noise and they already  
have the attention of a lot of people. Make their life easier and  
they'll let people know.

I first heard of RunRev in 2003 and evaluated it then. I got nowhere  
with it (unlike this time around). I have no idea where I heard of  
RunRev, but I spend a lot of time looking for software to reduce my  
pain and multi-platform user interfaces is one of the biggest pains I  
have. I am willing to bet that if I asked 10 or 20 of the programmers  
I've worked with over the last 5 years if they have heard of RunRev I  
will not get a single 'yes' (though you'd think I'd get at least a  
few 'sounds familiars' because they were on my team when I evaluated  
RunRev, but I don't think so). This is a *problem* -- these  
programmers are all in categories b, c, and/or d above, and most have  
the authority to make a decision.

There are a few things that RunRev *must* address and I think the  
biggest is source control. Flash has introduced the ability to have  
actionscript kept in text files and loaded. The same approach could  
be used for the scripts in Rev. That should be, barely, sufficient  
since both flash and Apple's XCode (nib files) get away with  
important assets being in binary files. This source control is not  
just for multiple programmer situation. *All* programmers should be  
using source control (and in fact I think *all* users of *all*  
software should demand this capability and this includes MS Office  
users).

A second thing would be the little rough spots in RunRev. For  
example, *I* think there should be a standard text editor thing that  
supports styled text better. I also think that there should be a tree  
widget (if only to remove barriers to entry -- a lot of people will  
try to duplicate existing UIs when evaluating and an awful lot of  
those will have trees in them -- and it *really* *does* *not*  
*matter* that trees are easy to build yourself in RunRev (and in  
fact, they aren't that easy because they won't be native and that is  
at least part of the appeal of RunRev)). I also think that RunRev  
should bundle Altuit's altBrowser and put it on the toolbar. I also  
think that they should describe more clearly how XML can be parsed  
and acted upon, with some examples and recommendations, and provide a  
better way to generate XML (this is how RunRev will be talking to  
servers over the internet (HTTP+XML) (I think SOAP and XML-RPC are  
just noise) -- I can go on, and on, and on, about this XML stuff so  
I'd better be careful).

BTW, price of Rev should *not* be made into an issue. Rev seems to  
justify the price easily enough (though in my current project I'm  
still evaluating, but I have decided that sooner or later I'll have a  
project appropriate to Rev). The key thing right now is that RunRev  
has to keep alive. At some point they'll have to re-think their  
pricing, as I am sure they know but some current users may not --  
when they do there may be a radical change in price structure and  
current users might not like that.

So, to summarise: there is a lack of awareness of RunRev.

Cheers,
Bob

On Nov 30, 2005, at 8:50 PM, Mark Swindell wrote:

> What is the main reason (if there is such a thing) that Rev is not  
> more popular among professional developers/programmers?  It's been  
> around awhile now.  People have had a chance to hear about it.  It  
> has garnered some awards, at least on the Mac side.  On the face of  
> things you'd think it would  be more popular.
>
> Just curious to hear what people think.
> Mark_______________________________________________
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> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
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----
Bob Hutchison          -- blogs at <http://www.recursive.ca/hutch/>
Recursive Design Inc.  -- <http://www.recursive.ca/>
Raconteur              -- <http://www.raconteur.info/>