I was thinking some more about what makes development with Rev so
different for me, and why I find it so rewarding.
I've done lots of Java programming, web development, and Lotus Notes
(Java, VB). Often the tools in those environments are expensive and/
or unwieldy. The development cycle is slow and/or full of
incompatibilities. Huge corporations such as Apple and IBM are
almost totally resistant to complaints by developers. And bugs can
also go for years without being fixed.
I also use XCode and WebObjects, and last year Apple integrated the
toolset more than ever, only this year to turn round and tell us that
WO development will no longer be supported in XCode in future
releases. I was recently doing some Applescript/Filemaker
integration for a client. I'd never touched either before, and I was
quite shocked at the lack of documentation, features that were
missing but were supposed to be there, now-unused hooks that no
longer worked and were barely documented as not working.
As far as I can see, Runrev have a much better vision and consistency
about where they are going, and by comparison with other commercial
development tools it is dirt cheap. Each version of the Notes IDE
costs $500 to upgrade, with no reduction for having bought the
previous version. I also used WebSphere Studio in the last company I
worked for and that cost $5,000 per license. I've bought the entry
version of other RAD tools (e.g. Demicron WireFusion), and I can't
even produce commercial apps with them without buying a license that
is more than the cost of a Revolution Enterprise license.
I've never even had to ask for technical support directly from Runrev
- the documentation is good, searching the user list or asking
questions here almost always turns up an answer, and the great people
on chat.rev (you guys really rock!) have given me instantaneous
support from very knowledgeable and humorous people at any time of
the day or night that I have visited the chat room. Nevertheless,
when browsing through the Runrev store recently I saw that paid
silver support incidents from Runrev were only about £26 each, and I
was very surprised. For example, I use the Firebird relational
database, and support incidents for that are £100 each, but must be
purchased in a pack of 10. In the past if I wanted to get
development support from Apple for WebObjects it would cost me
roughly £300 per incident. As for support from companies like IBM -
my past experience was that such support was a total waste of money
because the quality of the support staff was so low they usually knew
less than me about the particular products we were paying for. In a
2 year period they never managed to solve a single problem.
Last year at WWDC there were some WebObjects sessions that I want to
see, but I couldn't go. Can I buy recordings of them? Yes, they
would only cost me premier membership of ADC, at $3,500 for 1 year.
I've spent the last 3 weeks building a system in Rev that is going to
transform my own development practice. I'm amazed at what was
possible in such a short time. Not only is Rev highly productive
and flexible, but also highly performant.
I'm really looking forward to getting the June conference DVD. I'm
sure I'm going to really step up my development practices based on
what I learn from that.
Bernard Devlin_______________________________________________
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