Open Letter to Rev: Quality Is Job #1

Bill Marriott wjm at wjm.org
Fri Oct 20 23:52:55 EDT 2006


Mark,

> the whole 2.7x series
> seems like a run of beta releases.

Bingo.

> even in 2.7 I'm still
> about four or five times more productive than I am in C++. And each
> new release in this series seems to be inching its way towards
> usability.

I agree that xTalk is a phenomonal scripting language and that Rev 2.7.4 is 
better than 2.7.0, but "showstoppers" remain for me. My users complain about 
"bloated" executables that run slow, quit on them unexpectedly or remain in 
task manager when they close it.

And I just can't have the IDE crashing in the middle of a complex project. I 
forget the dozen little tweaks I made in the last 15 minutes since I saved. 
I'm driven up the wall by the slow text editing. Adding Galaxy would make 
things faster (with auto-save too), but that's another dimension of bugs to 
troubleshoot. (Was it my code? Rev's code? Galaxy's code? This is NOT a slam 
against Galaxy, which I admire a lot, and appreciate having a free version.)

> That said, I feel your attitude on reporting bugs is rather like
> someone who complains about the government but can't even be bothered
> to vote.

I feel this is not analogous to voting. This is analogous to someone who is 
unhappy about the government but doesn't attend political rallies, staff 
phone banks, donate large sums of money, and run for office. The "vote" I've 
cast is with my pocketbook. But like votes in elections, it's only one among 
many and seems to be unnoticed. Consider my original post a "letter to the 
editor." Perhaps not as heroic an effort as it could be, but not passive, 
either.

> If the team didn't find what you're running into during their
> development and the beta testers didn't come across them, then things
> aren't gonna get any better unless you report them.

Clearly the most serious issue is the crashing. What's the recipe for 
reproducing that? I dunno. What stack does it occur with? Various. Engine or 
IDE? I dunno. Description: Rev crashes. I'd feel like an idiot for 
submitting that one. Someone mentioned crash logs... I don't know where to 
find those. (Is that a Mac-only feature, or a Rev 2.7.x option I 
overlooked?)

As for the rest, I will dutifully log the installer issues and abysmal 
script editor speed -- since (despite this discussion) they don't exist if 
they're not in Bugzilla. But I don't intend to reinstall 2.7.4 to 
troubleshoot the other issues at this point... I've got too much going on to 
monkey with that.







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