Supercard vs. Rev

Heather Williams heather at runrev.com
Sat Mar 15 06:07:01 EST 2003


> Message: 10
> Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 20:06:58 -0600
> Subject: Re: Supercard vs. Rev
> From: Chilton Webb <chilton at tca.net>
> To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> Reply-To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> 

> 
>> Richard Gaskin responded:
>> I'm confident that as a long-time xTalker you recognize, as Mark Lucas
>> himself has said, that it's valuable for all xTalk products to support
>> others in different niches.  As long as your question is motivated by a
>> sincere interest in using Rev 2.0 I'm sure no one here would accuse
>> you of
>> being a "jerk".
> On list, this is probably true. Off list, I'm sure he's received about
> as many flames as I have the few times I've posted anything that puts
> Rev in a bad light. Apparently I'm everything from a 'typical Mac
> (expletive deleted)', to a SuperCard Bigot. Hopefully he'll make off a
> bit better.

Hi Chilton. Welcome. If you've been lurking on this list for so long, you
must have some idea by now of it's ethos. I have no control over what is
said off list. I could wish that everyone would get along in tolerance and
harmony, but this is the real world, people have egos, agendas, and
opinions, all of which they are entitled to.

However, by virtue of being appointed listmom, I do have some control over
what is said onlist. This type of personal discussion is definitely not
welcome, and not part of the remit of this list. We are here to discuss
Revolution. This can encompass discussing other tools, even competing tools,
I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the kind of
post that makes personal remarks about people, does not advance the cause of
anybody's programming abilities, and is likely to cause a flame war on list.
I object to flame wars on list.

So please, by all means post to the list. If you have useful comparisons to
make with SuperCard, make them. If you have comments on programming style,
syntax, the future of xTalk... Great. Personal remarks, please keep off
list. 
> 
>> Thus far the shift from Rev 1.x to 2.0 is moving faster than SC 3.x to
>> 4.0,
>> so any problem lies more with Rev's rush to announce ship dates
>> prematurely
>> than any actual engineering issue.
> This is true, but there are fewer underlying issues they're faced with
> as well (Raney gets to handle the heavy lifting on the engine), so this
> is likely entirely due to making sure the bugs are worked out. Always a
> good thing, in my book.

This is not entirely an accurate statement. Runtime work very closely with
Scott Raney. We have an engineer entirely dedicated to working on the
engine.

> 
>>> Chilton Webb said...
>>> I believe it's a difference in the demands of the users. Because SC
>>> has
>>> been around so long, if SC4 shipped with *any* major bugs, it would be
>>> seen a major failure on the part of the SuperCard team, so the
>>> development cycle for this version was considerably longer than I
>>> think
>>> anyone hoped it would be. But the finished product was worth the wait.
>>> 
>>> SC's installed user base is not as tolerant of the development team's
>>> mistakes as users are on this list.
>> Richard Gaskin responded:
>> I think you may be underestimating the supportiveness of the SC
>> community:
>> searching for "bug" in the SC list archives brought up a few hundred
>> messages, and the conversations there seemed very friendly and
>> supportive of
>> Mark Lucas' excellent work.
> Yes, but had he shipped SC4 with a bug that crashed everything under
> Jaguar, he'd never hear the end of it. Right now, there is not a
> shipping version of Revolution that is entirely safe in Jaguar, unless
> you can work with the old-style MacOS appearance for things.

Which does render it safe under Jaguar. So you can work with that operating
system, as well as Windows, Linux and Unix systems. We don't have the luxury
of putting one operating system first and making everything perfect only on
that one system. That said, 2.0 will eliminate this particular problem.
> 
>> One nice thing about this community is that posts related to other
>> tools are
>> never filtered out, so sincere posts with information useful to the
>> readers
>> here are always welcome.
> I'd question your use of the word 'welcome' here. This list is just as
> bad about flaming people as any other I've been on, the main difference
> is that the flames are kept off-list.

See remarks above... I guess if someone posts something controversial to the
remit of this list, they can expect to get responses to it. All I can do is
ensure the war does not take over the function of this list which is, as I
said, to discuss Revolution.

> Which is probably a good thing.
> But I've seen a few Rev users flamed by their own, for lesser things
> than pointing out the 4 month slip in the 2.0 release date.

Guys. We are as aware as anyone of the slip in release date. We could
scarcely have overlooked it. Every morning I field messages in my inbox
inquiring about the release date for 2.0. What can I tell you? We will ship
2.0 just as soon as it is finished. You can see from the current beta that
we are making progress. 2.0 will be worth the wait. Could we try perhaps for
a shift in perception here? Rather than mourning our lost Novembers, could
we look forward to a nearly finished major upgrade?

<snip some remarks which certainly have nothing to do with programming in
any language>

Warm regards

Heather

PS Any flames anyone was thinking of posting in response to this particular
thread, by all means send them to me. Personally. NOT TO THE LIST. I have a
flameproof suit in my wardrobe, right next the listmom hat.

-- 
Heather Williams <heather at runrev.com> <http://www.runrev.com/>
Runtime Revolution Ltd.
Tel: +44 (0) 131 7184333 Fax: +44 (0)1639 830707
Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought




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