There's been a fair number of posts regarding the fact that Transcript doesn't look and act like C. (I'm afraid that I was a big part of the conversation a couple of months ago when I suggested that it would be nice if simple constructs like "a = b + c" could be supported.) And now that I am completing this photo album project, I thought I'd share my experience.
This project has two pieces, a RunRev based client for Mac and PC, and (optional) PHP server code. Lately I have been going back and forth between Transcript and PHP, making sure that the code producing static photo album pages is identical to the dynamic pages produced by the PHP code. I have my iBook on the left, running RunRev, and a PC on the right running Zend Studio, and I spend a lot of time going back and forth between the two.
What's been interesting about this part of the process is that my thoughts of a couple of months ago, which ran in the vein of "what a pain in the a-- that Transcript doesn't work like C/PHP" have mellowed to "OK, that's Transcript code, and this is PHP code, and it will only take a couple of minutes to convert between the two". I'm surprised how often I will make something work in Transcript, and then port it to PHP; and then the other way around, I'll develop it first in PHP and then convert it to Transcript.
I understand Marc's desire that it would be nice if Transcript supported C-like syntax, because most of the worlds computer languages are C/Algol like (no need to comment if you have counterexamples that all languages aren't C/Algol like...I believe you). But I also understand the bulk of the list's belief that Transcript is easier to learn than C (it is), and that there really is no good reason to add C/Algol like syntax, because, well, there isn't. Everything you want to do in Transcript you can. And once you get your head around the fact that it isn't C, it is, well, much easier to stomach the fact that it won't ever be C.
So Marc, and everyone else who's scratching their heads wondering if it's worth putting up with this strange syntax, the answer is yes. Transcript and Revolution are what they are, and wishing them different isn't going to change things, but the productivity increases are so great that it is worth learning and using.
Enjoy, -- Frank Leahy
p.s. No need to respond...I'm really not trying to re-ignite a flame war...
_______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
