Great things about Rev

[Bernard Devlin]

I was thinking some more about what makes development with Rev so  
different for me, and why I find it so rewarding.

I've done lots of Java programming, web development, and Lotus Notes  
(Java, VB).  Often the tools in those environments are expensive and/ 
or unwieldy.  The development cycle is slow and/or full of  
incompatibilities.   Huge corporations such as Apple and IBM are  
almost totally resistant to complaints by developers.  And bugs can  
also go for years without being fixed.

I also use XCode and WebObjects, and last year Apple integrated the  
toolset more than ever, only this year to turn round and tell us that  
WO development will no longer be supported in XCode in future  
releases.   I was recently doing some Applescript/Filemaker  
integration for a client.  I'd never touched either before, and I was  
quite shocked at the lack of documentation, features that were  
missing but were supposed to be there, now-unused hooks that no  
longer worked and were barely documented as not working.

As far as I can see, Runrev have a much better vision and consistency  
about where they are going, and by comparison with other commercial  
development tools it is dirt cheap.  Each version of the Notes IDE  
costs $500 to upgrade, with no reduction for having bought the  
previous version.  I also used WebSphere Studio in the last company I  
worked for and that cost $5,000 per license.   I've bought the entry  
version of other RAD tools (e.g. Demicron WireFusion), and I can't  
even produce commercial apps with them without buying a license that  
is more than the cost of a Revolution Enterprise license.

I've never even had to ask for technical support directly from Runrev  
-  the documentation is good, searching the user list or asking  
questions here almost always turns up an answer, and the great people  
on chat.rev (you guys really rock!) have given me instantaneous  
support from very knowledgeable and humorous people at any time of  
the day or night that I have visited the chat room.  Nevertheless,  
when browsing through the Runrev store recently I saw that paid  
silver support incidents from Runrev were only about £26 each, and I  
was very surprised.  For example, I use the Firebird relational  
database, and support incidents for that are £100 each, but must be  
purchased in a pack of 10.  In the past if I wanted to get  
development support from Apple for WebObjects it would cost me  
roughly £300 per incident.  As for support from companies like IBM -  
my past experience was that such support  was a total waste of money  
because the quality of the support staff was so low they usually knew  
less than me about the particular products we were paying for.  In a  
2 year period they never managed to solve a single problem.

Last year at WWDC there were some WebObjects sessions that I want to  
see, but I couldn't go.  Can I buy recordings of them?  Yes, they  
would only cost me premier membership of ADC, at $3,500 for 1 year.

I've spent the last 3 weeks building a system in Rev that is going to  
transform my own development practice.  I'm amazed at what was  
possible in such a short time.   Not only is Rev highly productive  
and flexible, but also highly performant.

I'm really looking forward to getting the June conference DVD.  I'm  
sure I'm going to really step up my development practices based on  
what I learn from that.

Bernard Devlin