Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to
One big gap in Rev as a general purpose environment seems to be getting data out in a structured form. Or maybe this is just personal ignorance in how to do it? If so, corrections would be welcome. You have lets say a tab separated file with data in it. This seems to be the approved way of storing a few thousand or tens of thousands of records of data, and indeed it does work fine for storage. Now you want to produce reports out of it. The recommended way (which I've done) seems to be one field per item of information, lay out the card so that it looks halfway decent, and then print card. However any report is quite capable of having 50 -100 cells, more, in it. Now, it may be that there is an easier way, which if so it would be great to hear about, but addressing all those cells individually in a script so you go through the file and extract and calculate what is wanted is immensely tedious, inflexible, lengthy and error prone. Also, your reports may well be multiple pages, in which case layout again becomes problematic. The card metaphor does fine when you are dealing with screen fulls of info, but when you're dealing with page fulls, less so. Maybe there is a good way to lay out a field with totals and subtotals and percentages in it, and that does not involve addressing all the cells individually? Even then however, in Linux, I would have to re-export it to a text file at the moment in order to format it properly for printing it. (Yes, a bug has been filed on this.) Consequently in this, as in formatting a field for printing, your average dinosaur sighs and reaches for awk (animals of more recent period will probably reach for Perl), while reflecting that this is for at least this purpose an incomplete environment. Not only does it take a fraction of the effort and an even smaller fraction of script length to do it in awk, but the thing actually looks like a proper report when you are through by default - you don't have to mess around with setting the field parameters and alignment of the boxes so that it all displays nicely. But, you feel, this is the sort of thing I should be able to just do natively, without going out to shell in different ways potentially in three different operating systems with all the complexity that introduces. Could you do it in Quartam? Probably, but not in Linux at the moment. I don't do this for a living, , and restrict my OS environment, so its an irritation not a showstopper, and its balanced by other eases of use in other areas. If I did it for a living, and on multiple platforms, it would make me think long and hard before adopting Rev as the general tool of choice. A second issue (again it may be ignorance of best practice) is the sense of fragmentation. As the apps you take on become more complex, the tendency is for the code to spread itself across many objects on many cards. Now, for maintainability, I'd like to track all uses of a given variable name or object name in every script. Its not obvious how to do it. What I do (please, tell me a better way) is patiently copy and paste every script into a real editor - Geany or Kate. In fact, I now have started to write the scripts in Geany or Kate, having first drawn up a list of objects and variables. Then at least they are addressable as a whole, and in Kate you have the double or triple window into the text, and global search and replace works. Its a bit tedious replacing all the scripts when written, and tracking what you've done, but its possible given pencil and paper and check lists. It works, but one keeps feeling, surely an environment which is bound to lead to lots of bits of individual scripts should have some built in way of dealing with this better? Maybe it does, and I've idiotically not noticed? Its probably called GLX2 - but again, not for my chosen OS. If I were 20 and had learned programming starting with Rev, these two things would probably be what would make me 'move on'. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-Is-RR-too-easy--Or-too-hard--%28was%29-Is-RunRev-marketed-to-tp17561877p17572777.html Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to
On 5/31/08 12:31 AM, Peter Alcibiades [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You have lets say a tab separated file with data in it. This seems to be the approved way of storing a few thousand or tens of thousands of records of data, and indeed it does work fine for storage. Now you want to produce reports out of it. The recommended way (which I've done) seems to be one field per item of information, lay out the card so that it looks halfway decent, and then print card. However any report is quite capable of having 50 -100 cells, more, in it. Now, it may be that there is an easier way, which if so it would be great to hear about, but addressing all those cells individually in a script so you go through the file and extract and calculate what is wanted is immensely tedious, inflexible, lengthy and error prone. Also, your reports may well be multiple pages, in which case layout again becomes problematic. The card metaphor does fine when you are dealing with screen fulls of info, but when you're dealing with page fulls, less so. Maybe there is a good way to lay out a field with totals and subtotals and percentages in it, and that does not involve addressing all the cells individually? Even then however, in Linux, I would have to re-export it to a text file at the moment in order to format it properly for printing it. (Yes, a bug has been filed on this.) I don't do this kind of reporting, but used to in FileMaker many years ago. Of course, Filemaker was layout-driven so the tools were there. In Rev, I would use custom properties to store incoming data, formatting definitions, and calculated results. Loops could be made to scan the data, sort, tabulate, cross tabulate, and summarize. The final step would be to print one or more pages using a single card. This means populate fields for page one, print, then page two, etc. This also allows the use of headers and footers that track the page numbers. I would think that you could have different card layouts to optimize the choice of fonts, margins, orientation, page size. Some advantages to using custom properties are speed, unlimited 'cells' for storage, naming of properties, duplicating data instantly, saving the stack would also save the custom properties (and calculated values if created), and sub stacks could be used to help build summaries and tabulations. Others on the list have much more experience at this than I. Hope this helps. Jim Ault Las Vegas ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to
Hi All! I've been tracking this conversation, and I can say that I beat the drum for Rev quite often in K12 education. I like the idea of custom objects just for teachers, that they could snap into their projects, however, we practically have those items now in the current version of Rev :-) (i.e. revBrowser) I try to provide practical examples of how Rev could be used by teachers. (I just uploaded a couple of examples in RevOnline under the Education section: RevBrowser Example - Earthquake and RevBrowser Example 2.) On a related note... I'm very interested to see what RunRev comes out with in terms of other web components, similar to Andre and Chip's CGI work with Rev. I think if Rev would provide an easy interface for storing user actions on a network (ie gradebook, record), ...simplifying the existing strategies of creating cgi components or socket apps, there would be a lot of applications that could be created that provide built in for accountability that would be very appealing to educators. Most of the commercial apps that are out for K12 education have a component that tracks the student's progress. Most educators probably would not have the patience for creating a process like this for their apps. But if you could drop an object into your stack that automatically writes to the output of a variable to a mysql db, or a flat file, ...oh what I'm I saying!??? Those are already in Rev But maybe a little intimidating for a 2nd grade teacher who may have just picked up Rev. Oh..., getting off track..., maybe if the process were a little easier, tutorials maybe designed specifically for educational use...kind of what ...i forget his name...sorry the professor out at BYU has done? Just some thoughts! Thanks! John Patten Sylvan Union School District ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
marty wrote: Is it true that most programmers say that hypercard isn't programming? Do they say that about RR? I'm running into that issue a little bit. Some of my students (8th grade and up) think that RR is not a real programming language. Why? It's too easy! They have the notion -- shared by a good portion of the general public -- that programming is incredibly difficult to do, hard to learn, and mastered only by geeks. Thus, since making things (even executables) using RR is so easy, it must not be programming. This viewpoint is especially expressed by students who have dabbled in other languages, like java. Yeah, I see that a lot. Rev is in a very difficult position with regard to its positioning: any programming language will be too hard for most folks to find attractive, yet Transcript is too easy for some to take it seriously. I even see some of this at the end-user level: One of my apps ships to hospitals, where the IT staff sends me questions about installation. The hardest part of that conversation is convincing them that it's a very simple and fully self-contained app, with no complex networking protocols or DLLs strewn all over the hard drive. Once they try it they always send me a happy note, but at first they find it hard to believe such an app can be so simple to install. :) Back to Rev's positioning, as a proprietary sole-source technology using a unique object model and language unlike anything else, it's a tough sell to the largest potential market: folks who already have some scripting experience in something else. For most folks, that something else is JavaScript, which probably has more users than all other scripting languages combined. Rev isn't anything like JavaScript, nor would I suggest that it should be. But it would be helpful if some of the introductory materials in the docs discussed Rev as a second language for JavaScripters as it does for HC and VB. On the other side of the aisle, I'd like to begin urging other teachers to begin making their own software to use with their classes. But they think it's too hard! (Granted, most of them haven't really tried it -- they hear words like programming or writing software and shy away.) Judy Perry and I talked about that briefly at RevCon, and I followed up with Kevin on that afterward. We all agree that it would be very helpful for educators if there was a collection of prefab components one could use as starting points for courseware, but it would be a lot of work for RunRev to take this on and not optimal for them to do at this time given the other things on their plate right now. I'm prepared to devote some space at revJournal.com to such a collection if I can find someone who has the time to help manage it. I can provide FTP access, HTML templates, etc., but could really use someone with some time on their hands to help set it up and maintain it. I'd be happy to donate some components to such a collection as well, and if we got a dozen others to do so as well we'd get quite a nice time-saving set of goodies for teachers. If any of you may be interested in helping with such an initiative, whether as the assistance webmaster or contributing components, please drop me a note offlist and we'll see if we can get that going. -- Richard Gaskin Managing Editor, revJournal ___ Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
You are going to find all sorts of prejudices in the programming world about ease of use. Easier it is to use, the less they want to give it credit. Now you do have to see one thing from their viewpoint. You spend years learning how to use c++, you are finally at a point where you can do a decent program. Along comes someone who has been using RR for a month or two, and makes a very similar program to what you can do. The c++ isn't going to be impressed, they have to justify all the time and money they spent on learning their language. If they can't, why did they do it all in the first place. So they aren't going to embrace something like RR. Also consider the consultant that has to charge 10 times as much as a RR developer to make a custom program because it honestly takes that much longer in other languages. Are they going to tell a client that they are using a slower development system? No. They are going to tell people that there must be some kind of shortcoming in the RR system, otherwise it would take so much longer to do real programming. I saw this same type of battle ongoing with the DOS vs. Windows people. I couldn't believe how many DOS users wouldn't use Windows development tools, because they had always done it that way before. Guess what? Most of them are out of business. Computer programming is a fluid situation. There is a momentum that must be hit for a language to be accepted within the old school programming community. And frankly I don't ever see RR hitting those folks. Which is ok with me, lets move forward instead of trying to convert a bunch of old ways are best programmers. In the end, whatever tool you use to accomplish the task at hand is the one you want to use. I just think if you can do it in a much simpler and faster fashion, that it is just that much more fun :) - Noel At 10:34 AM 5/29/2008, you wrote: Is it true that most programmers say that hypercard isn't programming? Do they say that about RR? I'm running into that issue a little bit. Some of my students (8th grade and up) think that RR is not a real programming language. Why? It's too easy! They have the notion -- shared by a good portion of the general public -- that programming is incredibly difficult to do, hard to learn, and mastered only by geeks. Thus, since making things (even executables) using RR is so easy, it must not be programming. This viewpoint is especially expressed by students who have dabbled in other languages, like java. On the other side of the aisle, I'd like to begin urging other teachers to begin making their own software to use with their classes. But they think it's too hard! (Granted, most of them haven't really tried it -- they hear words like programming or writing software and shy away.) Sigh - marty -- Marty Billingsley The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools Recently, william humphrey wrote: Since my only experience in programming is with hypercard (and most programmers say that isn't programming) and with web stuff like PHP JAVAscript which has thousands of carefully indexed examples that you can just snip and paste into your projects then I am really not the one to answer this question. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
That's a *great* idea, Richard. On May 29, 2008, at 12:12 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote: But it would be helpful if some of the introductory materials in the docs discussed Rev as a second language for JavaScripters as it does for HC and VB. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
HyperCard also suffered from this mentality in both higher education and corporate environments (I can speak to this first hand). Part of HC's problem was that it was slower than compiled applications doing the same things. Part of the problem was that color was being widely accepted and adopted, and other than using ColorizeIt! or AddMotion, there was no way to add color to stacks. SuperCard fixed that problem but SuperCard was a bit player because HC was free. Heizer Software came along and added CompileIt! and Double-XX, both of which fixed the speed problems, and made it possible to write XFCN's and XCMD's in HT using the Apple Toolbox API's. However, in the corporate environments where I worked as a staffer and as a consultant (in three of the biggest companies on the planet at their headquarters), the concern was that third-party add-ons to address the issues actually detracted from the product, despite the fact that Crystal Reports was becoming accepted as a way to interface to SQL back ends, and the fact that the 3rd party developer community for HC was immense. There were actually mail order catalogs of 3rd party HC add-ons. The complaints against the language, in a time when Pascal was the new and accepted standard (Nobody in these cultures was interested in C or C++ yet), was the fact that it is verbose. Despite the fact that it was also easier to read, the general feeling was that since put 3 into x instead of x:=3; was too much typing. Implicit typing was an AppleSoft BASIC thing. Real men type all their variables. Yes, I find the rapid recent adoption of Javascript ironic in light of that. Part of my initial assignment at Fortune 50 Company was to a) learn all about a new XCMD/XFCN toolkit to connect our enterprise SQL database server to HC. b) Develop an entire system, back end and front end, that would manage and solve a particular corporate problem. c) Be ready to demo the solution on the following Monday. I was done with EVERYTHING in two days. That included adding the fake color to the application, and running everything through my personal copies of various Heizer tools to build this bugger into a standalone double-clickable, compiled application, building the back-end database. What I didn't know was that I was in a race against someone else, using a well-known database RAD tool with all the things I was adding on already built-in. This race started on Monday of week 1. The other guy didn't show up for work on Friday, and his desktop machine was curiously missing. It turns out, as I found out later, that he took all day (and into the evening) Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to complete the non HC version of the project, and ultimately it was SLOWER than the HC version. So in 16 hours I completed what took nearly 60 hours in that other tool. So the short version of that story is You're right. The longer version, though, is a tale of irrational prejudice, tilting against windmills, and a failure on the part of HC before, and RR now to radically alter a perception that is based on an alternate reality and Paradigm Paralysis. That, my friends, is the biggest failure of all. Apple could buy RR or start over and release a brand-new version of HC. The chaos that would ensue in schools and organizations as individuals start building their own applications to solve particular problems would rival the upheaval that was threatened in the late 80's and early 90's as HC and then HC2 empowered folks to stop waiting for IT to pick their noses and instead attack their own issues. Yet we are no closer today than we were then, some 20 years ago. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
Mikey, And this all over again as Mashups infiltrate enterprise and IT have to deal with end users building their own UI etc. Thanks for the post Tom On May 29, 2008, at 1:36 PM, Mikey wrote: So the short version of that story is You're right. The longer version, though, is a tale of irrational prejudice, tilting against windmills, and a failure on the part of HC before, and RR now to radically alter a perception that is based on an alternate reality and Paradigm Paralysis. That, my friends, is the biggest failure of all. Apple could buy RR or start over and release a brand-new version of HC. The chaos that would ensue in schools and organizations as individuals start building their own applications to solve particular problems would rival the upheaval that was threatened in the late 80's and early 90's as HC and then HC2 empowered folks to stop waiting for IT to pick their noses and instead attack their own issues. Yet we are no closer today than we were then, some 20 years ago. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
Thats why it would be nice to have Revolution name mentioned regularly in the big IT magazines. Once it gets there the snowball effect will start working as local national magazines tend to replicate news printed in the greater ones. These news in turn get replicated by IT columns in local newspapers. For the old school we can probably say that indeed, you can enjoy coding by writing your own externals in C++. B.t.w, now as we know how to do it in C++ it would be also nice to have tutorials on writing externals (if possible) in C, Visual Basic, Pascal, D, Ada (check the tiobe programming language ranking at http://www.tiobe.com/ to see why). Learning by example is the most efficient (and likely the only) approach to learn new things. The old school is actually now being replaced by folks that do php, perl, python, rubby. And finally there is a growing community of javascript/ajax, xml, flash/flex/actionscript programmers and database people. The situation now is that more and more software is being written in interpreted languages then in compiled ones. But if Revolution remains unprinted (=unheard), then it can't reach people efficiently. V. -- Computer programming is a fluid situation. There is a momentum that must be hit for a language to be accepted within the old school programming community. And frankly I don't ever see RR hitting those folks. Which is ok with me, lets move forward instead of trying to convert a bunch of old ways are best programmers. In the end, whatever tool you use to accomplish the task at hand is the one you want to use. I just think if you can do it in a much simpler and faster fashion, that it is just that much more fun :) - Noel At 10:34 AM 5/29/2008, you wrote: Is it true that most programmers say that hypercard isn't programming? Do they say that about RR? I'm running into that issue a little bit. Some of my students (8th grade and up) think that RR is not a real programming language. Why? It's too easy! They have the notion -- shared by a good portion of the general public -- that programming is incredibly difficult to do, hard to learn, and mastered only by geeks. Thus, since making things (even executables) using RR is so easy, it must not be programming. This viewpoint is especially expressed by students who have dabbled in other languages, like java. On the other side of the aisle, I'd like to begin urging other teachers to begin making their own software to use with their classes. But they think it's too hard! (Granted, most of them haven't really tried it -- they hear words like programming or writing software and shy away.) Sigh - marty -- Marty Billingsley The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools Recently, william humphrey wrote: Since my only experience in programming is with hypercard (and most programmers say that isn't programming) and with web stuff like PHP JAVAscript which has thousands of carefully indexed examples that you can just snip and paste into your projects then I am really not the one to answer this question. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
The catch is: If anyone uses Google to find answers, or help, or general info... this won't get much if all you write is RevCode, so use more than one term, such as Revolution or Transcript, etc. Of course, RunRev is unique, but I don't see many people using this beyond the Rev team. Lynn mentioned blogging as a way of getting the word out, but we still get back to using an effective set of key words to take advantage of the list postings, web sites (ala Richard, Ken, Eric), and blogs. RevCode is short, more unique than Revolution and we can define it to mean something more specific. Eg. Early RevCode could be MetaCard. I think this is true. I like RevCode better than Transcript, and better than... Jim Ault Las Vegas On 5/29/08 12:12 PM, Thomas McGrath III [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mikey, And this all over again as Mashups infiltrate enterprise and IT have to deal with end users building their own UI etc. Thanks for the post Tom On May 29, 2008, at 1:36 PM, Mikey wrote: So the short version of that story is You're right. The longer version, though, is a tale of irrational prejudice, tilting against windmills, and a failure on the part of HC before, and RR now to radically alter a perception that is based on an alternate reality and Paradigm Paralysis. That, my friends, is the biggest failure of all. Apple could buy RR or start over and release a brand-new version of HC. The chaos that would ensue in schools and organizations as individuals start building their own applications to solve particular problems would rival the upheaval that was threatened in the late 80's and early 90's as HC and then HC2 empowered folks to stop waiting for IT to pick their noses and instead attack their own issues. Yet we are no closer today than we were then, some 20 years ago. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
RevCode certainly is a nice succinct and unique word. Revolution is a useless word and Transcript is also and scripting all those others aren't unique. It really is a great idea to name transcript or hypertalk or revolution or whatever the stuff we have been coding in when using RunRev RevCode. The only problem with it (in google search) is there is some very prolific poster named revcode. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
Is it cultural or why do hate the name revolution? Long, unwieldy, heavy handed, un-related to the product, awkward, out of vogue, s t r a n g e, the opposite of cool . . . like british food? Gets in the way of public acceptance. -Original Message- From: viktoras didziulis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: How to use Revolution use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Sent: 5/29/2008 12:18 PM Subject: Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly? Thats why it would be nice to have Revolution name mentioned regularly in the big IT magazines. Once it gets there the snowball effect will start working as local national magazines tend to replicate news printed in the greater ones. These news in turn get replicated by IT columns in local newspapers. For the old school we can probably say that indeed, you can enjoy coding by writing your own externals in C++. B.t.w, now as we know how to do it in C++ it would be also nice to have tutorials on writing externals (if possible) in C, Visual Basic, Pascal, D, Ada (check the tiobe programming language ranking at http://www.tiobe.com/ to see why). Learning by example is the most efficient (and likely the only) approach to learn new things. The old school is actually now being replaced by folks that do php, perl, python, rubby. And finally there is a growing community of javascript/ajax, xml, flash/flex/actionscript programmers and database people. The situation now is that more and more software is being written in interpreted languages then in compiled ones. But if Revolution remains unprinted (=unheard), then it can't reach people efficiently. V. -- Computer programming is a fluid situation. There is a momentum that must be hit for a language to be accepted within the old school programming community. And frankly I don't ever see RR hitting those folks. Which is ok with me, lets move forward instead of trying to convert a bunch of old ways are best programmers. In the end, whatever tool you use to accomplish the task at hand is the one you want to use. I just think if you can do it in a much simpler and faster fashion, that it is just that much more fun :) - Noel At 10:34 AM 5/29/2008, you wrote: Is it true that most programmers say that hypercard isn't programming? Do they say that about RR? I'm running into that issue a little bit. Some of my students (8th grade and up) think that RR is not a real programming language. Why? It's too easy! They have the notion -- shared by a good portion of the general public -- that programming is incredibly difficult to do, hard to learn, and mastered only by geeks. Thus, since making things (even executables) using RR is so easy, it must not be programming. This viewpoint is especially expressed by students who have dabbled in other languages, like java. On the other side of the aisle, I'd like to begin urging other teachers to begin making their own software to use with their classes. But they think it's too hard! (Granted, most of them haven't really tried it -- they hear words like programming or writing software and shy away.) Sigh - marty -- Marty Billingsley The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools Recently, william humphrey wrote: Since my only experience in programming is with hypercard (and most programmers say that isn't programming) and with web stuff like PHP JAVAscript which has thousands of carefully indexed examples that you can just snip and paste into your projects then I am really not the one to answer this question. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
Personally, I think it overstates the case, it is too long, and is pompous. If you don't use it all the time then it isn't so bad - RevCode, for example, is just RevCode, even though it's short for something else. If you use it sparingly then it isn't a problem. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
The biggest problem with using Revolution to mean RevCode is that Revolution means something else. So it is confusing especially for web searches. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
Well said, why should computing be consomptive only? We dont just read books... We also write them. Computing should be a more creative activity. i'm not saying xtalk is the final solution... But it does lower the pain theashold enough to bring more people to the only qualitatively different aspect of computing... Programming executable logic. R. -Original Message- From: Richmond Mathewson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Sent: 5/29/2008 1:45 PM Subject: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly? Too easy? Too difficult? This is one of those things that can go on and on. Having ploughed through all those disgusting command-line languages of the 70s and 80s I really don't care if people want to be all funny about Runtime Revolution; let them be; all I do know is: I can have a child of 8 making a program (the s are there for the 'purists'/'snobs'/whatever) inside of 120 minutes [and, parenthetically,I do owe an apology with regard to certain sarcastic remarks made earlier this year about claims as to how rapidly one could write a program in RR]], and within a day have them producing a functioning model of a pocket calculator. This serves a number of purposes: 1. It gets them off the incredibly destructive view propagated by Bulgarian schools that computer programming consists of writing MSWord documents, checking your e-mail and mucking around with Excel documents. 2. Empowers those kids no end: You should see their faces! 3. Teaches them certain aspects of abstract thinking quite a few years before the psychologists say kids can manage it. 4. Stimulates their sense of curiosity about the world which our common culture and education systems work so hard to stultify and dumb-down. All 4 of which have to be good. Further to that: One's system development cycle does not have to be a long, drawn out process; one can often go from idea to initial prototype in a matter of hours. While it might take quite a while to get the hang of all the capabilities of Runtime Revolution (after 6 years I would like to think I am familiar with about 50% of them), one can do great things in a remarkably short time. As a point of comparison I would like to mention something I went through (as in a personal period of suffering) about 4 years ago: As part of an M.Sc in Computing and IT I had to attend classes in Visual Basic 5; which, quite remarkably, told me nothing I had not learnt when studying BASIC 5 in 1976 (). After doing the fairly goofy exercises in the lab at the institution I would drive home and, just for fun (well, and a way of coping with the trauma) I would duplicate each exercise in Revolution. Every time I did this the time spent on duplicating the exercise in RR took 20-25% of the time to do it in VB 5 (and, I am not counting the pretty flow-charts, games with yoghurt pots of buttons and so forth that came before I went near any computer). Also, with RR I could see what was happening as I did things; which was not the case with VB 5. Put some of my prejudice down to the fact that I do not like Windows 2000, and to the fact that the lecturer in the practical sessions kept shouting at me because I was using a slide-rule rather than a pocket calculator (made her feel insecure ), and that she had no manners; but not all of it. Now I know that in some would-be 'elitest' groups the word VISUAL is viewed as obscene, However, I love the word VISUAL, because as a human being I receive 80% of my sense-data through my eyes, and because I had about 15 years of horrid black screens with either black or green letters. Visual Basic 5 (and I cannot comment for 6 or NET) was neither one thing or the other (i.e. VISUAL or a command line language); frankly I would far rather have old-fashioned BASIC (well,maybe after the requirement for the LET statement was dropped). Now Runtime Revolution is VISUAL; I use Runtime Revolution for the very reason that it is: VISUAL, like LEGO, (which was a great help when I hired an architect who started waving 2-dimensional plans at me), KIDS and CLIENTS can see what is being done (not much good if you want to cultivate the image of some magician with mystical powers over the computer) while it is being done: nothing like talking through a problem with a client/pupil and doing some RR on-screen at the same time so that by the end of your chat you actually have something half-decent you can show them! Runtime Revolution is absolutely bl**dy marvellous; I don't know why they seem to be hiding their light under a bushel. At the moment high schools in Bulgaria teach PASCAL; which is plain daft, and, 90% of the kids hate it, get turned-off computer programming, see absolutely no connexion between it and the PCs they have in the living-room at home, cannot understand any connexion between what they are supposed to do (with PASCAL) and the programs they use on their home PCs, and gain very
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
Here, here! How do you think we can do to help this happen? Judy On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 9:34 AM, marty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On the other side of the aisle, I'd like to begin urging other teachers to begin making their own software to use with their classes. But they think it's too hard! (Granted, most of them haven't really tried it -- they hear words like programming or writing software and shy away.) Sigh - marty ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
I'd forgotten about Lynn's blogging suggestion, which is odd given that I've been tinkering with the idea of a Rev in Education blog @;-) Judy On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 12:29 PM, Jim Ault [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Lynn mentioned blogging as a way of getting the word out, but we still get back to using an effective set of key words to take advantage of the list postings, web sites (ala Richard, Ken, Eric), and blogs. RevCode is short, more unique than Revolution and we can define it to mean something more specific. Eg. Early RevCode could be MetaCard. I think this is true. I like RevCode better than Transcript, and better than... Jim Ault Las Vegas On 5/29/08 12:12 PM, Thomas McGrath III [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mikey, And this all over again as Mashups infiltrate enterprise and IT have to deal with end users building their own UI etc. Thanks for the post Tom On May 29, 2008, at 1:36 PM, Mikey wrote: So the short version of that story is You're right. The longer version, though, is a tale of irrational prejudice, tilting against windmills, and a failure on the part of HC before, and RR now to radically alter a perception that is based on an alternate reality and Paradigm Paralysis. That, my friends, is the biggest failure of all. Apple could buy RR or start over and release a brand-new version of HC. The chaos that would ensue in schools and organizations as individuals start building their own applications to solve particular problems would rival the upheaval that was threatened in the late 80's and early 90's as HC and then HC2 empowered folks to stop waiting for IT to pick their noses and instead attack their own issues. Yet we are no closer today than we were then, some 20 years ago. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
And, of course, the problem here is one of branding, or rather, changing the branding rather frequently. Is it Revolution? Transcript? Media/Dreamcard/Studio/Enterprise/whatever-it-is-this-week? (though I must say I was very impressed with the concern for branding expressed at the conference, as well as with the visually improved new web presence!). Judy On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 12:45 PM, william humphrey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: RevCode certainly is a nice succinct and unique word. Revolution is a useless word and Transcript is also and scripting all those others aren't unique. It really is a great idea to name transcript or hypertalk or revolution or whatever the stuff we have been coding in when using RunRev RevCode. The only problem with it (in google search) is there is some very prolific poster named revcode. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
Richmond, I quite often take issue with your posts to this list, but this time, I agree with every word :-) I too suffer from people describing Revolution as a toy and ignoring the fact that I produce software that is incredibly stable and largely bug-free in about a tenth of the time they do. Cheers, Sarah ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Is RR too easy? Or too hard? (was) Is RunRev marketed to developers mainly?
On 5/29/08 7:34 PM, marty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Marty, Is it true that most programmers say that hypercard isn't programming? Do they say that about RR? I'm running into that issue a little bit. Some of my students (8th grade and up) think that RR is not a real programming language. Why? It's too easy! They have the notion -- shared by a good portion of the general public -- that programming is incredibly difficult to do, hard to learn, and mastered only by geeks. Thus, since making things (even executables) using RR is so easy, it must not be programming. This viewpoint is especially expressed by students who have dabbled in other languages, like java. On the other side of the aisle, I'd like to begin urging other teachers to begin making their own software to use with their classes. But they think it's too hard! (Granted, most of them haven't really tried it -- they hear words like programming or writing software and shy away.) I self teach students-programmers sometimes more than 10 years, And I can say that good programmer student must learn at least on overview level this programming languages and concepts to get more or less complete picture of the world * PROCEDUREAL better C * OOC++, JS, Java, ObjC * LOGICAL/DECLARATIVE Prolog/Lisp * DB/DECLARTIVE SQL * SCRIPTING langPHP/Rev * EXOTICpython, Ruby About Revolution lang. From my talks with Mark, I have catch main point of REVOLUTION product. Ask your students: how will look programming lang of far future? what is IDEAL language ? After pause, answer self -- ideal the most cool programming language for us is HUMAN language. Revolution is on this way. C++ and Java are not :-) -- Best regards, Ruslan Zasukhin VP Engineering and New Technology Paradigma Software, Inc Valentina - Joining Worlds of Information http://www.paradigmasoft.com [I feel the need: the need for speed] ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
