Plea to sell Dan's book widely

Stephen King st.king42 at ntlworld.com
Sun Aug 8 08:08:58 EDT 2004



 Dan wrote
 >I reiterate what I said earlier today in this very interesting
 >discussion. I do not believe Rev has any serious chance of making
 >significant inroads into the professional development community on ANY
 >platform, and certainly not on Windows or (moreso?) on *nix. It will
 >always be a product aimed at hobbyist and inventive user class
 >developers who do not write code for a living but who have real
 >problems to solve at work or at home. That's a huge market, bigger, I
 >believe, than the programmer market. But it has to be located and
 >convinced.

 I couldn't agree more...
 I see the 'express' market as the big one, not the professional developer
(but understand that Rev is a pro tool)
As I see it there is a very large and intelligent older/retiree community
rapidly building skills in this area. They have the time to invest in
learing and not the need to sell the product. They programme for fun,
providing tools for schools, clubs, freinds. Also, there are peolple like
myself and those I work with who programme at home generating tools to help
our work, be it engineering, research, schools - again not to sell. These
people need a tool that developes code (script) rapidly, is easy to use,
doesn't have to follow the old rules (they are not professionals so don't
know the old rules) but they need the features to at least do everything
reasonably but not perfectly. They provide very local one off custom
solutions*

 These are windows based (UK) not xplat developers (except maybe Macs who
develop for organisations using PCs) but that doesn't matter if the tool is
usuable. The market is there but it needs to be tapped by good documentation
and high profiling - back to an earlier point that Rev *never* appears in
the windows mags.

 Rev is easy to use and could be easy to learn. It's powerful - it needs to
address some weaknesses but most of all I think it needs to grab a bigger
market!

 Cheers
 Steve
 PS - I have bopught Vol 1... waiting earnestly for vol 2 and 3 (not a dig
;-))

 *As an example, I produced a specialised stroke analysis tool for a
swimming
 club. This was specific to the coaches needs and no way would he get it
 commercially. There are thousands such clubs around who are now computer
 based and are computer literate. Most have a 'member' who can try their
hand
 at this.



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