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

Bernard Devlin revolution at knowledgeworks.plus.com
Tue May 15 08:38:59 EDT 2007


Well, Scott.  Thanks for sharing your experience of development  
environments with us.  How sad that you think you will be flamed.  I  
certainly don't want this to be a flame-fest.  I want to improve the  
way that Rev works.

I too have a wide experience of development tools - I have a degree  
in CS and I first started programming in Fortran on mainframes in  
1980. And for some tasks I choose Revolution, for others Python, for  
others Java.  When I decide that Rev is not the appropriate tool, I  
use a tool that is more appropriate.   For some things Rev is the  
only tool I currently have that will do the job.

> the most used or most requested (read desired) issues are worked on  
> first.

That's not quite true.  Hence my accusation that the Community Beta  
has lost its way.

I have been a member of this list for about 4 or 5 years, and I am  
NOT one of the people who has ranted on and on about bugs.   In fact,  
the last time I posted anything as long as this to the list, it was  
to object to someone who moaned endlessly about bugs, but wouldn't  
even bother to log them in Bugzilla.

Over the years I have experienced minor bugs in Rev - they have been  
irritations but almost without exception I've been able to work round  
them, and I wouldn't say that Rev has noticeably more bugs than any  
other development tool I use.   I have Studio licenses for OS X,  
Windows and Linux, paid up for the next 2 years in advance.   Unlike  
Runrev's Quality Control Partner, I do NOT think that the way to get  
Runrev to fix bugs is to starve them of funds.

The Open Community Beta was announced with great fanfare, and I  
publicly welcomed it.  It led me to expect that some long-standing  
bug-reports that I had been waiting to be fixed would finally receive  
treatment.  I patiently waited throughout the Open Community Beta,  
only to find that my most important blocking bug has been deemed not  
important enough, and it was probably bumped out by the introduction  
of the Altuit products, which already existed (and many of us --  
including me -- already owned licenses to them).

When something in Rev has not worked for four years, but has been  
shown to be a bug, and I cannot work round it, what am I supposed to  
do?  I can guarantee that if there was an ancient bug in Rev that  
stopped your 2 year project, and that bug had been shunted out of the  
way, you would be much less sanguine.  Or maybe not - you have  
multiple GUI toolkits to choose from.  I don't - Rev is my only GUI  
toolkit.

> Respect is earned and RunRev have certainly earned respect.

I think you mean "Respect is earned and RunRev have certainly earned  
MY respect."  You have some special individual circumstances that  
endear them to you.  The fact that you allude to this shows that  
really you know that you are in some kind of special relationship  
with them.  Clearly for you, they are doing something right.   I  
could mention the names of several long-time Rev/Metacard developers  
who want the absolute minimum to do with Runrev the company.   And  
then there are the other users who have slipped away more silently.

I'm suggesting to Runrev that they stop doing something that is wrong.

> The *only* solution to these kind of issues is direct with RunRev,  
> IMHO any other form of reponse is amatuer at best

Sometimes an organisation has to be publicly shamed before something  
is done.  But thanks for the insult anyway (maybe that's why you're  
expecting a flame fest).  My previous private communications with  
Runrev are precisely what has led me to have so little respect for  
them and their ability to set expectations.   And in case you haven't  
been paying attention - bug 3196 had received NO attention until I  
made this more generalized critique.  If there had been any feedback  
from Runrev at all during the last 6 months about which severe bugs  
they were deciding to ignore, I may have decided some months back to  
look into alternative tools.  I specifically recommended they do this  
so that people would have an idea of what to expect from this Beta.

Anyway, I'm not going to waste any more time on this.  I've learned  
the hard way to set my own expectations of Runrev, and sadly they are  
decidedly lower than they were 6 months ago.

Regards,

Bernard







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