Steve,
I don't think we're coming from the same perspective. That said, I'll
disagree with you.
>* There are so many uses and considerations to take.
Bear River's framework is not targeted towards PIM, horizontal
applications. These are relatively easy to write for the Palm, and they
need to be small enough for users to use them. It's targeted primarily at
large, enterprise applications, those dealing with lots of enterprise data
(those with relationships, multiple data entities or relational database on
the server), or those communicating via wireless TCP/IP with an application
server, or those which do high-end tasks like web browsing.
For applications like these, the small overhead of a framework pales in
comparison to the large size of the application. The quality of the code is
vastly improved for organizational reasons. The speed of development drops
and your code does not crash (which many of the much-touted thousands of
Palm applications do, regularly).
>* It overall bloats the code.
That depends how you use it. Try writing a Palm app with six tables of
enterprise data, and see if you don't get code bloat from writing your
custom queries by hand for each form.
>* There are plenty of object like application environments out there
>already (Sat. Forms comes to mind)
There's a *BIG* difference between object-like and object-oriented. VB and
Sat Forms are object-BASED, not object-oriented. Anyone who thinks Sat
Forms brings you the same benefits of an object-oriented language is
drastically misusing the term.
>* Most of all, it is already quick and easy to write a Palm app so I don't
>see much of an incentive to speed up the code.
I heartily disagree, and I've written more than my share of Palm code. Like
I said, I'm not writing a "to do" app, a train schedule, or an expense
calculator. I'm writing enterprise applications that talk to databases or
agents via the network.
I can hear it already: the Palm wasn't meant for this. Tell that to Palm;
if you were at the Dev Conference, you heard the buzz. Every other word at
the keynotes was "enterprise." People are using this stuff right and left
for doing these kinds of things ... I know this, because they're hiring me
to do it.
Take a look at the Palm enterprise market sometime: it's huge and growing.
You're right, it may not be relevant to all Palm developers, but it's huge,
and it's growing. There are people writing inventory software, shopping
software, commercial software, web software (esp with Palm VII), medical
software/hospital mgmt/etc., package tracking, receiving and delivery.
Writing one of these applications is "quick and easy" ... and simplified by
a low-level API? I'm sorry, that's just not true.
Also: you absolutely CANNOT write these applications in Satellite Forms,
not if you want to sell them in a competitive market. I looked closely at
this alternative.
Regards,
Ben Flaumenhaft
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