"Be This Guy"

[Richmond]

Why do I feel that RunRev have been scraping the barrel recently?

I wonder if the, unintended, result of their open source initiative is 
that their income has
dropped considerably; hence the rather childish adverts.

My e-mail inboxes (I have 2 e-mail addresses that are personal and one 
for my Devawriter)
seem to get at least one RunRev advert a day, and, as such, I don't mind 
that.

But there is something I don't like; the implication of these adverts 
seems to be that any old moron
can write computer programs ; something that is palpably not true. And 
my ego feels bruised by
the corollary that if any old moron can write computer programs with 
Livecode then I must be any old moron (and I'm not; I'm a special type 
of moron in a category of my own).

Certainly that "BE THIS GUY" (Who would you rather be? and the answer is 
'anybody else') advert does not
do RunRev many favours; it comes out of the British 'dumb everything 
down to the stage where its just simply insulting' school of thought 
that seems to be pretty well all pervasive throughout the British Isles.

This started with the slightly prognathous girl on the new RunRev 
website who is spacing out with her
mall-rat friends (Scottish valley girls; the open sewer that runs 
between Edinburgh and Glasgow, starting
with Westerhailes [heroin capital of the world] and moving through 
Hamilton [Buckfast tonic wine capital
of the world]; 2 national disgraces and social bombsites whichever way 
you look at them) and has moved slowly down-market from there ("'down 
market' from Westerhailes" I hear you ask; well, I did see somebody 
injecting themselves with heroin in a carpark right smackdown by the 
river Tay in Dundee in 2003; so, if one thinks about parts of Lochee and 
Hilltown, it is just about possible).

As somebody who has learnt about 9 programming languages (and most of 
the people on the RunRev use-list will better me there), I am well aware 
that learning to program is NOT for any old moron, and to imply so
with "Tracy Beaker on Speed" types of adverts is disingenuous insofar as 
it gives any moronic programmer wannabees out there a distinctly wrong 
impression, and it will drive away more intelligent and motivated typoes 
towards programming languages/IDEs/packages that don't promote 
themselves through kiddy-crap.

The whole thing reminds me of a Steve Martin film called "The Jerk", 
where, at one point, Steve Martin, playing the epynomous lead character, 
is drinking some multicolored cocktail out of a glass with a paper 
umbrella in
it, and pointing at an advert the same cocktail saying "be somebody".

"With 8 x 1 hour long lessons and a 1 hour 1-1 Skype Session and a Live 
Q&A Session every week you could produce the #1 selling app."

Possibly; but not if you are a person who wants to "be somebody" in the 
way the advert presents things.

RunRev produce a fantastic product; a product that can produce simple 
Powerpoint-like slideshows to incredibly complicated stuff (my 
Devawriter being about 25% along that line); so advertising Livecode like
this is just doing RunRev a disservice.

------

Jump on me.

Agree.

Disagree.

BUT; Please, don't keep quiet.  I do feel that as parts of what RunRev 
choose to call a 'community' and
like to tell us that we have some sort of say and input on what their 
company does, we should voice our opinions in this respect (as well as 
all the others).

------

Richmond.