Suggestion for correcting the IDE's script editor

[Bob Warren]

Can we go back to where it all started?

Although I made contact with Rev some time ago, I have only taken it more
seriously recently. This is not so much because I didn't think it was worth
taking seriously as the fact that finally, Microsoft have made it abundantly
clear that do do not intend to review their decision to kill off Visual
Basic. I have used VB exclusively for a number of years.

For those of you who don't know the story, let me tell it quickly. A bit
more than 2 years ago, Microsoft launched VB.NET which was radically
different to the previous VB. To me, it was not "Basic" at all. VB
previously was user-centric and approximated the English language. In
contrast, the .NET version was machine/system oriented and no longer
approximated English. On top of that, it was much more complicated. Just to
give you an example, whereas before you could put "Hello World" on the
screen in a window by simply writing "Print 'Hello World'", in .NET you
needed half a page of formal declarations just to put it on the console! I
very quickly decided that .NET was not for me, but like many others I hoped
that VB6 would be reprieved. Nobody really believed that Microsoft would
actually go ahead with abandoning VB6 since it would be an incredibly
irresponsible thing to do. They did.

Just to let you know how it feels, let me mimic the situation as though it
were Revolution.

You are a lover of X-Talk. The kind of philosophy behind it is just what you
always wanted and needed. You build your profession around it, set up your
business, raise your family on the income you make from it, and have great
hopes for the future of Revolution. And then you suddenly get an e-mail
saying that Runtime Revolution is pleased to announce their launching of
"Rev.NUT" which bears very little resemblance to the obsolete Transcript
language that you have been using. None of the programs you have ever
written will work in .NUT, and although an automatic converter utility will
be provided, Runtime Revolution will make absolutely sure that it does not
work at all, even for the simplest programs. Like it or lump it.

So there you are, suddenly and unexpectedly a refugee. You never ever
thought of yourself as a refugee, least of all in the field of programming.
You have that lovely feeling of anomaly, like being stranded in the middle
of the ocean and not belonging anywhere any more.

OK. Back to me again. I have found RunRev. It possess all the
characteristics of the programming values I hold dear. But certainly its IDE
is strange to say the least. I don't learn anything easily, and I sometimes
get confused and make mistakes. Like anyone else in a learning situation, I
suffer from blindspots until my genetic programming is ready for me to have
the "aha" experience and I discover what should have been obvious. However,
such personal difficulties have an advantage. Because I suffer in order to
learn, I understand in my skin the problems of any beginner, and that's why
I have been a teacher all my life and why for quite a number of years I was
responsible for computer training. I don't think I was too bad at it.
However, the advantage back then was that when I was preparing training, if
I found myself in a situation where what I needed to teach did not make much
sense, I had the power to consult with management and the thing got changed.
Nobody expected me to teach a psychological mess.

Being a teacher has made me interested in psychology, and one hard lesson
that I have learned is that ALL ideas are valuable, even wrong ones. That
is, of course, if you want to value them. If not, you can throw them away,
as many people do. To me, this is a terrible waste. I much prefer to engage
in a creative process than to engage in symmetrical battles as a result of
my mono-perception of a situation which in reality has multiple aspects. I
was perfectly happy with what came out of my suggestion for correcting the
IDE's script editor because I learned a lot and because it revealed some
weaknesses in the setup as it stands. First of all, it never occurred to me
that the TAB key could be used for anything else than indenting a single
line. In retrospect of course, I was suffering from typical learner's
blindness since I could have found the information about it tucked away in
a corner of the Help and in the Preferences. But it was only half way
through the discussion that there was something very significant that I had
missed. Nevertheless, I don't think that this detracts from the points that
I made. Anyone not born and bred with X-Talk would be likely to fall into
the same trap.

So here is the synthesis of my suggestion for correcting the IDE's script
editor. It presumes that programming and design norms are to be taken into
account, and that likely pitfalls of newcomers are to be avoided as much as
possible.

1. Existing bugs should be removed. The very fact that a newcomer cannot
easily see the difference between a feature and a bug shows that there is
something wrong somewhere. Bugs confuse everybody and everything.

As Mark suggested in his e-mail to us all by suggesting that "it is not
unreasonable to give users the choice":

2. Leave the existing auto-formatting facilities entirely alone.
BUT
3. When the auto-formatting is turned off, it means what it says. This means
that changes to existing text can be made in the manner of a normal text
editor. TAB creates a single indentation in a single line.

In addition, perhaps the switch for turning auto-formatting on and off could
be put in a more convenient place Also, descriptions of auto-formatting and
the (non-standard) use of the TAB key could be more prominently displayed in
the Help.

Now, if we can discuss this on the List and arrive at some kind of consensus
about it, then perhaps we would earn sufficient respect on the part of the
management to get something implemented.

Finally, I would like to apologise for the rather confused nature of my
explanation. On top of my status as a refugee, I am extremely upset at the
conflict my suggestion seems to have stimulated. Perhaps one reason for this
is that to have new ideas, one must necessarily be provocative, and this is
easily misinterpreted by those who are motivated to do so. I am seeking to
deflate the situation by returning to the scene of the crime and re-tracing
my steps. But only you are able to tell me whether I have succeeded or
failed.

Bob