Felt like a chat, just some general views for idle discussion?
> From: Scott Raney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 10:29:57 -0700 (MST)
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: MetaCard review
>
> On Tue, 7 Dec 1999, Ruediger zu Dohna wrote:
>
>> Kevin Miller wrote:
>>> http://www.zdjournals.com/sun/9912/sun99c2.htm
>>
>> Clayton E. Crooks II seems to know more about MetaCard than most of us.
>> "built-in support for databases such as Sybase, Access, and Oracle"?!?
>> "multimedia abilities comparable to products like ... Macromedia
>> Director"?!? Why did't anybody tell me? "it flawlessly integrates all of
>> the tools into one seamless development environment"?!? We should tell
>> XWorlds, who are working so hard on an improved developer experience!
>
> I think the take home message here is that this review was published
> in a UNIX-centric publication, and so you have to look at MetaCard's
> primary competition in the UNIX market. While the current development
> environment may not meet the aesthetic standards of some Mac users, it
> looks pretty good compared with most of the UNIX alternatives.
>
"aesthetic standards" is not really the point here, it's about functionality
in terms of ease of use getting the job done. It's about getting the
learning curve right, so that new users can be up and productive as soon as
possible. For UNIX users Metacard does this job nicely, for Mac users they
feel that the Starter Kit could be better (functionally) designed. Windows
users probably fall somewhere inbetween.
>>
>> If the things promised in the article are really coming within one year
>> or so, then only terrible marketing could stop MetaCard from becoming
>> one of the big players in IDE and scripting environments, and the others
>> (Java, VisualBasic, Tcl, Perl, etc.) can only keep up due to better
>> marketing (OpenSource is marketing with other means :-).
>
> Fortunately the rather uninspring sales rates of the various add-ons
> and development environments for those "Open Source" languages is
> seriously limiting progress in those areas,
Have you any references for this you could point me at? I'd like to learn
from these experiences...
> evidence that the "free"
> factor seems to be of more importance in their popularity than the
> "open source" factor (something I've firmly believed all along).
"Open source" is only useful to you if you can use the code. It will only be
worth money to you if you can use it to do commercial work. You will only
pay for it, if doing this is more efficient than getting your head round the
"free" stuff. Then there are the marketing problems: "is it free or what?"
> There's no competing with Microsoft and their marketing of Visual
> Basic, but MetaCard's chances vs. Java are looking better every day: I
> recently read an article about software development trends which
> included statistics on Java adoption which showed that over the last
> couple of years the percentage of organizations "planning to use in
> the next 12 months" had dropped from near 100% down to near the 30-40%
> of sites already using it. This means that the Java cancer is no
> longer spreading and may even be going into remission. Now we just
> need to provide that more healthful alternative...
> Regards,
> Scott
>
One thing that interests me is the complete focus on Java as the Metacard
competitor. While I can understand the philosophical dispute their seems to
be no discussion of the main competitor for many users - Macromind Director?
There are no, speed comparisons posted, there is no table of pro's and cons
etc. As for Java, why not work with the stuff? Wouldn't it make a nice
language to write cross platform extensions? Wouldn't it make an easier
transition for corporate Java developers if you could use Java beans within
the Metacard environment (there is an external for HyperCard that someone at
Apple wrote to do this). C'mon boys, work with the devil -:)
