Revolution vs Visual Basic

[Andre Garzia]

Haltham,

another nice features of Rev that I don't find in the standard  
computer languages out there are:

* Avoid the write-compile-debug cycle. Your stack is always ready,  
your code too. Just change the tool and interact with it. If it  
explodes, change the tool and fix it. This might appear silly at  
first glance but this is one huge time saver. Using tradicional  
languages you might end up building tons of buggy standalones as you  
debug your app. With Rev things are just more productive. For  
example, Rob had this huge 90mb stack that took some minutes to  
build. If he had to build it everytime he wanted to test something,  
he'd end up loosing time...

* Its easy to create custom tools to help you code. As you get more  
used to us and this list, you'll see that many developers end up  
building their own palletes and environment to suit their tastes.  
It's not like ActiveX and VCL controls of windows. It's like simple  
tools built with Rev to help you work the way you want to work. Scott  
Rossi for example built some very nice alignment, gradient and color  
tools to suit his taste. I have my own set of network tools. I never  
saw VB developers building such tools as easy as we do here.

* Revolution is fun and powerfull. Revolution has some 'new' concepts  
that tradicional coders might need to learn such as how stack works,  
the message path, all about custom properties and other features. But  
those features enable you to create very powerfull tools very fast.  
The stacks being able to load and use other stacks across networks  
make it very easy to share code and to work in groups, it also enable  
you to create auto-update tools very easily. The message path that  
allows you to dispatch and listen to messages making your code flow  
in ways that C/C++ coders can't do and Custom Properties, your cool  
way to store all kinds of things. I've seen pdfs, fonts, all packed  
inside little props of buttons ready to being unpacked as needed or  
copied to other stacks, it's not like other languages containers.  
Custom Props are a way to tune an object to your tastes and allied to  
the message path system allows you to build beautiful softwares that  
are really easy to understand and mantain (which is always productive  
wise).

* Oh, did we talked about cross platform yet? :-)

Cheers and welcome
Andre

On Mar 8, 2006, at 3:56 PM, Dan Shafer wrote:

> Haltham.....
>
> (Keep in mind as you read this that although I'm a language junkie  
> and I've
> done a bit of work in VB, though not recently, I'm really a Mac guy  
> so some
> other Windows developers here may very well declare me to be all  
> wet. I
> would bow to their judgement.)
>
> Revolution's largest claim to fame is clearly that it allows the  
> creation of
> cross-platform standlone applications from a single development  
> platform. If
> that's an important factor for you, then obviously VB variants  
> aren't going
> to be the answer because you cannot create OS X or Linux/Unix apps  
> from it.
> If, however, you are purely a Windows developer and if you're already
> steeped in VB syntax, methodologies and architecture, then my guess is
> you'll find yourself well-served in the long run by staying with VB.
>
> A lot of what you are looking for in Rev isn't built in but as  
> others have
> shown in their answers here, creating the functionality in Rev is  
> close to
> trivial. But the programming paradigm in Revolution with its  
> Transcript
> xTalk language is so substantially different from the approaches  
> taken by VB
> that twisting your head around it may prove challenging. That  
> challenge is
> definitely worthwhile if you plan to create cross-platform software  
> but if
> you don't, I'm not sure it's worth it.
>
>
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author
> http://www.shafermedia.com
> Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
>> From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html
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