New topic: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?
<http://forums.realsoftware.com/viewtopic.php?t=46017> Page 1 of 2 [ 19 posts ] Go to page 1, 2 Next Previous topic | Next topic Author Message p0wn3d Post subject: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 9:08 am Joined: Sun Oct 28, 2012 4:54 am Posts: 26 Hi All I am coding a cross platform remote administration tool. Being new to RB and a little curious obviously there are many ways and methods in order achieve the same results. I suppose it's all about best practice. For example let's say I need to get a screenshot from a Linux host which would be considered the best method? Use a 3rd party plugin IE: screenshotMBS or simply just shell out "#import -window root screenshot.png" Would be interesting to know how many of you prefer to shell rather than plugin? Top DaveS Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 10:00 am Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2007 10:46 am Posts: 4292 Location: San Diego, CA Personally.... I prefer SHELL, or to do things with DECLARES supported directly by the OS manufacturer (Apple or Micro$oft) While of course they could change things (especially between say Carbon and Cocoa in the case of OSX), at least this way YOU know how the code is working, and you know if the "author" disappears that you have problems larger than a function or two in your program not working. In the case of a plugin... a) you don't know how it works (and therefore didn't learn anything, and cannot "tweak" it) and more importantly b) most plugins are supplied by individuals or small companies that could most likely not exist tommorow, leaving your with a black box that may or may not work in future releases. THIS IS MY PERSONAL OPINION.....AND IT IS THE WAY I DO, AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO BUSINESS _________________ Dave Sisemore MacPro, OSX Lion 10.7.4 RB2012r1 Note : I am not interested in any solutions that involve custom Plug-ins of any kind Top timhare Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 3:13 pm Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2006 3:21 pm Posts: 11829 Location: Portland, OR USA DaveS wrote:small companies that could most likely not exist tommorow "most likely"??? As part of a small software company I take exception to that comment. Yeesh! Top p0wn3d Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 5:19 pm Joined: Sun Oct 28, 2012 4:54 am Posts: 26 Tim With all due respect DaveS does have a valid point. Hence the current economic climate small companies are struggling even more to survive. And things ARE going to get worse. The same thing seems to also apply to community driven contributions that also just seem to evaporate into thin air quickly http://www.aaronballman.com/programming ... ySuite.php 404 Not found Doh.....! Top J.Sh3ppard Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 5:30 pm Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 8:44 pm Posts: 515 I like using the shell. The shell is easy, fast, reliable, included in RS ability and mostly the same code for each OS for just about all of the OS versions. That isn't true of declares which can easily break or change with a new OS version. Declare code would be different on different operating systems as well. Using MBS plugins are great but I probably wouldn't rely on a plugin for this simple task. That exposes you to MBS bug fixing, needing to pay for upgrades, etc. If for some reason you don't want to use the shell you could write your own screen capture code. If you search the forum I think someone's shared code for this. Top npalardy Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 5:37 pm Real Software Engineer Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2005 8:18 pm Posts: 7551 Location: Canada, Alberta, Near Red Deer p0wn3d wrote:Tim With all due respect DaveS does have a valid point. Hence the current economic climate small companies are struggling even more to survive. And things ARE going to get worse. The same thing seems to also apply to community driven contributions that also just seem to evaporate into thin air quickly http://www.aaronballman.com/programming ... ySuite.php 404 Not found Doh.....! Moved try http://arbpmembers.org/windows-functionality-suite And FWIW this was hardly "community driven" - Aaron did most of this on his own as part of his time here at Real _________________ My web site Great White Software RBLibrary.com REALbasic learning Top npalardy Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 5:44 pm Real Software Engineer Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2005 8:18 pm Posts: 7551 Location: Canada, Alberta, Near Red Deer DaveS wrote:Personally.... I prefer SHELL, or to do things with DECLARES supported directly by the OS manufacturer (Apple or Micro$oft) While of course they could change things (especially between say Carbon and Cocoa in the case of OSX), at least this way YOU know how the code is working, and you know if the "author" disappears that you have problems larger than a function or two in your program not working. In the case of a plugin... a) you don't know how it works (and therefore didn't learn anything, and cannot "tweak" it) and more importantly b) most plugins are supplied by individuals or small companies that could most likely not exist tommorow, leaving your with a black box that may or may not work in future releases. THIS IS MY PERSONAL OPINION.....AND IT IS THE WAY I DO, AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO BUSINESS Big or small really doesn't impact "will or won't be here tomorrow" any more or less in my experience. I've worked with software from big companies that got bought up & their products discontinued or that went bankrupt, like HP appears to be trying to do, and small companies who have been around for a long time (Real is a great example as they're now 15+ years old but not giant like Apple or MS) _________________ My web site Great White Software RBLibrary.com REALbasic learning Top Markus Winter Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 5:45 pm Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2006 4:00 pm Posts: 1221 Location: Heidelberg, Germany p0wn3d wrote:Tim With all due respect DaveS does have a valid point. Hence the current economic climate small companies are struggling even more to survive. And things ARE going to get worse. The same thing seems to also apply to community driven contributions that also just seem to evaporate into thin air quickly http://www.aaronballman.com/programming ... ySuite.php 404 Not found Doh.....! That is a bit disingenious, isn't it? Aarons website is still up (http://www.aaronballman.com/) and a somewhat updated version of the Windows Functionality now ships with RealStudio in the "Example Projects\Windows OS specific\" subdirectory of the RealStudio install directory. Furthermore the WFS ihas been hosted on ARBP for quite some time now - see http://arbpmembers.org/windows-functionality-suite Top p0wn3d Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 5:55 pm Joined: Sun Oct 28, 2012 4:54 am Posts: 26 Windows Functionality suite Wiki + HowTo + Examples etc.. Any of you contributed - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Top p0wn3d Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 6:03 pm Joined: Sun Oct 28, 2012 4:54 am Posts: 26 Download the latest build of realstudio; then go to the networking examples (Nothing There) how disingenious is that DaveS does have a point... Top charonn0 Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 6:28 pm Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 2:08 am Posts: 1019 Location: San Francisco, CA, USA p0wn3d wrote:Windows Functionality suite Wiki + HowTo + Examples etc.. Any of you contributed - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO There's far more out there on RB than just these three. Some free with source, some not. _________________ Boredom Software Top timhare Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 6:31 pm Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2006 3:21 pm Posts: 11829 Location: Portland, OR USA I do not dispute that the availability of continued support is one consideration among many in evaluating your options, but I get annoyed at the implication that because I am a small business, I am somehow at more risk than a larger business. On the contrary, I am probably more agile and resilient than my larger competitors. Dave's wording just rubbed me the wrong way. Top J.Sh3ppard Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 7:13 pm Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 8:44 pm Posts: 515 timhare wrote:I do not dispute that the availability of continued support is one consideration among many in evaluating your options , but I get annoyed at the implication that because I am a small business, I am somehow at more risk than a larger business. On the contrary, I am probably more agile and resilient than my larger competitors. Dave's wording just rubbed me the wrong way. RISK ON : You may see it that way but customer's often see it as, 'This single guy or very small team could easily disappear at any time due to business failure or accident so putting my business/product's future in such feeble hands is very risky.' Since you're a single developer or very small team customers can easily say that your time is over committed to your other products and customers so there would be a huge gap in support. What you can do (if you don't do this already) is sell your plugins or products with unprotected code so that IF anything happens to you like a car accident or big tree falling on you causing your demise your customers can still happily continue development without much suffering. Have you put in place a failsafe method to protect your customers? Maybe your spouse or family member could release the source code to your products for all of your customers if you become incapable? These kinds of reassurances help ease customer's minds and make us feel better about depending on small company products and services for our products. npalardy wrote:Big or small really doesn't impact "will or won't be here tomorrow" any more or less in my experience. There is no guarantee that a large company will continue to be alive in the long run but in most cases they certainly last longer and have greater chances of being taken over and kept alive than an individual / tiny company. Teenies can disappear and no one would notice except the few customers. Larger failing companies are often very attractive to business investors for take over. Even the large companies that don't get saved can take years time to finally die or be saved. For a real world example look at how many thousands of small banks disappeared over the last 5 years. Hardly any huge banks have disappeared. Another example, look at Sprint. A huge company and a total loser hemorrhaging money for years and what happened? Sprint recently got bought up by a crazy Korean billionaire (softbank) who is going to try to turn it around and make it profitable further extending it's life for at least several more years. Even the US Government steps in to save the giants. "Too big to fail". The reality is in general larger companies have more outs than small individuals and teeny companies so relying on their products is often much safer than relying on smaller company products. Another example that's happening today is the coal industry. Right now coal is being crushed (thanks Obummer) and coal companies are having to sell many assets to keep themselves alive. Wait a minute. The LARGER coal companies that have worthy assets are selling their assets to keep themselves alive. The smaller coal companies are disappearing because they don't have the assets or options to keep themselves going. If you work for a coal company I'd bet you'd be happy you've still got a job because you work at a larger coal company and not one of the smaller shops which is now dead or dying. Investors also know that their money is much safer in larger company equities vs. smaller company equities. The returns are greater in smaller equities but so is the risk. It is much more likely a smaller company's stock will tank or get delisted and the company disappear than a large blue chip caliber company. With blue chip companies the returns are smaller but your money is much safer. That doesn't mean Walmart's stock or Apple's stock won't tank. Of course they can and large retraces are expected but overtime the blue chips are a much safer haven. For investors the disappearing act of coal and mining companies is causing an oversupply of mining equipment. That means right now you can make millions of dollars buying this hugely discounted mining equipment then reselling it later when the industry picks up again or by selling it overseas to other coal mining companies for a quicker profit. Top DaveS Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 8:46 pm Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2007 10:46 am Posts: 4292 Location: San Diego, CA Tim... didn't mean to rub you the wrong way... but I think the point is valid.... not that ALL small company vanish... but many have, leaveing developers that had been dependant on their products in a predicament. And I say this from personal experience. Many years ago, I was working on a project (VB6 not RS), and was working closely with a developer that had a product called "CODEMAX" (if I remember correctly). There were hundreds of developers including some large companies that were developing products with this product as a core component (it was very much like Alex Restrepos Custom Edit Field, but the code was NOT available, just a DLL). This developer had a new version in beta, that promised the functions that the "community" had suggested, and in some cases even helped design. Then one day we all recieve an email. "Sorry folks... I'm bored. CodeMax is dead. Sorry". Website vanished the next day. So... while this may have been an extreme case.... it shows that it can happen.... and for me, destroyed a years worth of work that I had invested in my project, because I (and others) had become dependant on that piece of code. So now, if I can't see the "code" so I can learn from it, maintain it myself if required.... then I'm not interested. And before you say "What about RealStudio itself?".... not quite the same if you think about it.... _________________ Dave Sisemore MacPro, OSX Lion 10.7.4 RB2012r1 Note : I am not interested in any solutions that involve custom Plug-ins of any kind Top J.Sh3ppard Post subject: Re: To Plugin, not to plugin or just shell out?Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 9:37 pm Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 8:44 pm Posts: 515 DaveS wrote: And before you say "What about RealStudio itself?".... not quite the same if you think about it.... Dave I agree with what you wrote except this part here. Developing with RS (an abstract) is basically the same thing. We are putting our income on the line for this product hoping it won't fail us. If RS goes belly up and disappears or decides to close shop and not let someone else develop the product we're screwed. That is another reason I'm slowly moving to web development. Is it likely going to happen in 3 years? Probably not but the odds of RS disappearing before the web does are huge and developing for web doesn't depend on any product. Top Display posts from previous: All posts1 day7 days2 weeks1 month3 months6 months1 year Sort by AuthorPost timeSubject AscendingDescending Page 1 of 2 [ 19 posts ] Go to page 1, 2 Next -- Over 1500 classes with 29000 functions in one REALbasic plug-in collection. The Monkeybread Software Realbasic Plugin v9.3. http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/realbasic/plugins.shtml [email protected]
