At 12:24 AM +0300 8/14/01, Douglas Wagner wrote:
>You rather missed the point of my remark. I'm aware of the need for effort.
>However, I do begrudge unnecessary effort which is the result of inadequate
>documentation. The fact is the evaluation version of RR is badly documented.
I think that's an unfair assessment. At the least, it's important to judge the
documentation in the context of the free support offered here on the list. There are
tools that are powerful and hard to use, tools that are limited and easy to use, and
tools that are limited and hard to use. :-)
There are _very_ few tools that are powerful and easy to use. Revolution comes close.
>In order to evaluate the IDE properly I need to be able to understand it and
>use it. That's difficult if there is no detailed documentation and coding is
>restricted to 10 lines. (One might almost think RR didn't welcome too close a
>scrutiny by a prospective purchaser).
This is an unreasonable characterization. Revolution is neither time- nor
feature-limited. You can experiment as much as you like, and there is very little that
cannot be accomplished within the demo limitation.
>Past experience has taught me to be cautious. On a number of occasions I've
>spent months on software that turned out to be buggy and which eventually bit
>the dust. Symantec's VisualCafe for Mac, the Java IDE, was a good example. I've
>>experienced others. So it makes sense to be sure of how capable an application >is
>before one devotes much time to it.
Certainly your caution is well-founded. There are number of environments out there
that promise more than they deliver. But the thing that should make you nervous is
when you ask something on the list and hear only "Gee, it's just that way," or "Wow, I
have no idea how you could do that," in response. So far all your questions to the
list have been standard new-to-the-environment type. Some of us have been using the
beta for months, and similar environments for years before, so we have a leg up. I
remember being perplexed in the past. I still am, sometimes, when I come up against an
area of Rev that I haven't touched before. Sometimes I wondered who would win,
Revolution or me. :-)
At this point, however, I'm fairly confident that I can look at a problem and know
whether Revolution can handle it. Most often, the answer is "yes," and many times I
grin, because I'm watching someone struggle to solve the problem with an inferior tool.
>
>Kevin Miller remarked to me in a personal eMail that RR is, "...aiming more at
>professional developers that hobbyists". All the more reason it seems to me to
>supply adequate documentation. I take it one gets rather more comprehensive
>documentation with the unrestricted version?
No, what you have is all there is, but it's under active development, and the list is
here, ready to help.
Regards,
Geoff
