David, Interesting initial post - like marmalade on a flakey croissant, a little sweet and a little bitter. I've hammered a similar nail before: what is 4D's vision of itself? What is the target market? Why does such a fabulous product remain so unknown? Why isn't there better documentation? Let's build the user base... There seems to be a resolute determination not to pursue any of that sort of thing. To my American brain that seems just weird. My wife has been very helpful in getting me to accept just how "French" 4D is. These aren't prime motivators. I think Americans really get jazzed about getting bigger, richer, and just having 'more'. 4D seems to be about control and being happy. I don't know of many other software companies that have been active for 30+ years and remained as closely held as 4D has. OK, maybe some of us would fit that profile but we're pretty small. Heck 4D itself isn't that big at ~$20million US. A number of their customers are larger. I don't know if you've had a chance to see Laurent in the past few years but every time I do I see a really happy guy. JPR is the most affable curmudgeon I've ever met. I've never seen Thomas Maul not smiling. And so on. Perhaps Atavan is part of the compensation package. But the folks who matter in the company all seem pretty content with the way things are and so I think that's the way things will be. Is it so bad being happy in a world on the edge of oblivion at the hands of morons?
Personally I think 4D's weaknesses and strengths are side by side with each other. Or it's like a uroboros for a darker metaphor of the R release cycle. The thing now is what made 4D cool 30 years ago - it's a single package that allows you to do some of almost everything. You got your relational database engine, you got your PHP, you got your Web thingy, you got your JSON stuff, you got your graphical interface designer whizy, we got plugins, we got components. Many of these are quite well developed and some are just bolted on. You don't like the way we do databases then go ahead and write your own database inside of ours. Heck now that we can query a JSON field it's almost like noSQL, ar you can mimic noSQL. 4D doesn't try to lead anything because there's no payoff with a small user base and in some areas always lags (I'm looking at you security guys). This makes it attractive to folks looking for a well equipped playground. Again, it's always been that way. The most common 4D origin story I hear is similar to my own: it was 1987 and I was doing some work for a company that needed a database to do a specific thing, just like Steve said, and they were using Macs and I said "I can do that" because I'd read an article in MacWorld or something talking about the cool things you could do with this new program called 4D and this was a great excuse to go spend the $500 or so to buy it. The thing is that's about the only origin story I really hear. I know there are others that's just the one I've heard most. In a very roundabout way this brings me back to the frustrations I hear in your posts from time to time. And you're not alone, just perhaps more willing to go on record with them. You're like a real CS guy and while I can muddle around in the 4D middle ground for the rest of my life you drill down into stuff, 'cause you know about it, (and here's another metaphor) it's like hopping the fence at Disneyland and finding there aren't real buildings on Main Street. So that's why there's no actual records in City Hall, for example. (Stretching it even further.) Reading back over this I see I sort of hijacked your post a little. Sorry about that. For me I decided to stop trying to get 4D to do anything and just decide for myself whether it was worth my effort to use it. As is. Like any other relationship - accept the other as they are or leave. I never successfully changed anyone but myself. And funny enough the more I focused on that the happier I became with 4D. And you are totally right about the JSON parser. I mean really. I will echo Steve's comment about how valuable I find your contributions here and the times we've exchanged emails off line. The iNug is better with folks like you. On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 6:19 PM, David Adams via 4D_Tech < [email protected]> wrote: > You're right, I need more tools - and I'm find with that. 4D isn't a data > analysis tool and I actually accept that part. But, yeah, I do get > frustrated by some things, like, an incomplete JSON parser? Makes no sense > to me. > > Anyway, 4D has a ton of features I love and I'm fluent in it enough to get > things done quickly. It's absolutely my go-to tool for grinding and > reprocessing data. It's great for that. And I don't think that's just > because I know it already, I think it's actually pretty great at connecting > to a huge range of systems and tweaking stuff. > -- Kirk Brooks San Francisco, CA ======================= *The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.* *- Edmund Burke* ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) FAQ: http://lists.4d.com/faqnug.html Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: http://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:[email protected] **********************************************************************
