OT2: The 'realness' of languages

[viktoras didziulis]

once Revolution collects the critical mass of developers and "well 
known" cross platform software products created with it, the transition 
should happen automagically. In general the situation is such that we 
have more than 50 other languages standing in front of Revolution if we 
sort them by popularity (www.tiobe.com), so the statistics is not on our 
side unless Revolution Ltd introduces something so valuable, so 
efficient, so universal (see list below) that everyone would not resist 
getting a copy of Rev...


I guess some people who explore potential of Revolution for their 
projects might dislike the following issues:
1) lack of hardware accelerated 3D engine (what if I wish to add a 
decent 3D visualization feature into my software, I will be stuck if I 
use Revolution..)
2) objects limited to GUI (I will not be able to create my own invisible 
object with its properties and use it in consistent manner like other 
objects of Revolution. e.g. set the height of object "myCube" or get the 
mass of object "Planet"). I am not speaking about complicated OOP here, 
just about lacking possibility to create simple non-GUI objects, not 
resorting to workarounds.
3) pixel by pixel image manipulation is slow, in Java one can create 
smooth animations by manipulating individual pixels in real-time, in 
Revolution it is still too slow.
4) can I easily use  library written in C/C++ ? No... I need to hire a 
C/C++ programmer to write a wrapper. Or C/C++/Revolution programmer 
which is yet more difficult to find. This inhibits the spread of 
Revolution. For example REXX language has The Generic Call Interface 
(GCI, http://rexx-gci.sourceforge.net/) which allows a REXX-only 
solution for calling external function packages without a wrapper 
library. Many would like a thing like this for Revolution.
5) syntax, well, at least Director folks say that popularity of Lingo 
increased once they introduced alternative dot syntax which requires 
less typing.

So, they might consider choosing Revolution if they are 100% sure they 
will never ever need smooth 3D graphics, direct image manipulation, own 
objects, external libraries and feel comfortable with its syntax. I 
still believe we will have those things in 5 years or so...

All the best!
Viktoras

George C Brackett wrote:
> I'm wondering if this has happened to you:
>
> I recently was talking with a prospective client about extending a 
> program I wrote in Revolution for one school (the charter high school 
> I helped found) to work with a group of schools sharing common 
> interests.  My program has worked well on two platforms for four years 
> (we're OS-agnostic), storing data on student behavior on a MySQL 
> database accessed via internet, and displaying the data in a variety 
> of ways (numeric, graphical, on the web) for teachers, students, 
> families, and administrators.  Rev made it easy to write the program 
> initially and to modify it as the requirements became clearer with use.
>
> While demonstrating the program, the prospective client (who had made 
> it clear to me that she had been involved with many software 
> development projects before) asked what the program was written in.  
> After I told her I used Revolution for its rapid-development and 
> cross-platform capabilities, a subtle change occurred in the 
> conversation.  She began talking about how I might help with the 
> design, but that of course when the design was finished a software 
> firm would take over the development (presumably in some 'real' 
> language like C).  I didn't bother to tell her I COULD write in C, 
> Java, PERL, PHP and so on, because it would be extraord inarily 
> painful to do so.
>
> Has anyone else run into this issue?  Do you dodge the 'what is it 
> written in' question?  How can we raise the profile of Revolution as a 
> 'real' language?  (Never mind what religion it might resemble!)
>
> George
>
> _______________________________________________
> use-revolution mailing list
> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your 
> subscription preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
>