Revolution 2.7.4 Released

Samuel M. Smith smithsm at samuelsmith.org
Tue Sep 26 14:02:09 EDT 2006


> 2.7.4 brings the number of Revolution new releases since January to  
> four, averaging around one every two months. This means that we are  
> perhaps the most responsive development environment on the market,  
> bringing you cutting edge technology as it happens - we were first  
> with Mac Intel support, first with U3 bringing fast development to  
> your flash drive, and since version 2.7 we have introduced over 180  
> new features! It also means we can respond fast to customer  
> requests for IDE improvements.


My gut reaction to your statement is that Revolution is too unstable  
for you to brag about "being the most responsive development  
environment".
There are far too many bugs that don't get fixed. It seems that  
Revolution corporately has
adopted a Microsoft like business model that says lets keep adding  
new features to justify the upgrade revenue stream rather than fixing  
bugs so that the development tools are rock solid. The first project  
I tried to develop with with revolution, the first day I found half a  
dozen bugs, 2 drop dead ones. I posted them to the bug site, two  
years later and multiple upgrades, only one of the bugs has been  
fixed. Needless to say I didn't develop on revolution.

As an additional example, one of the reasons I purchased Revolution  
was its support for cgi.
This has languished on the sidelines and OSX cgi support for 10.4 and  
revolution 2.7 does not exist.
I would rather that revolution dependably supported all its features  
before it added new ones.
I would feel much better about paying annual upgrade insurance if I  
had confidence that the stability and support were converging.

I understand that supporting multiple OS platforms is a difficult  
task, but that is one of the main value propositions for revolution  
that makes it worth
considering. Unfortunately for me the stability and feature coverage  
is too uncertain for me to use Revolution for anything
but toy projects. Basically, I have paid for revolution in the hope
that it will get stable because I really loved hypercard/supercard.

So far revolution has been too fickle of a love interest for me to  
commit to anything serious.

Sam




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