Hi,
Being new here, and a professional programmer for getting
frighteningly close to 30 years now, maybe I should say something...
There is no such homogeneous group as "professional developer/
programmer" (and you clearly understand this on some level because
you wrote "developer/programmer" and "professional" :-)
It seems to me that there are a few obvious kinds of programmer that
will find Rev very useful:
a) users whose primary job is not programming but who have occasional
need
b) solo programmers
c) exploratory programmers in internet based applications
d) programmers responsible for content-creation-heavy web-applications
e) corporate IT
So why is Rev not more prominent? From what I've seen:
1) where will the users with better things to do than programming
have heard of Rev? This is really difficult thing for RunRev to
address (i.e. expensive, hard to get attention) even though the
vehicle is well known (the web). Training materials do not seem to be
sufficient (for example, I've read Dan Shafer's ebook and thought it
was excellent but it won't work for the kinds of people I'm thinking
of when I look for examples of users in this category).
2) the solo programmer survives these days largely because they can
make use of libraries and open source software. It is not obvious to
the solo programmer that Rev is going to play along with that
strategy. RunRev can counter this with some clear statements and
demonstrations. Being new here I can't say if RunRev is okay here,
but it looks as though, worst case, something could be done easily.
That RunRev itself is closed source isn't going to be that big a
problem initially, that'll be countered by its value.
3) the exploratory programmer in internet based applications probably
just hasn't heard of RunRev or they are trapped into web based
applications somehow.
4) the content-creation people in web-applications either have not
heard of RunRev or feel some (intense) pressure to do it in the browser
5) the corporate IT users either have not heard of it or can't get it
past the internal auditing groups (that kept Java out of corporate IT
for a few years)
So what does this come down to? First getting users to pay attention
to or just notice Rev. Second some demonstrations for the benefit of
the solo programmer. Getting the word out will, I think, clearly lead
to more widespread successful use and that will attract still more
attention. Solo programmers are a vocal bunch these days in the
development community. They've always been disproportionately
important but with weblogs they can make some noise and they already
have the attention of a lot of people. Make their life easier and
they'll let people know.
I first heard of RunRev in 2003 and evaluated it then. I got nowhere
with it (unlike this time around). I have no idea where I heard of
RunRev, but I spend a lot of time looking for software to reduce my
pain and multi-platform user interfaces is one of the biggest pains I
have. I am willing to bet that if I asked 10 or 20 of the programmers
I've worked with over the last 5 years if they have heard of RunRev I
will not get a single 'yes' (though you'd think I'd get at least a
few 'sounds familiars' because they were on my team when I evaluated
RunRev, but I don't think so). This is a *problem* -- these
programmers are all in categories b, c, and/or d above, and most have
the authority to make a decision.
There are a few things that RunRev *must* address and I think the
biggest is source control. Flash has introduced the ability to have
actionscript kept in text files and loaded. The same approach could
be used for the scripts in Rev. That should be, barely, sufficient
since both flash and Apple's XCode (nib files) get away with
important assets being in binary files. This source control is not
just for multiple programmer situation. *All* programmers should be
using source control (and in fact I think *all* users of *all*
software should demand this capability and this includes MS Office
users).
A second thing would be the little rough spots in RunRev. For
example, *I* think there should be a standard text editor thing that
supports styled text better. I also think that there should be a tree
widget (if only to remove barriers to entry -- a lot of people will
try to duplicate existing UIs when evaluating and an awful lot of
those will have trees in them -- and it *really* *does* *not*
*matter* that trees are easy to build yourself in RunRev (and in
fact, they aren't that easy because they won't be native and that is
at least part of the appeal of RunRev)). I also think that RunRev
should bundle Altuit's altBrowser and put it on the toolbar. I also
think that they should describe more clearly how XML can be parsed
and acted upon, with some examples and recommendations, and provide a
better way to generate XML (this is how RunRev will be talking to
servers over the internet (HTTP+XML) (I think SOAP and XML-RPC are
just noise) -- I can go on, and on, and on, about this XML stuff so
I'd better be careful).
BTW, price of Rev should *not* be made into an issue. Rev seems to
justify the price easily enough (though in my current project I'm
still evaluating, but I have decided that sooner or later I'll have a
project appropriate to Rev). The key thing right now is that RunRev
has to keep alive. At some point they'll have to re-think their
pricing, as I am sure they know but some current users may not --
when they do there may be a radical change in price structure and
current users might not like that.
So, to summarise: there is a lack of awareness of RunRev.
Cheers,
Bob
On Nov 30, 2005, at 8:50 PM, Mark Swindell wrote:
What is the main reason (if there is such a thing) that Rev is not
more popular among professional developers/programmers? It's been
around awhile now. People have had a chance to hear about it. It
has garnered some awards, at least on the Mac side. On the face of
things you'd think it would be more popular.
Just curious to hear what people think.
Mark_______________________________________________
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----
Bob Hutchison -- blogs at <http://www.recursive.ca/hutch/>
Recursive Design Inc. -- <http://www.recursive.ca/>
Raconteur -- <http://www.raconteur.info/>
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