What's The Verdict, Web or Not?

[Bill Marriott]

Whew :) I'm glad you weren't saying it's a waste of time!!

For me, what makes the product amazing is the language itself. It truly is 
enjoyable to write code in xTalk/transcript/Revolution. I've long wondered 
what the legal side of things was all about ... can anyone with the smarts, 
energy, and time make a HyperTalk variant?

Chipp Walters wrote:
> Frankly, I mentioned to Dan Shafer earlier this evening, I wish I had
> the same prowess in AJAX as I do in Rev, as I'm sure I'd have more
> business-- and for sure a larger market- and one not dominated by a
> single company.

No kidding. AJAX is ultimately just a way to code web pages and servers so 
they do "bite sized" transactions within a page, rather than reloading the 
whole ball of wax at every user interaction. It's a baby step closer to how 
a "real application" works, but still far short of what is possible when 
coding an application.

Can you imagine if you had a nice, integrated client-server model, 
fully-fleshed out, based on transcript? How much fun would that be?

> It frankly
> bothers me that there's not a serious buzz about how absolutely (to
> use a Steve Jobs phrase) 'insanely great' this tool REALLY is! But the
> limited resources of a small company, no matter how wisely spent,
> prevent this development system from gaining wide acceptance. As this
> thread clearly points out, newcomers (aka Greg) have a hard time
> figuring out what RR's good for.

I remember when HyperCard first came out, one of my friends was very 
dismissive of it, saying "what kind of database program doesn't print 
labels?" He looks at HyperCard and saw a database program. Others looked at 
it and saw a multimedia tool. Others saw a programming language, etc. I 
think Rev still suffers from this "identity crisis" to an extent.

> The fact I can build a complete cross-platform application for a
> client, soups to nuts, in only a couple of days is simply lost on a
> majority of potential users.

> Case in point. A couple of months ago, on a Tuesday afternoon, a
> client asked me to built a Chart Wizard tool for creating dashboard
> images for PowerPoint presentations. Said he needed it by end of day
> Wednesday.

> You can't get any faster than that in RAD tools (as far as I know).
> Sure, I have some pre-built libraries (but not the chart one), and
> some tools to help me with layout management and interface, but
> still-- less than 2 days is really fast. And it's not because I'm a
> great programmer, it's really the tool that's great.

I wrote a client-server application in just over 4 days with Rev. I'm not 
saying it's the greatest thing ever, but you can find the standalone at 
http://merryotter.com/stocksensor. Hundreds of people have had access to the 
same XML-based server data-source I did, and wrote some "competing" 
utilities in things ranging from VB.net to JavaScript. Mine is the fastest 
and most powerful out there, took the least amount of time to build, and is 
used by most of the "top 10" traders in that game. While it's running, it 
uses about 3MB of RAM at most. The official web-based interface for that 
game uses 32MB to 35MB and is slow, slow, slow. That link has the 
standalone; if you're interested contact me off-list for the Rev stack.

Come to think... what it really needs is a decent chart facility :)

> All that said, We still don't have paying clients knocking down our
> doors with apps in hand. Lots of reasons, but IMO, the biggest is the
> lack of exposure of RR in Enterprise or really anywhere else. Not even
> sure if one would really consider it Enterprise software?

I'll attribute it to a conspiracy on the part of white-robed programmer 
elites who want to ensure only the blessed have access to computing power :)

> So, yes, I would like to be able to code as quickly and efficiently in
> AJAX,DOM, whatever, but sadly, I think I'm already too spoiled using
> RunRev.

I think we're all spoiled in that way, which is why we (or, at least, "I") 
want to extend our posh, comfy environs to the Web.