Friends and neighbors...
First I want to thank all the folks who are voicing their excitement
about the products from Daniels & Mara--mostly Constellation at this
point. We've listened to suggestions and like to try different
approaches to problem solving. We have had a much longer pre-release
period than I ever thought possible, because we got so many great
recommendations and ideas from the early adopters.
I wanted to say a few words about debugging a debugger (without a
debugger) and tracking breakpoints.
When you're writing a script editor that lets you set breakpoints,
you quickly realize: very script could have breakpoints and every
user action could necessitate changing them. That means every time
someone types a char, as the developer of the script editor, you have
to be ready to update where the breakpoints should NOW be. If you
test for EVERYTHING, your editor will be hard to type in due to
performance issues. And what about undo or cut or paste? It seems
like a life's work to get the right balance. Not easy.
Break Points Part Deux
We found the Rev engine had difficulty "coming back" from a "Step
Into" another handler. So I created "ghost breakpoints" just on the
other side of every handler call, in the event the user when down a
rabbit hole into that other handler that was being called. The ghosts
kept my debug session alive after the engine had given up. Since they
were "ghosts" the user couldn't see them--that's the fun part about
having your own script editor. The current Rev script editor has to
deal with these same anomalies from the engine.
After a couple hundred test cycles and hundreds of suggestions on
design and UI, I have decided that no two people want the same IDE.
The diversity is staggering and heartening at the same time. I
decided to enjoy the process of change and forget about having the
perfect product or being the perfect programmer. Constellation
evolves...as do we all with or without our consent or vote.
Luckily, I'm like Andre...some times I just like to open up
Constellation and look at it!
Best,
Jerry
http://daniels-mara.com/products/constellation.htm
Check out the tutorials to see it work.
On Oct 18, 2005, at 10:36 AM, David Burgun wrote:
True and the real value of Rev is that the tools are built in the
language so we can enhance the core product - the more
contributions like Lord Daniels the better!
On 18 Oct 2005, at 01:15, Dan Shafer wrote:
A couple of you were kind enough to point out that in my
exuberant endorsement of Jerry Daniels' wonderful Constellation
Rev IDE, I came off sounding a bit like the built-in, out-of-the-
box Rev IDE was a piece of crap. Let me set the record straight.
It's wonderful. It has flaws and rough edges and quirks that
sometimes confuse newbies and even oldies. But it's still really
a great product.
As a production tool to be used by professionals it sucks a fair
bit in my opinion! Other development environments suck too or did
during their evolution anyway. For instance a lot of CodeWarrior
releases had the same old bugs in them release after release, some
of them were not fixed for years. Yet the latest version always had
loads of new features. I see this mirrored in RunRev too.
I mean I've been using RunRev now for about 2 years, but still:
1. The debugger refuses to obey breakpoints.
2. The documentaion is still poor.
3. It crashes or causes me to ForceQuit at 3 times a day on
average when I am using it full time for development.
4. Windows in the IDE never open where you left them, especially
when you have 2 monitors.
5. The Script Editor does beswick at least 3 times a day, forcing
me to restart RunRev.
There are loads more like this, but these are the things that
really get my goat. I reckon I waste at least an hour a day
fighting IDE and/or Documentation problems.
Having said all that, it's still a good environment but it could be
much better. I just wish they would do a major IDE bug fix release,
especiallly with the Debugger. Putting this ahead of adding any new
features.
All the Best
Dave
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