Disclaimer : yes it's a rant, so feel free to ignore it if you want ;)
I'm sorry but I can't stay quiet any longer.
I've noticed a trend by people to just complain and complain and
complain about Realbasic having bugs, not working the way it should,
about features lacking, documentation not being good enough....
As a professional programmer on the windows platform I do not understand
this trend at all.
Have any of these people actually worked with Microsoft's development
tools ?
If so have they ever tried to send a bug report to Microsoft. Have they
gotten any answers from Microsoft ? Were the bugs fixed in due time ?
What about feature requests to Microsoft ? Were they ever implemented ?
I've had to work with Visual Basic and Visual Basic .Net (all version up
to the latest one) and with Microsoft Access. All of them contain bugs,
and all of them have features lacking. The bugs have made me lose hours
of work, whilst the features that have been lacking for years never got
fixed. The features that were added to the development tools are usually
useful for enterprises but not for small programming teams and only seem
to add to the bloat when we produce software.
From my personal experience I can say that Microsoft's development
tools are the most popular tools amongst small development teams that
need to program for the Microsoft platform. If we don't pay for an MSDN
account (not cheap for a small team in a small company), we can't file
bug reports, get support, and when it comes to feature requests, just
look at the features that were added in the past couple of years, then
you can see that if you are not an enterprise they'll ignore your
feature request. Microsoft always says that the big difference between
software you payed for and illegal downloads is the fact you get
support. Well from my experience with Microsoft I can say that the only
thing that even remotely looks like support I ever get is when I get to
click those annoying send crash report to Microsoft buttons or the
occasional feedback form (read popup) on their website. I never get any
feedback from them at all. What did they do with my bug reports (clicked
button) or with my feedback ? I don't know and I never will.
Now compare this to Realbasic.
Yes, it isn't perfect, but it is good. Just compare it to VB 6.0 or to
any VB.net to see what I mean. I also is cross platform and with a
simple build instruction I can distribute to Windows, Mac and Linux. Try
that with Microsoft's tools. Yes I can try to develop with .Net and
target the Mono platform, but that is hardly an easy way to develop
cross platform, and even if I did go this way, I can imagine the fun of
trying to write a cross platform installer that targets the Mono
environment.
Several things are still not 100% what I want with Realbasic. Some
examples would be the integration with source code version control
software, certain issues with the IDE,...
From what I see the issues are being dealt with though. The features
are being listened to and the bugs are being fixed.
If you want to better know what is getting fixed/implemented and you
have a current subscription then you can always sign up for the beta
program and help RS with what they are trying to do by filing bug
reports for the beta's, so that by the time they get released there are
as few bugs as possible. Yes this puts the responsibility in our camp,
the developers. We know what we want, we know what we need, and we can
help RS get a better product on the market. All that is needed is a bit
of our time. So quit the complaining and start helping. RS does listen
to the developers and from my personal experience I can say that they do
read and fix the issues that are passed on to them through the feedback
section of their website. I am also happily surprised to see several of
the people that work for RS trying to help people with problems on this
list. I say they are trying hard to give us a good product, they are
trying to help as much as possible if we have questions, so what more do
we expect from them. Last time I checked they were not gods, so don't
expect miracles. They are people, developers, just like us, and I'd say
encourage them and help them if you can. I am sure that just like me,
they don't want to hear people complaining (usually about the same thing
over and over again) every day.
Signing of on this rant
Dirk Cleenwerck
Chief programmer
Useitgroup NV
Belgium
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