I'm sure you'll get lots of answers...and opinions on this one. Here's my best first shot.
On 5/21/06, John R. Sowden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Revolution seems to be my solution for writing business apps. I am a business person, not a professional programmer, but I create all of my internal apps, currently in Foxpro/DOS. A couple of questions: The description says the program creates "stand alone" executables. To me this means no "run time", no "token compiling", but it may mean external libraries. Is this true?
Yes, basically. The "external libraries" are typically written in Revolution itself and compiled with the standalone, making installation a breeze. How big is "Hello World", meaning how much baggage (code bloat) is included
in the executable?
Last I checked, the minimum standalone size is about 2.5MB give or take depending on the platform. Judicious settings in the compilation process can, I think, make this number smaller but I've never been motivated to do so. Does revolution lend itself to creating simple applications quickly?
Example, I can create a simple name/address database application in Foxpro/DOS with menu, add, edit, search, select index, etc. in about 1 hour including creating the database structure.
I've never seen anything quicker for building apps than Revolution. Once you're facile with the tool, an hour would be an outside time for creating the kind of app you describe here. There are more data storage choices with Rev, some of which can greatly speed up development and execution. Is a database application, without multimedia features a good use of this
product?
Definitely. Are there any hidden problems that are not discussed in the web/faq, etc.,
like "copy protection" methods that require dongles, keeping the licensed program on the computer/lan that the compiled application is running on, etc.
Nothing along htose lines. Clearly any tool has its quirks and idiosyncracies, but as for formal blocks or deployment issues, they don't exist with Rev. My operating system of choice is linux (currently Suse 9.3), not a windows
os. Is this a good match, or is this a windows product that usually runs on Linux, with little support?
Actually, it's a product that's probably more Mac-centric than anything else but apps you make with it run fine on all three platforms (Mac, Win, *nix). I'm not sure what the developer experience is like on Linux; I've never used it there. I'll leave that to others more knowledgeable than i. The old adage, "if it looks to good to be true, it probably is" keeps
ringing in my mind, but revolution could also be a minimally marketed diamond in the rough!
Rev is definitely in the latter category. Thanks in advance,
-- John R. Sowden AMERICAN SENTRY SYSTEMS, INC. Residential & Commercial Alarm Service UL Listed Central Station Serving the San Francisco Bay Area Since 1967 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.americansentry.net _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author http://www.shafermedia.com Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html
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