Stack Overflow : a new site for programming Q&A.

[Richard Gaskin]

Paul Looney wrote:
> My first thought, years ago, was "revTalk" also.
> But  "talks" are not preceived as "real" languages - remember when  
> Apple went through all those contortions to use "scripting" instead  
> of "coding". Dropping "talk" helps Rev transcend its heritage and  
> paradigm - will result in more sales, too.

I agree it's a tough balancing act.  As Jacque's noted many times, the 
ease of HyperTalk made it possible to produce a lot of amateurish wares, 
which tainted the "talk" suffix.  When Rev was starting out more than a 
decade ago, I was also firmly against anything with "talk" in it.

But a lot of time has passed since Apple killed HC, and today more 
people use SmallTalk than HyperTalk.

Mikey's point about managing expectations is an important one, IMO. Rev 
ain't your father's scripting language.

We're in a Golden Age of sorts for scripting, with the near-ubiquity of 
JavaScript thanks to it being the only programming language available in 
browsers.  I'd venture to guess that there are several orders of 
magnitude more folks versant in JavaScript today than the sum of all 
xTalkers ever.

So while scripting has been validated by JavaScript and other languages, 
Rev is very different from all of them, enough that I believe it helps 
manage expectations by drawing attention to that difference, even at the 
risk of a relative few who remember HyperTalk unfavorably.

These days most folks don't remember HyperTalk at all, and many who do 
have positive memories of it.  For them the only downside to HyperTalk 
is that it reminds them of Apple's most short-sighted moment.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
  _______________________________________________________
  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com