mission critical apps; was Re: cross platform ide

[Richard Gaskin]

Alex Rice wrote:

> The questions I intended to bring up were:
> 
> 1) In a technical interview, or when trying to sell an xtalk solution
> to corporate IT dept, you may run into someone who challenges the
> xtalk/smalltalk messaging model. I described in a previous post that
> interview where the Java engineer was challenging me about Objective-C.
> It's possible the issue will come up for other
> xtalk/smalltalk/objective-C programmers too.

What is the argument against the xTalk messaging model?

Can you think of a way to address those concerns while retaining the
essential flavor of the language?

Perhaps as an optional set of language additions, a la explicitVars?


> 2) Is a tool that's really good for games and multimedia also a good
> tool for making ultra-reliable business applications? There is an
> saying something like: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks
> like a nail. Can the 'All talking All singing All dancing' Runrev
> really be the 1 true tool that we want it to be?

I agree that "multimedia" is a poor choice to describe something like Rev.
Though it can do multimedia, it can also do a lot more.  The challenge is
that it can do so many things, nerly as many as Java or C, and like those
languages it's hard to define them in terms of types of software delivered
using them.

Maybe something like "media-rich applications" might be more on-target.

Then again, I'm cautious of even attempting to define Rev by the stuff folks
make with it today.  There are so many things in the Rev VM I can't write
apps as fast as opportunities arise for them.  What can't you build with
Rev? :)  

There might be a way to evagelize the tool by merely describing how it
works, and let folks imagine what that means for them specifically.  That
may sound a little too California, but consider:

As a general-purpose GUI toolkit, the range of examples should have
something for just about anyone:  database front-ends like Revzilla,
downloadable dynamic content like RevNet, Web production tools like
Hemmingway and WebMerge, media-rich databases like Rob Pitt's PEDiPac,
qualitative analysis tools like HyperRESEARCH, AI tools lik Alex' CLIPS
project, CBTs like Max Shafer's Spolin CD, and the list goes on.

On Brian Thomas' "If Monks Had Macs" CD alone there are many different
application categories represented:  an e-book reader, a personal journal
application, a text adventure game, a solitaire card game, and tons of
"multimedia" like his piece on the White Rose.  Heck, his Thinker Toy widget
alone straddles at least two or three categories (you can see a screenshot
of it at the lower-left of <http://www.rivertext.com/monks3.html>).

All this, and still a thousand other software categories that simply haven't
been invented yet....

Category labels may be unncessarily limiting, introducing boundaries for
perceptions which might have remained broader just hearing something like:

  Java promises "write-once, run aywhere."
  Revolution delivers.
  Easily.

Then exaplain it as a modern 4GL with with rich GUI support and an
unbeatable ROI proposition.  Now that you have their atention, show them
case study after case study of people making or saving many times their
development expense with Rev.

How many times does an IT request get delivered long after it was useful?
How many in-house apps get deployed but never used because it's hard to make
great interfaces quickly in most other tools?  How many projects are over
budget?

Rev projects are not immune to budget overruns, no software is. But because
you're working at such a high level with Rev the range of things that can go
wrong is smaller, and often the variance between estimate and actual cost is
smaller accordingly.  A 20-year ACM survey found 80% of software projects
were over budget, with a variance of a factor of 16 (as low as one-forth the
estimate, as high as four times as much).  I have no doubt that among
professional Rev developers the variance is much smaller.  Containing that
variance makes cost control possible.

For open-mindered corporations who need to roll out usable interfaces
effeciently, Rev has a lot to offer.

Many decision-makers may not understand programming, but they do understand
their bottom line.  And that's where Rev shines most brightly.

Let's hope we see a collection of case studies at the RunRev site soon.
They've helped make many a happy story, they might as well tell a few...

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
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