Contrib to old topics - why isn't Rev more popular?

[Richard Gaskin]

Marty Billingsley wrote:
> Ken Apthorpe <ken.apthorpe at optusnet.com.au> writes:
>> I'll finish with an analogy.  Back in the days when getting up a web site
>> was all the rage, the hand coders would sneer at WSIWYG web tools like the
>> early versions of Dreamweaver and Cyberstudio.  Now what are even the
>> professionals using?  Dreamweaver and GoLive. There is a lesson in there for
>> Rev I think.
> 
> I found, to my surprise, that professionals aren't using Dreamweaver and
> GoLive and are, in fact, coding by hand.

I think it depends on which professionals.  I haven't seen stats, but I 
know anecdotally that a great many professional sites are done with DW 
and some even with GL.

It's a question of productivity, of the tradeoffs between hand-coded 
tight HTML vs. rapid development.  And most of the code is the same, 
whether generated by hand or by machine.  "<p>" is "<p>" whether typed 
by hand or generated.

One could argue that all C++ introduced over C was the insertion of 
orders of magnitude more JSR statements into the object code.  But of 
course that's only one view, a view that overlooks the productivity 
benefits of OOP.  One could make a similar comparison of C vs. 
Assembler, or to bring it back home, of Transcript vs. any lower level 
alternative.

Similarly, MVC (Model-View-Controller) paradigms add overhead to code, 
but the microseconds lost in that data management are more than made up 
for in delivering richer features at a lower cost to customers.  The 
older I get, the more I'm migrating my code to such generalized 
patterns.  Sure, I'm giving up a few microseconds of performance, but if 
I can build functional UIs in hours which previously took days my 
customers will be grateful for the loss. :)

Back to the original post, it would be especially helpful if Mr. 
Apthorpe would tell us a bit about his background -- whether he's done 
other programming, whether he's had previous experience with xTalks, 
stuff like that.  The hardest part about product documentation is 
knowing the audience, so it's especially helpful to get background info 
on audience members who express difficulty so future version can be more 
tailored for that learning style.

I liked his analogy of HTML generators and I agree it's a fitting one 
here.  There are many opportunities for ways to decrease coding effort, 
and while some "pro" developers may not use them a great many more would 
find it enormously valuable to be able to drop in behaviors in Rev as in 
DW and other WYSIYG authoring tools.  And if the APIs for such behaviors 
were as well documented as those for DW, it might have as much of a 
positive impact on third party developers as DW's massive number of 
available extensions, so "pro" and "hobbyist" users alike could all benefit.

Mr. Apthorpe wrote:

    The Docs are great if you have some idea of what your doing.
    If you are trying to learn what to do, they are are of
    little use, or just a source of teeth gnashing frustration.

I know that enhancement of the documentation has been an item of keen 
interest at RunRev, and it'll be interesting to see how that interest 
manifests itself in future versions of the product.

In the meantime, perhaps the greatest contribution for learners came 
from Jacque Gay's efforts throughout 2005 in working with developers to 
create a comprehensive tutorial series. These were available at the 
RunRev site until a couple days ago, and no doubt will return soon.  I 
would strongly encourage you to check those out, and we're all anxious 
to see what RunRev does with regard to make the docs more task-oriented.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
  _______________________________________________________
  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com