who's out there?

[Dan Shafer]

Back in the Smalltalk days (man, I gotta stop this reminiscing crap),  
I once asked Adele Goldberg at ParcPlace why they sold their version  
of the language at such a high price point compared to Digitalk. Her  
answer was brilliant and insightful. "Because we don't want a bunch  
of garage programmer hobbyists trying to figure out the language and  
clogging up our support lines. We make a lot more money from the  
serious professionals who spend real money and go to training classes  
and learn it."

Hmmmmmmmm.


On Jun 6, 2005, at 3:58 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Dan Shafer wrote:
>
>> I had lunch today with a good friend who is a serious Java gear-head.
>> He says the IDE he uses -- Eclipse (which is open source) -- has   
>> dozens of bugs that require knowledgeable workarounds. "Any   
>> programmer worth his or her salt knows that tiptoeing around  
>> these  land mines goes with the territory," he claims.
>> I think the real problem with Rev is its schizophrenia: it's a  
>> fairly  serious developer IDE that tries also to be usable by and  
>> accessible  to people with little or no programming training and  
>> experience.  Those folks don't have the high level of tolerance  
>> for bugs and  quirks that professionals do. They expect things  
>> like the IDE to  actually work.
>>
>
> That was one of the reasons Dr. Raney only sold licenses for $995  
> --  it was a sort of marketing filter that worked well for him on  
> two sides:
>
> - It meant he sold fewer license, but he didn't have to sell as  
> many to earn the same money
>
> - His support costs were faaaaaaaaaaaaar below industry averages,  
> since he was dealing with people who had usually been around the  
> block with enough other tools to know how to deal with the small  
> stuff.
>
> I'm not suggesting Rev do the same, just agreeing that selling  
> something as powerful as Rev cheaply is indeed a double-edged sword.
>
> --
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Fourth World Media Corporation
>  __________________________________________________
>  Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev
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>
>



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Shafer, Co-Chair
RevConWest '05
June 17-18, 2005, Monterey, California
http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit/RevConWest