[Slightly OT?] Why It's Hard to Explain Rev

[Ken Ray]

On 11/2/05 4:33 PM, "Dan Shafer" <revdan at danshafer.com> wrote:

> When HyperCard was my development tool of choice, I often bemoaned
> the fact that Apple itself seemed unable to articulate what HyperCard
> really was. "It's a digestive aid AND a floor wax!" In my baser
> moments, I wondered if the problem wasn't that Apple was just too
> dumb to get it.

No, because when I worked at Allegiant, the same problem was true for
SuperCard as well... there just wasn't a single way to articulate what it
did...

> I've had the same sort of experience with Rev. It has, as Yogi Berra
> is wont to say, "Deja vu all over again." Is it a database or an
> application tool or a development environment? Is it for
> professionals or serious amateurs? Today, one of my favorite
> newsletters, Good Experience by one of the brightest designers and
> thinkers in the Web universe, Mark Hurst, has an explanation for why
> this is the case.
> 
> "A good experience is rich, something worth exploring, telling others
> about, and experiencing again. It's overdetermined - or holistic - or
> *integrated*. And being integrated makes it (often) hard to explain,
> since one can't truly reduce an integrated whole to a simple cause."
> 
> Well said, I think, and an apt description of Revolution's many-
> faceted appeals.

Agreed...

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com