When they ask, what is this written in?

Neal Campbell nealk3nc at gmail.com
Mon Dec 1 11:39:58 EST 2008


Over the past several months I have been studying a lot, looking for
the perfect language that I enjoyed for working on desktop
applications as well as RIA/Web applications. The languages I have
purchased/used/enjoyed include:
Delphi 2009
C# 3.0
Realbasic 2008
Revolution
Ruby
Python
Objective C
Adobe Flex/Actionscript 3
Lua
Ni

If you really look at these, they are all slowly drifting towards
commonality. They all started at different points but with each
iteration of features, they are beginning to look alike. Compare C#
and Actionscript for instance, you cannot hardly tell which is which
(and throw java in there also).

My point is that languages are irrelevant as far as users are
concerned. They were more relevant 10 years ago as the limitations
were pretty visible. There is an argument that vendor-native languages
have an advantage (C#/VB .net on Windows or Objective C for OS X).
These languages enjoy the greatest amount of native look-feel early in
the game but the others catch up pretty quickly.

The language selection is important for us though, both in terms of
speed of development, unit testing capability and ease of deployment.

The other thing is that with RESTful/SOAP/RPC-XML/AMFPHP/etc,
standardized frameworks are actually becoming more strategic in
architecture decision making, not language. Much of the Business
Intelligence can now reside there, segregating the "View" to whatever
language you find best to draw on the screen.

I somehow sense a feeling of "second-class" amongst some when using
Rev. Rev is to the original Hypercard what PC Basic was to VB .net. If
anyone has taken a spin with VB .net 2008, its as complex/difficult as
C#. The old joke that the difference between C++ and VB was 3 months
has long gone. After 2 months of trying it, I decided C# was an easier
language!

Code on Revvers!

Neal Campbell
Abroham Neal Software
Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux
(540) 242 0911
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On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Richard Gaskin
<ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote:
> Mark Smith wrote:
>>
>> Just recently, I told one company I'm working with that I'm using a
>>  scripting language called revolution. They didn't seem worried.
>>
>> Perhaps the phrase "scripting language" might once have caused  concern,
>> but given the prevalence of perl, php, ruby and python, I  don't think it
>> worries many people these days.
>
> True, I think the plethora of very capable VHLs has brought us to a sort of
> Golden Age for scripting.  At last we get some respect. :)
>
> For years I've been referring folks to this article that I first came across
> via Scott Raney:
>
> Scripting: Higher Level Programming
> for the 21st Century
> John K. Ousterhout
> <http://www.tcl.tk/doc/scripting.html>
>
> While focused on TCL, all the arguments he makes there for the inherent
> productivity of typeless languages applies equally well to Transcript.
>
> More recently Geoff Canyon turned me on to this one:
>
> In Praise of Scripting:  Real Programming Pragmatism
> Ronald P. Loui
> <http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~loui/praiseieee.txt>
>
> When I get some free time (yeah, right), I plan to put these and other
> references together into a "Why Revolution?" article for my site.
>
> I think Rev offers a unique blend of strengths that even in spite of its
> weaknesses make it a strong candidate for a broad range of vertical-market
> applications.  It doesn't take much nudging to present a good case for it,
> but hopefully such an article will simplify such conversations.
>
> In the meantime, perhaps the strongest case could be made by simply getting
> the good folks at RunRev to flesh out their listing of apps made with Rev.
>  Nothing makes a more compelling argument than tangible results.
>
> --
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Managing Editor, revJournal
>  _______________________________________________________
>  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com
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>



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