Revolution vs REALbasic

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massung
Posts: 93
Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:34 pm

Post by massung » Mon Aug 03, 2009 8:52 pm

First off, I have to agree with everyone that suggested "right tool for the right job." However, assuming that either RB or Rev would work for the OP's task-at-hand...

RB is a nice product. And, with the addition of the OpenGLSurface control (FINALLY!), it's getting better. Certainly, if you need real OO in your project, RB will beat Rev. Similarly, if you are doing heavy number crunching, RB will easily destroy Rev (since numbers are strings in HyperTalk). Then again, based on the number crunching, you may be better off using C, Lisp, APL, J, or a myriad of other languages over RB :).

Those points aside, I feel it necessary to really identify the major difference between Rev and every other development environment out there. Rev is 100% live programming. I can't stress enough not only how cool that is, but how much more productive it is.

Programmers who swear by (example) Python over C++ aren't excited over built-in hash tables. They are dancing because they can iterate very fast with an REPL (read-eval-print-loop). Rev takes that paradigm and blows it out of the water. There's no such thing as having to rerun your program from scratch, reload the data, and retest. You just keep tweaking the same, always running application, until it works. You have become a the sculptor of a solution instead of a programmer. And once you experience this, you won't want to go back.

Bottom line: there are certain applications for which Rev isn't well suited compared to other languages. I wouldn't want to do finite element analysis in Rev :lol:.

But, when the app I'm working on fits in Rev's domain, I'd rather not work in anything else due to the workflow of the environment.

Jeff M.

P.S.

I do have to go on record against the 2 biggest features of 3.5 (behaviors and data grids). The concepts of both are wonderful, and should be awesome features. But behaviors having to be buttons is a joke, and wreaks of "HACK" to get a bullet point feature in. And the data grids, while a noble effort, are just a side project that don't even come close to being truly integrated in with the rest of the environment or intuitive in any way (like the rest of Rev).

3.5, IMO, was a step backwards by the Rev team. 4.0 looks to be a giant leap forwards, but I would kill for behaviors and data grids to be implemented "properly" :roll:.

andyh1234
Posts: 476
Joined: Mon Aug 13, 2007 4:44 pm
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Post by andyh1234 » Wed Aug 05, 2009 4:45 pm

Id agree with the right tool for the right job comments as well.

I originally used RB to program Mac apps after using VB in Windows, and it was a very easy switch.

I bought RunRev as a curiosity when I was on a family holiday in Canada, wife was off out and I had some time to kill, the email offer came in just at the right time so I thought id give it a go.

I think initially it was a little odd working in a 'live' environment, and took me a while to get my head around the fact everything was running, but once I figure that out it does change the way you work and I write all the apps I can in RunRev now rather than any other language, the last time I started RB would be a couple of years ago now.

If I had any issues with RunRev its just that there are so many ways to do the same thing, but then thats also part of the charm! Its very easy to pick up some script and be able to 'read' what it does, even if you are not familiar with the specific commands used, they tend to make sense.

This forum is a god send, I doubt that without it I would have got as far as I have!

Andy

Quality
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Post by Quality » Wed Aug 19, 2009 8:41 am

MotherHoose wrote:you can't get refund from RuntimeRevolution, even if the program doesn't work on the computer you bought it for! (they didn't even offer to supply a copy/serial# for the platform I needed!)
RunRev offers a 30-day free trial period, and a 30-day money back guarantee. I'd be truly shocked if you couldn't get a refund within that 30-day post-purchase period, so there must be something more to this story.
[size=75]Bill Marriott
Director of Marketing
Runtime Revolution[/size]

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