Rev_rant part 1

[Dave]

On 14 Nov 2006, at 13:56, Bernard Devlin wrote:

> Dave said:
>
> >>
> I decided early on that to be really efficient in
> RunRev you need to develop your own framework (or use a 3rd party
> system), if you do this right you can obtain the maximum code and
> screen design re-use. The problems that I found were because I was
> doing things that probably had not been tested and probably doing
> things that 95% of RunRev Scripters/Programmers don't do!
> <<
>
> Well, I think that this might well explain the differences.
>
> Are you the same Dave who was developing his ISM library?

Yes.

> If so, I remember you were working at a level of abstraction that  
> is quite unusual (I believe) among Rev users.  That's not to  
> criticise you - it's fantastic you are thinking about these  
> problems like that and trying to implement them in Rev.  But that  
> is going to lead you to edge cases where there are going to be bugs  
> and/or inconsistent behaviors.  If one pushes any platform to its  
> limits, then there are going to be problems that have not yet been  
> found and dealt with.

Yes, I agree, but in this case I'm really not sure what the solution  
is, I think it's a bug, but other RunRev'ers/MC'ers may disagree,  
and, since the documentation does not really cover what should happen  
in this case, it's really difficult to know what to do. However with  
the minimum of effort the documentation could be changed which would  
have meant I'd have found the work-around a lot sooner and so would  
the next person (which could be you!).
>
> You pushed Rev further than most people.  You encountered more bugs/ 
> undocumented behaviours/inconsistent behaviours than most people.   
> You end up with the idea that Rev is really buggy.  If Rev was a  
> lot less flexible and dynamic, I think it would be a lot easier to  
> find bugs and make behaviours more consistent.

I don't think that it's all that buggy and I agree that I pushed the  
boundaries, however no one can deny that bugs that have been around  
since the dawn of creation [of RunRev] are still there!

>
> I'm using Rev with my own framework too to maximize code re-use,  
> but in an entirely different way from you. My way hasn't led me to  
> run across the bugs you've found.
>

Well, remember, that:

put the cp1 of this [thing] into me  --on a field

May not work and when it doesn't you may well spend ages tracking it  
down and then ages trying to figure out a work around!!

> It's great to have someone like you here pushing the boundary.  But  
> you are wrong to conclude from that everyone else experiences Rev  
> to be as buggy as you do.  (It is not that buggy for me.)

I haven't said that I think everyone has experienced the same  
problems as me, but from reading this list on and off for 3 years,  
there are questions and problems and  bugs/undocumented behaviours/ 
inconsistent behaviours that have not been fixed either in the  
Engine, the IDE or the Documentation for a long time.

All the Best
Dave