Making the move...

Dan Shafer revolutionary.dan at gmail.com
Tue Mar 14 17:42:13 EST 2006


Pardon me for jumping in here but I just went through a fairly extensive and
intense period of working with Ruby on Rails and I'm a sort of long-time
Revolutionary so I figured I could add something to the discussion.

Web applications in the sense Ruby on Rails defines them cannot be written
in Revolution. You *can* write CGIs and deploy stacks on servers and Web
servers but there is, e.g., no Revolution plugin that would allow you to
deploy a Rev app on a Web server so that a Firefox user could access it.

You can, however, develop what are called Desktop Web Appliances (see
http://www.daniels-mara.com/WebAppliances.htm) using Rev quite nicely. And
with Altuit's amazingly powerful altBrowser (
http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/altBrowserCover/default.htm), you can
create custom browsers that embed the behavior of Firefox and/or IE on OS X
and Windows, respectively. And creating Web-aware Rev apps is really a piece
of cake.

So if you just need an app to be able to deal with the Internet/Web, Rev is
perfect. If, OTOH, you really need or want to build apps that reside on the
Web and can be accessed out of standard Web browsers, then Rev won't work.
In that case, Ruby on Rails is the best tool for creating such apps as I've
seen but be forewarned: it's deceptively easy to do simple stuff in RoR but
I found it dishearteningly difficult to use it to create anything real even
after spending a lot of time, energy and money (see
http://www.danshafer.com/onemind/?q=node/43).

As for REALBasic vs. Revolution, Johnathan Lynch is basically right on
target with his comments. I'd add one more: unless you already know BASIC
syntax and/or have some familiarity with a Visual Basic-type environment,
Real isn't going to be very easy to learn or use. And as far as I can tell,
database stuff is far more mature and accessible in Rev than in Real.

On 3/14/06, mvreade at earthlink.net <mvreade at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> I will.  Could you please elaborate on the second question is asked:
>
> 2) Revolution vs Ruby on Rails?  You mean to say you use Revolution
> to write browser enabled web-apps? Something I could access with
> Firefox?  If so, I'd love to hear more.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Michael
>
>
> On Mar 14, 2006, at 12:10 PM, Jonathan Lynch wrote:
>
> > If you search the archives, you will find countless RunRev Vs. Real
> > Basic
> > discussions.
> >
> > I think it breaks down to your needs and your programming style.
> > For me,
> > RunRev and Transcript just fit with my brain really well.
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--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author
http://www.shafermedia.com
Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
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