Robert and others who care to read this long post,
This is funny because I was going to write the same rant myself. I have started it several times and then let it go. Don't get me wrong, I love the product and have used it for many years. But there does seem to be some hiccups.
The main problem is visability. When you say PHP, everyone knows pretty much exactly what you are talking about. Same with ASP, .NET, Cold Fusion, etc. When you say Witango, you do get the blank stares. The "What is that?" The "Never heard of it." It seems to be a tool that would be developers don't choose because they are not even aware that it is out there. Now think of it this way. You are a budding young developer and you want to find the tools you are going to use to perfect your craft. If Witango isn't even on the radar screen, there is no way you are going to choose it.
A couple of years ago, there was talk on this forum about building the Witango editor to spit out ASP. I was all for that because of some things that were happening with one of my major clients. I thought that doing something like that would have really boost the editor's potential in the market place. Think about it, A tool that has the flow and logic of Witango that spits out code every developer either knows or at least it aware of. That would have been a great way to introduce Witango to the developing community.
Now for the story...
About 10 years ago, I was approached by a company that had absolutely no web presence. They were the largest publisher in the world for architectural blueprints and represented hundreds of architects from around the globe. They wanted to be able to sell their blueprints on-line. Not an easy feat since the price of blueprints can be quite expensive. We sat down at meetings and pounded out what needed to be done. I was given complete control of the language and tools that could be used to develop the project. At the time, PHP didn't even exist and Cold Fusion and Tango were in their infancy. I chose Tango.
After several years, the site really took off. They signed up over fifty affiliates that would plug into the basket system I developed. These were no small potatoes for affiliates either. Readers Digiest, Associated Press, Bob Vila and Home Improvement, Ace Hardware to name just a few. All were now selling blueprints on their sites. In each case, I had to talk to the developers for these companies and I was asked what I was using for the front and back end. When I answered Tango, I got the usual "What is that?" The "Never heard of it." Didn't matter though because they were just linking to the system I had built.
At the time I had a T1 and the bandwidth this company needed was exceeding what I could provide for them. They were getting about a half million visits per week. I suggested that they either purchase additional bandwidth for their site or move the site in-house. They decided on the latter. So they purchased Tango 2000 corporate and a couple of servers and brought in a T3.
The company started expanding by leaps and bounds. They now had a whole building in the downtown area. It was decided, and I was bummed about this since I always considered the site my baby, that they would hire in-house IT and developers to expand and maintain the site. They contacted schools, put ads in the newspapers, looked high and low for anyone in this area who knew anything about Tango. They found not one person they could hire. All they found were myself and another consultant who would do the work, but did not want to be an employee of their company. When contacting the schools and through research on their part, they decided that they would have to change the language in which the site was built. I was totaly bummed out about this. I argued the point with them, told them that the site was up and running well, explained the ease and how fast the work could get done, I would train anyone they hired, ya da ya da ya da.
They decided to go with ASP and .NET (just emerging at that time). Now they literally had hundreds of developers they could choose from. They hired an experienced ASP guy and a couple of others out of school. They also hired 2 consultants and spent a year and a half redoing the whole site in what turned out to be .NET. They spent a boatload of money to do this. All the while this was going on, I would come in and do work for them on the Tango sites as the new sites were being developed. I would joke with the developers about how I could do what they were dong in a fraction of the time it was taking them, but it fell on deaf ears. They were trained in what they did and pretty much had blinders on when it came to Tango or anything that had to do with Tango. In fact, they became so ambivalent, then downright nasty (probably because they didn't understand Tango at all), that they planned a bar-b-cue when the new site was to be launched and they were going to burn the Tango CDs. They even invited me! I begged management not to let the IT guys do this and ended up buying the program from them.
This about the time Pervasive dropped the ball.
Well, if you made it this far in this long post, I think you can see where my concerns about the product are. Somehow, Witango needs to be added to that list of tools that developers can choose to use. The visibility of the product needs to be out there so a new developer has the choice to try it, or at least know about it.
Many of my clients are concerned with what happens if I go away. They need to know that the product is supported and that it can be moved to other providers if it needs to be. The companies who will host Witango programs are a small, minuscule part of the hosting companies out there as a whole. PHP, .NET and ASP can be moved just about anywhere now, but Witango is very limited in this respect.
I posted 2 weeks ago of a person who was looking for a place to put their Witango site. I got 4 responses on this. That is pretty narrow as to where this guy can go. If I would have posted this on an ASP or a PHP forum, I bet I would have gotten thousands of responses. This person turned to me for help because he was unhappy with the current developer and just wanted to move his site. He spent a long time searching for a hosting provider that supports Witango, gave up and asked me to find one for him. If his site was ASP or PHP, he would have had many providers to choose from and he probably would not have had to contact me. And this is the crux as to why a lot of companies who have a choice of using Witango shy away from it. What happens if the developer goes away? Are they left in a muddle like the company above was?
Please do not get me wrong. Witango is my tool of choice. I love it and try to promote it when I can. But I have lost clients over it, lost bids because of it, but still I hang in there and hope that it will turn around so instead of 4 providers that are found that will take a site, thousands would respond. I wish there was more I could do to help get this product out of the basement and up to par with a lot of the other languages and tools out there. Maybe I could land some more work. and maybe others would be more comfortable about using it if they knew there was a good, large community that supported it.
Just my 2 cents.
WebDude
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