Code Samples/Comparisons

[David Bovill]

2009/12/5 Bernard Devlin <bdrunrev at gmail.com>

>
> I think that the true strength (and uniqueness) of Rev lies in
> fat-client development.  Of course the tiny size of the engine makes
> the plugin possible, and the fact that revTalk works without a GUI
> makes the serverside code possible.  But those are both areas in which
> Rev is facing long-established competitors



> ....
>


> The thing that Runrev needs to remember is that the number of
> non-programmers vastly outweighs the number of professional
> programmers.  It is question of reaching those people and letting them
> know what is possible.  That is why the opinions of people on slashdot
> and the serverside are irrelevant.  If people were expecting on-rev to
> be the new ruby on rails, they were setting themselves up for
> disappointment.
>

True - but not the right way round IMO. To get new people into the language
(at this point in internet history), you need to give them tools to do what
they want to do. The fact is very few people want to make desktop
applications or fat clients (ok relatively few). Most kids if they want to
make anything it is a web site, a plugin for Facebook, or a game. The target
audience you are talking about is pre-Web2.0 and pre-easy to author game
IDE's - people have (except for a niche market) moved their focus away for
desktop/fat clients and onto these other areas now.

What it makes sense for RunRev to target is people who want to do the above,
but are put off with the intelligibility of the programming languages they
need to learn to do that. The second thing they need to do is make these
same people feel that learning to do it the RunRev way will help them move
into "the real thing" - that is making popular commercial or non-profit
games, web sites.

RunRev is in a good position to meet the first demand with the server side
scripting language, and the plugin, but it is a bit harder to see how they
are effectively addressing the second.