Constant 'Nonsense' about RR documentation

[David Burgun]

>I learnt Hypercard without a book,
>and I extended my knowledge, as RR extended xTalk, in the
>same way:
>
>by doing!

That's great if you have all the time in the world to "doing" it 
wrong many times! Especially when the documentaion is just plain 
wrong!

>
>Ludwig Wittgenstein said that too many people Philosophise
>and not enough DO PHILOSOPHY.
>
>Now if we all DID Runtime Revolution:
>
>i.e. got in there, got our feet wet, realised that (despite
>a few itches) it really is just about the best
>cross-platform RAD out there, and used the built-in
>documentation as well as we are able to . . .
>
>We would probably shut-up about the 'awful this and the
>awful that'.
>
>Although I am a mere 43 (I have a feeling Dan Shafer is
>older) I started computer programming with FORTRAN 4 in
>1975 - then BASIC, then PASCAL, ZILOG . . . those who moan
>(I don't mean the odd 'twitch') and continue to moan about
>RR's documentation and "lack-of-ease-of-use" ought to try
>programming with one of those horrible Hollerith card
>punchers:
>
>http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/cards.html
>
>a stack of cards,

I did all that too. Started out working in Assembler on Minicomputers 
and IBM/ICL mainframes.

One difference was the number of customers you'd have for a given 
product. Most companies sold computers systems where the hardware was 
at least £10,000 and most likely more like £30,000. The system was 
also specified up front and the user paid extra for addition features 
from the base system. Today, we write general purpose software to be 
sold to a mass market, running of different hardware and operating 
systems.

Another difference is that the systems back then had about 10% of the 
complexity of the Mac/PC today. Also in those environments there were 
two areas you had there were seperate, e.g. the language, like 
Assember, Pascal, Fortran, Cobol, C etc. which had separate 
documentation similar to code warrior today. IOW, you can get any one 
of a 100 C/C++, Pascal or Fortran books. In this case there was a 
bible you could look to to see what was *supposed* to happen.

Also when you did find a problem, it was much easier to patch the OS 
or the Assembler/Compiler, and you could step into almost any part of 
the system on a machine code basis. The Debugger was usually in ROM 
which helped too, you couldn't corrupt it.

In the case of environments like RunRev, it's an all in one solution 
and there isn't a bible or a host of other places you can look to see 
what is *supposed* to happen. You are relient on the documentation 
that comes with the system, and since the IDE is part of that same 
system you are developing, the problems are much more complex.

>a Fortran Manual (remember all that stuff about
>formatting?),
>
>and the 2-3 week wait while your cards sat in a queue at
>one of the few Universities that offered a public service.

The difference was you were not trying to make a living out of it, 
and, even if you were, the market was FAR less competitive and the 
application FAR less complex.

All the Best
Dave