Rev_rant part 4

[Bernard Devlin]

Dave said:

 >>
I'm not talking about "me", I'm talking about trying to sell it to a
whole programming department that is currently using a mix of Macs,
Windows and Linux machines and programming tools such as C/C++,
RealBasic, AppleScript, XML, PDF, PERL, JavaScript, etc.
<<

But why are you trying to 'sell' Rev to these people?  What's the  
benefit for them?

They already have several cross-platform dev tools (RealBasic, Perl,  
Javascript).  What do you think that Rev would give them that they  
don't already have?  Transcript/xCard is a completely different  
programming paradigm to any of those dev tools.  What do you see that  
Rev brings to them that they don't already have?  What can justify  
them learning a new paradigm?  How are you trying to sell it to  
them?  By pointing out how buggy it is?  By pointing out how they  
should get free updates for the first year?  By pointing out how  
insecure you think the company's future is?  Maybe your frustrations  
with your department not using Rev is being taken out on Rev itself?

You've got to accent the positive. I'm using Rev to build cross- 
platform tools (installers, GUI controls for monitoring processes)  
and as a rich, highly dynamic, componentized, presentation tier in n- 
tier applications.  There are very few tools that suit my needs in  
the case of the latter, and none that I know of that could also be  
used to do the former as well.  In fact, I also see a time where I  
will be using Rev to build tools to replace many of the tools used in  
my middleware environment.  In my case, Rev is the right tool for the  
jobs I'm using it for.  I have been able to sell Rev (literally) to  
other people because I have shown them some of the benefits it holds  
for them.

Most programmers are quite opinionated (I might even go so far as to  
say bigoted).  You are going to need compelling reasons to convince a  
C programmer or a Perl scripter to adopt Rev.  I worked in a team of  
6 developers.  The Java/Oracle people would not look at anything that  
did not come from IBM, because any company smaller than Oracle or IBM  
was too risky (despite the fact that they'd followed IBM solutions  
down more than one dead end road), and they were always looking to  
have skills to sell to their next employer.

You've said yourself that you want to be using tools that have  
widespread adoption.  You could remove all bugs in Rev, and all  
policies you don't like from RunRev, and I think we'd all be retired  
before Rev would have as wide adoption as  JavaScript, Perl, or even  
AppleScript.

Bernard