Into the flamefest

[Andre Garzia]

On Dec 6, 2005, at 6:31 AM, Jerry Saperstein wrote:

>
> 	Some of the zealots and self-promoters here are furious that someone
> dared criticize the object of their passion.

Jerry,

I was one of the first persons to reply to your email, I don't think  
I was furious or rude but if you were offended by my email, sorry,  
english is not my native language and although I try my best to use  
it correctly but mistakes happens.

You said that Rev was unable to deliver business solutions. There are  
folks here deploying business solutions since HyperCard, MetaCard,  
SuperCard and every other xTalk in existance, please don't dismiss  
their work with a simple paragraph. I know folks here that deployied  
solutions since I was a toddler with a videogame wondering if those  
lemmings won't fall from the screen.

As for your remark of those business solutions being vague or hoax- 
like, all I can say is about my solutions. Most of my business apps  
were created on a contractual basis and are protected by NDA so I  
can't show you or make them available for download. Some parts of the  
code, which I own, I share with everyone and that includes code for  
all kinds of business needs like networking, servers, database and  
stuff.

Now trying to take this conversation to a happy level, can you tell  
us more about your trouble? What are you trying to accomplish? There  
are tasks that Rev is not suited, we always talk about that, for  
example, I share a simple HTTP server with people here but always  
tell them that the server was not built to handle thousands of  
connections and serve heavy traffic websites, but it's suited to  
small groups and custom solutions. I see myself as an evangelist for  
Revolution, I never was a Zealot, I hope that if you'd share your  
tasks with us, we can help you to see how Rev can work for you or if  
it can't.

Revolution is an xTalk platform, some things are very quick to do in  
xTalk, others are not so forward, some people like it, others can't  
stand it. No language is made for everyone, I for one hate C++ and  
will only touch such language in extreme cases and only if there's no  
other options, on the other hand I love lisp and scheme and till  
today I make lot's of little tools for me in lisp just because I like  
coding in it.

I begun to realize this days that I spend more and more time in the  
Rev IDE having written many tools for my own that I am able to work  
without leaving the IDE (much like some folks with Squeak), I have my  
own mailers and rich text editor. I have my own image browsing and  
screen grabber tool. I have interfaces from Rev to iCal, AddressBook,  
Apple Mail and the Terminal. Revolution is becoming more than a  
simple IDE for me and it's becoming a crucial part of my computing  
experience. Why this? Is it because Rev is a God Send and the Final  
Language of The World? No. This is happening because Rev is a perfect  
match for my needs and wishes, it's on personal level, it suits the  
way I think. I begun to understand Rev after talking to many folks in  
here like Richard, Chipp, Jacque, Dan, Dar, Scott and Trevor and...  
heck, I'll quote the whole userbase if I go like this. They were (and  
still are) much more experienced than me. It was seeing their code  
and their insights that I came to enjoy rev and finally understand  
what it was all about - for example, the message hierarchy system is  
nothing I've seen in other languages, but without it, you can't  
really enjoy Rev.

I moved to Rev after coding in C, Pascal, Basic and Lisp. I was a PC  
guy moved to Macs and needed to deploy cross platform solutions. I  
choosed REALBasic first because I used Delphi and VB in the PC and  
that language was similar to me and I was pretty happy with the  
conventional approach. I never saw HyperCard but heard that my  
favorite game was built with it, and a guy that I respected much -  
Michael Swaine of DDJ - kept shouting about metacard, revolution and  
stuff. When MacOS X came into being, I could not upgrade my RB, the  
first carbon betas were flawed and the sunden change in their socket  
routines rendered all my code bogus. I decided to try that MetaCard  
thing, launched it, couldn't do nothing with it, deleted it, kept  
using RB... only many months later, with the Rev Starter kit and this  
list I started understanding rev. I never moved back, but, my love  
with rev was not on the first glance, it took me a while, maybe if  
you tell us what you're trying to do, we'll be able to help you and  
then maybe some of this love will came to you.

Cheers, Good Luck,
Andre

PS: ... Err... I own 3 newtons, sorry, use them everyday, sorry, even  
with WIFI :-)