The end of OS9 development

[Dan Shafer]

I apologize for the curt sound of my "bite the bullet" message and all the
counter-argument it generated here. I know full well that educational
institutions can't always upgrade hardware and software when they'd like. I
also know from bitter first-hand experience that teachers are so busy with
their normal workloads that getting them to grok the significant gains
technology could win for them in the classroom isn't easy either. I fought
this good fight for a few years with a commercial software company of my
own. We finally had to close the doors. That undoubtedly taints my attitude
and responses here.

But if you have an educational situation where you need OS9 development, the
answer if you want to keep using Rev is pretty straight-forward, isn't it?
Just stop upgrading until and unless Rev releases an OS9 version of a
subsequent release. It's not like the development tool stops working. Yeah,
you'll miss some of the features and you may have to grapple with some bugs
that are fixed in later releases but if that's the best your budget
supports, at least you're not dead in the water.

On some level, we're all in a similar boat. If RunRev gave up the ghost
tomorrow (rest assured that as far as I know, they don't plan to do that!),
we'd all still have a fully (mostly?) functional development tool to keep
using for years to come. It just wouldn't be upgraded to new versions of new
OSes and add new features to the engine. That's the problem with adopting a
proprietary development technollogy. That's also the reason I never keep all
my development eggs in one basket.

Dan