'Community Beta' has lost its way [any part]

[Scott Kane]

Hi,

You know - this kind of thing really gets my goat.  I'm going to explain why 
presently and I'm going to give examples using other IDE's and compilers to 
support why it gets my goat, plus I'm going to ruffle some feathers, but I'm 
an Aussy and that's what we do best <vbg>.  From time to time on this list 
we see people having a go at RunRev yet I wonder how much they really know 
about what goes into writing and IDE and compiler let alone writing one to 
run on three major (and several minor) platforms?  I've found Rev to be a 
wonderful product.  It has flaws - heck so do I!  <g>  But all round it's 
pretty solid for the average developer doing the average developer "thing". 
Anybody fired up RealBasic (better named RealBugs IMHO) recently?  It's a 
total joke compared to the stability of Rev and I'm not even running the 
newest version of Rev I'm still on 2.6.1.

It has been a pleasure (and shall continue to be a pleasure) to associate 
with many of the wonderful people on this list and the people at RunRev as 
well.  Heather is an angel - I don't know how she keeps her cool and I'm a 
moderator on Usenet of ten years!  RunRev are also *incredibly* genorous, I 
can't (and will not) give details on some of their genourosty but that has 
been my experience of them.  When fellow developers ask (and I know over a 
thousand of them as a member of several associations) about cross platform 
tools I recommend Rev in an instant.  Sure it's a different paradigm than 
most are used to but compared to RB, Trolltech or the incredibly clumsy 
offerings from Apple (if you want to code in C++) it's a gem.

Having said that let's take a look at some of those examples of other IDE's 
that I work in on a weekly basis:

RealBasic - actually I know longer work in it because it is a total joke in 
my experience.

Borland Delphi - I've worked in Delphi since Beta 1 1994.  I love Object 
Pascal and Delphi - yet there are bugs that date to Version 2 that have 
*not* been fixed.  This is from a *huge* development company (compared to 
RunRev) and yet those bugs remain unfixed.  It's at version TEN!.  Why?  See 
further down.

Borland C++ Builder - same company and yep it's based on Delphi code and it 
inherits the bugs from Delphi 2.

Microsoft Access - to many bugs to list!!!!!!

Microsoft Visual Basic - pick a verison!!

Revolution.  I put it in the same experience as the one I've had for Delphi. 
If I want to do something straight forward and not low level I choose Rev. 
If I want to do something complex - like writing direct to the audio card 
then I'd choose Delphi or C++ Builder.  But for most projects these days Rev 
fits the bill because *it just works*.  I've been working on one project for 
two years and hope to bring it to conclusion this year and it's 100% Rev and 
it's lean and efficient despite it's use of 3D graphics and extensive audio. 
Rev gets the credit for this - not me.

Economic pragamatism - it applies to politics too.  You can please some of 
the people some of the time but generally you've got to keep your eye on the 
ball and the ball is where they dollars are and that's with general feature 
sets and tools that appeal and solve the problems of the average developer - 
simple.  How many of us developers (beyond those writing code in a corporate 
situation) add or fix bugs rarely used by our user base as a priority?  How 
many of use can justify doing this?  If one answers honestly in an 
application of reasonable complexity the answer is going to be very few. 
There simply isn't enough money or time to work on every one - so the most 
used or most requested (read desired) issues are worked on first.  Thinking 
that it should be any different - as commercial developers - is 100% 
unrealistic, unfair and down right mean spirited. Rather than blasting away 
on a list frequented potentially by people who are new to Rev and possibly 
development of software in general (and therefore easily scared off) is *no* 
answer to any problem.  If this was the software written by one of us here 
we'd be outraged that somebody would do such a thing to us - so why 
shouldn't the same measure be applied to RunRev?  Respect is earned and 
RunRev have certainly earned respect.   *None* of us are perfect and none of 
us live in an ideal bug free world.  The *only* solution to these kind of 
issues is direct with RunRev, IMHO any other form of reponse is amatuer at 
best and potentially damaging at worst to what is a respectable company 
worthy of our support and assistance where we can give it.

Flames can be directed to bitbucket at cdroo.com   Reasonable discussion of 
course is welcome.

Scott Kane