On-Rev / Off-Rev

[Bill Marriott]

Richmond,

> The reason I asked the question that I did was because of what you wrote
> re the language and the IDE:
>
> "we consider our product to be the language, not merely the desktop IDE"
>
> as if the language and the IDE were, in some way, capable of independent
> existences.

Well, they are. The old CGI engine didn't have any IDE or GUI whatsoever and 
was certainly "Revolution."

Thought experiment:

Which would be more Rev-ish?

- The Revolution IDE and the syntax was, for example, Java? or,
- The Revolution syntax and the IDE was, for example, Visual Studio?

The answer is pretty simple for me. At least, I know which product I would 
buy. (Thankfully we have BOTH the Revolution IDE and the Revolution syntax!)

Note that we have seen multiple IDE variants historically including 
MetaCard, the open-source one some people like to use, Revolution itself, 
and even Jerry's GLX lineup. I would consider all of them to be part of the 
Rev experience. Broadening to "xTalk," we've seen dozens of products with 
different approaches to the IDE: SuperCard, Director, TileStack. It always 
comes back to the language. That is what people love and are committed to.

> The word 'merely' also made me wonder if the IDE was rather far down a 
> list
> of priorities as far as Runtime Revolution's future development went. 
> Although the advent of dataGrids would seem to bely that.

No, the IDE is not de-emphasized whatsoever. You're reading too much into 
semantics, and are forgetting Revolution 3.0 introduced a completely 
revamped Script Editor, gradient editor, etc. Going forward you'll see even 
more enhancements and customization abilities. We've been making fantastic 
strides on both fronts, and there is a mutual dependence, one on the other. 
Unquestionably a great language needs a great IDE.

> as far as I can tell, RunRev's ancestor,
> HyperCard seemed to be built around the idea of some sort of organic
> co-existence between the language and an IDE; unlike most programming
> languages available at that time where there was no IDE at all.

I *personally* don't agree with that. HyperCard was written in the days when 
Apple liked to imagine itself a walled garden where the hardware, operating 
system, and applications were all separate from the rest of the world, like 
some kind of priestly caste "above it all." AppleTalk, ADB, non-standard 
monitor connections, etc. Those days are gone. Today we're in a much more 
inter-connected, inter-dependent, and standards-based world. A core benefit 
of Rev is its cross-platform capabilities. Today that is Mac/Windows/Linux 
desktops. And we're moving toward Web servers (on-Rev and our server 
technology) and Web multimedia (the plugin). The IDE will always evolve; it 
is the language which remains the constant, from the day HyperTalk was born. 
And RunRev is the unchallenged steward of that legacy today.

Of course we'll always have a "model" for constructing UI that is integrated 
into the language; I don't think that can be separated. But as we're seeing 
now, the language needs to evolve to handle manipulation of elements 
regardless of the presentation. (i.e., Web forms versus fields as we know 
them.)

> what is not clear to me is whether the language can exist outwith an IDE
[...]
> I feel that the language uncoupled from the IDE
> would lose more than half what makes it such a fantastic RAD.

Rev's easy-to-use IDE will always be a key element of the product. I am sure 
that for some people it's a different percentage of the appeal than others. 
You consider it more than 50% of the value, I consider the language to be 
the majority. But it's a little like debating whether the dashboard or the 
engine is the more critical part of the car. Some people will always be 
concerned about horsepower and performance; others will focus on comfort. 
Luckily we enjoy the best of all worlds: an accessible, natural-language 
syntax that performs admirably and is very easy to use.

Can a language "exist" without an IDE? Going back to my CGI point at the 
beginning, the answer is an obvious "yes." But it's certainly very nice to 
have one, and that is why we have invested in building the on-Rev client for 
our server technology, and why it has been so well-received.

- Bill