Rev_rant part 4

Dave dave at looktowindward.com
Wed Nov 15 05:36:17 EST 2006


On 14 Nov 2006, at 15:09, Bernard Devlin wrote:

> Dave said:
>
> >>
> I'm not talking about "me", I'm talking about trying to sell it to a
> whole programming department that is currently using a mix of Macs,
> Windows and Linux machines and programming tools such as C/C++,
> RealBasic, AppleScript, XML, PDF, PERL, JavaScript, etc.
> <<
>
> But why are you trying to 'sell' Rev to these people?  What's the  
> benefit for them?
>
> They already have several cross-platform dev tools (RealBasic,  
> Perl, Javascript).  What do you think that Rev would give them that  
> they don't already have?  Transcript/xCard is a completely  
> different programming paradigm to any of those dev tools.  What do  
> you see that Rev brings to them that they don't already have?  What  
> can justify them learning a new paradigm?  How are you trying to  
> sell it to them?  By pointing out how buggy it is?  By pointing out  
> how they should get free updates for the first year?  By pointing  
> out how insecure you think the company's future is?  Maybe your  
> frustrations with your department not using Rev is being taken out  
> on Rev itself?

The point is that all those technologies could be replaced by RunRev  
and the whole system would be much more stable. They are finding it  
really hard to find the right people because of all the different  
technologies and tools involved. In short it would be much better and  
reliable to use RunRev and would save them money and allow them to  
extend their system much more easily.

>   Maybe your frustrations with your department not using Rev is  
> being taken out on Rev itself?

Not at all! I'm quite happy either way since I still get paid! The  
only one losing out is RunRev Limited.

>
> You've got to accent the positive. I'm using Rev to build cross- 
> platform tools (installers, GUI controls for monitoring processes)  
> and as a rich, highly dynamic, componentized, presentation tier in  
> n-tier applications.  There are very few tools that suit my needs  
> in the case of the latter, and none that I know of that could also  
> be used to do the former as well.  In fact, I also see a time where  
> I will be using Rev to build tools to replace many of the tools  
> used in my middleware environment.  In my case, Rev is the right  
> tool for the jobs I'm using it for.  I have been able to sell Rev  
> (literally) to other people because I have shown them some of the  
> benefits it holds for them.


I've done all that. The proof is in the pudding and with all the  
problems in 2.7.x (especially on the Windows) and then news that the  
basic price didn't include bug fixes/support (I hadn't realized that  
it had changed) put them off. I'm still using 2.6,6 to build some  
apps for them and maybe they'll move to RunRev in the future, but for  
now, it's no-go!
>
> Most programmers are quite opinionated (I might even go so far as  
> to say bigoted).  You are going to need compelling reasons to  
> convince a C programmer or a Perl scripter to adopt Rev.  I worked  
> in a team of 6 developers.  The Java/Oracle people would not look  
> at anything that did not come from IBM, because any company smaller  
> than Oracle or IBM was too risky (despite the fact that they'd  
> followed IBM solutions down more than one dead end road), and they  
> were always looking to have skills to sell to their next employer.
>

I've got all the convincing arguments etc. They were quite happy to  
go down the RunRev route but the stuff mentioned above put them off.

> You've said yourself that you want to be using tools that have  
> widespread adoption.  You could remove all bugs in Rev, and all  
> policies you don't like from RunRev, and I think we'd all be  
> retired before Rev would have as wide adoption as  JavaScript,  
> Perl, or even AppleScript.

I can't believe you called me pessimistic! I find this post to very  
pessimistic basically saying it's a toy, don't try to make it  
mainstream, give up now cos it will never happen!

All the Best
Dave











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