on Windows without significant problems. I love using it. I did learn ColdFusion 4.5
years ago and found that it took about 50% longer to do the same application
(though there are some aspects of the language that I really like that I wish
WiTango had).
My biggest concern is not so much with the product as with the company and
how customer (us) relations are handled. If Robert's needs had been addressed,
he would not be leaving. The same goes for the other developers that are leaving.
Enough developers leave and the product is at risk. THAT is my biggest concern.
It's not too much to ask to provide complete documentation. That should be a
given (though it's a boring task). Providing support to major developers, especially
when it's a problem with the lack of documentation, should be given priority. Fixing
bugs in the studio should be done, even if it only affects the Mac platform.
What's the problem here?
I love Witango. I will stay on it as long as I can. If the product dies, I can't. The
way that we developers are treated will affect the long-term viability.
Sincerely,
Stefan
At 05:03 PM 12/14/2005, you wrote:
For what it's worth, we are using witango and still are as happy as ever.
Our server is stable and our clients are happy and our business is growing better than it ever has.
I have programming experience in php as well and while there are things i like about php (the C syntax mostly and all the plugin libs you can get), there are things i like about witango too such as getting quick results when i set out to program something.
Just thought i'd share my experiences since all we are hearing is negative really.
On 12/14/05, Stefan Gonick < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
- This whole thing is so sad and discouraging to me. The problems that you
- list, Robert, are correctable, but since they weren't corrected, you are now
- leaving. This is extremely sad since you used to be one of the major resellers.
- Apparently, this is true for other major developers as well as we are now
- discovering.
- It is extra discouraging to me that With hasn't responded to these emails
- of people leaving due to correctable problems. I wish Phil would write an
- email and say that the documentation deficiency would be fixed by a relatively
- soon date. I also wish that he would commit to fixing the bugs in the Mac
- version of the dev studio in the near future. I wish that he would say something.
- Since With is a small company with limited resources, they are very dependent
- on the efforts of us developers to help support and promote the product. It would
- make sense to me that there should be significant effort to keep us happy.
- To me, this means to be very communicative with us about the current situation
- and plans for the future, complete documentation, and to fix bugs. With is
- very responsive to fixing server bugs. I definitely appreciate that. However,
- With has been very unresponsive to fixing studio bugs even though we live
- in the studio every day. In fact, it's the studio that is the whole reason that
- we are Witango developers. There should be a high priority to fixing those
- bugs for free (not to wait until a whole new version). This should take priority
- over working on version 6. Get the current version working correctly!
- Btw, I never upgraded to version 5.0 because of all of the reported major bugs.
- I finally upgraded to 5.5 because the number of bugs was liveable. That's not
- so true with the Mac version apparently. There should have been a 5.1 studio
- with bugs fixed free to owners of 5.0. There should be a 5.51 free upgrade
- before version 6.
- I have found the lack of communication very frustrating and discouraging
- the whole time that With has owned the product. I really really really really wish
- this would change before too many people leave and the product dies. I love
- using Witango and hate the idea of learning a new platform, but I will if I have to.
- It's all up to you Phil. I know that you are an extremely busy guy, but in
- this case an ounce of prevention would have been worth a ton of cure. You
- have lost several major developers, which has scared the rest of us. You may
- want to reassess your priorities. If you are offended by these statements,
- then I despair about the future. Hopefully, you'll realize what you need to do
- to save the situation before it's too late.
- Very sincerely,
- Stefan Gonick, M.S.
- Long time (Wi)Tango developer (and with Robert Shubert, server bug finder)
- At 06:01 PM 12/13/2005, you wrote:
- Take a look at Zend/PHP. Pay special attention to the Zend Platform.
- I haven't posted it yet, but I have decided to completely move off of the witango platform for many reasons, and we have just purchased our licenses for Zend.
- Why PHP over others?
- First, I wouldn't have chosen php on its own, it was the zend package that made it the witango killer for me. Only $999 per cpu per year, with unlimited support. This have been my main beef with Witango. The support, IMHO, has a lot to be desired. I am tired of asking for left out documentation, and dealing with many bugs, especially in the studio.
- Witango has always had one great benefit, its fast to get to prototype. But this is completely negated by a couple of factors.
- 1. Too many bugs in the studio that cuz workarounds, rebuilding actions, crashing, taking more time than you desire. Especially the !CST bug on the mac. I have to check each taf in a text editor, and fix manually many times.
- 2. Text encoding issues, and other undocumented problems. For instance, witango most of the time expects ISO-8859-1 and outputs it, but not always, and the only way to find out, is tear your hair out trial and error. I have asked for help/documentation, but apparently I don't own enough servers, or this isn't considered installation support, so I have to pay $1500 support subscription, to get it. One issue that took me many hours to get right, was that when you send text through a bean, Witango expects ASCII coming out, and converts it to ISO. This was very hard to detect. If I sent out ISO from the bean, it didn't work, and if I sent ascii, and then looked for ascii, it didn't work, but if I sent out ASCII from the bean, and then treated the witango text from the bean as ISO, it worked. I have asked Witango Inc, for 2.5+ years to provide documentation on the beanhandler, and have still not received it. Many requests.
- 3. Due to things like the encoding issues, trial and error with beans and stuff, you lose your fast time to prototype when you prepare for deployment. In prototype, it just has to work with some test examples. In deployment, it has to work with whatever your customers are going to throw at it, and effciently, so that it doesn't peg a cpu, and take down your servers under load. I find myself spending too many hours wrestling performance out of witango, when I should be inventing.
- 4. Code base. Periodically, I see a post on the list, where is that one blog example? or something like that. Do a google search for "php blog", or whatever, and look at the tons of examples you have to choose from. Support? Aside from my unlimited Zend support, there are MANY lists, and google will be your best friend. When I code in .NET, or VB, or RB, I can get tons of help and examples from google, nothing on witango.
- 5. Developer availability. There are tons of php developers to choose from out there. BTW, if you are a witango dev and good at php, send me your resume.
- Anyway, the hardest issue when looking, was cluster management, and session tracking in a cluster. Witango does this seamlessly. The Zend platform was even easier to set up to do this. I have a test cluster of 4 php servers on Fedora core 4, and one zend management server. I can hit my zend management console, and administer everything, and get excellent status feedback. Just watch the demo on the zend platform on the site.
- Also, on my zend management console, I can change the php.ini settings on one server, then clone the settings to any or all of the rest in one step.
- The dev studio has STEP debugging, code folding, subversion support, cross platform, yada yada. The Zend platform send events to your studio for you to fix. Its a great product, can't wait to get it live.
- The platform does code optimization, or precompilation. This is a sort of byte order compilation that precompiles your scripts to get better performance in looping and such.
- And for when I really need performance, a fully optimized and documented java bridge function for running java classes and beans.
- In the near future I will be documenting my progress of switching it all over on my site, at http://www.bighead.net/tools/
- I have nothing against .NET, but I find I can develop much faster, and there is so much good, free/cheap code out there for php so that you are rarely starting from scratch on a project. Also, I have had some real world experience with linux vs. windows with performance on the same hardware. I am loving fedora 4.
- Anyway, Zend gave me a volume dicount, so only $799/cpu for my servers, so for 6 servers, and 4 dev studios, I only paid $5691. And I get unlimited support. And I have been testing it, it is excellent so far.
- --
- Robert Garcia
- President - BigHead Technology
- VP Application Development - eventpix.com
- 13653 West Park Dr
- Magalia, Ca 95954
- ph: 530.645.4040 x222 fax: 530.645.4040
- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- http://bighead.net/ - http://eventpix.com/
- On Dec 13, 2005, at 1:37 PM, Wolf, Gene wrote:
- I hate asking this question but most of you have either faced this question from your customers or management in the past or have addressed it yourselves. I figured I'd go to the people who know best.
- I have been strongly encouraged by my management to look for and train my people in a more mainstream product. They have been very patient (3 years now) and very pleased with the productivity that my group can deliver with Witango. However they can't take it upstairs to corporate. They can't find it in any trades, they can't find mention of it in any recent reviews, they can't find people who know it locally, etc. It makes them nervous. Hence the encouragement to move on.
- Witango has been a great tool for me for 10 years. I've been here since the Everyware days. However I understand management's nervousness. My question is, what mainstream product comes close to doing what Witango does? We're looking at Visual Studio, Oracle HTML DB, and some other tools. Some are slicker than Witango in that you can create templates, etc, but none come close to ease of use.
- Anyone have any suggestion for a migration path? We're a Windows shop currently using MS SQL Server but transitioning to Oracle. Thanks for any suggestions you can give.
- TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to
- http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf
- TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to
- http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf
- =====================================================
- Database WebWorks: Dynamic web sites through database integration
- http://www.DatabaseWebWorks.com
- TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to
- http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf
________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf
Database WebWorks: Dynamic web sites through database integration
http://www.DatabaseWebWorks.com
________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf
