>>ironic "...capability of writing self-modifying code. Think about >>the potential of that feature." > >Hi David, > >Try as I might, I don't see the irony.
I tried harder, David: If you mean the potential for error, that goes without saying. Give anyone a new tool or new power and you increase the potential ways they can screw up. Pointers, handles, direct system calls, and such are not child's play. But Revolution is not a tool for children. In its first incarnation as HyperTalk, Xtalk was designed to keep these "programming matches" out of the hands of beginners so they couldn't burn themselves; however if professional RR developers are to successfully compete with developers using other development environments, they should not be restrained because adding more features to the environment may cause problems for users lacking the experience to use them correctly. (Of course power for self-modification has been there from HC v1) In 25 years of programming business applications I've never found the need to write self-modifying (in the traditional sense) code; but that doesn't mean I would want someone working in AI to be locked out of RunRev as a development platform in order to keep newbies from shooting themselves in the foot with a weapon they don't understand how to use. It also doesn't mean that some day, after I've mastered all the techniques that are more important to my app that I won't at least experiment with ways of programming it to modify it's behavior based on past experience. FWIW, I think this issue is more likely to arise here than among MetaCard users because, whereas MC was always a tool for professionals (@ one large a pop), RunRev's introductory pricing has attempted to attract HyperCard users who would not consider paying that much for a development tool. Don't get me wrong...I wish very strongly that there were a current programming tool for the "masses" al la HyperCard. That's why I worked on the FreeCard project and helped man the iHUG booth at MacWorld 2001. But I don't think RunRev can be both that tool for the masses AND the world's best professional development platform, bar none. -- Rob Cozens CCW, Serendipity Software Company http://www.oenolog.com/who.htm "And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee." from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631) _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
