On 21/07/2007, at 8:54, Mike Schrag wrote:
> The WO team didn't choose to drop the tools because they
> necessarily wanted to, they chose to drop the tools to save the
> framework. The WO apps were incredibly old code bases that have
> been on life support for several years. If Leopard gets up to
> release and there's a crashing bug in EOModeler, it's not Leopard
> that stops shipping, it's WO. This was a pragmatic decision to
> attempt to keep a deserving technology shipping that doesn't
> generate any direct revenue for the company. The alternatives
> could have been much worse, so you should focus on the bright side
> of this.
I can't help thinking of the Monty Python song from The Life of
Brian, where they are getting crucified and he is singing "Always
look on the bright side of life..."
Seriously, I do see the bright side, and I am so much happier that
there are tools that are actively supported by WO professionals and
enthusiasts. Although WO Builder is my most productive tool in WO
development, I have literally been swearing at it for more than five
years because it has had the same stupid and easily fixed bugs in all
that time, despite a shiny new look. So I am very glad that there ARE
developer tools that are supported better that Apple did.
>
> I also don't believe there's a "philosophical bias" in the WOLips
> development team towards text-based tools.
Sorry, Mike, perhaps I tarred the developers with the same brush as
the WOnder mailing list, where the majority of contributors to the
list definitely do show this bias, and (the majority) don't appear to
understand the difference between programming productivity and
project productivity.
> People write these responses like I'm not aware of the pros and
> cons of visual vs non-visual development, and apparently assume
> that because I didn't build a graphical WOB right off the bat that
> I'm somehow anti-visual-development and missing the boat on the
> concept. I assure you I think about the concept quite a bit, and
> I'm not ignorant of the benefits. Specifically, it's not that I
> don't believe in the concept (I *love* IB), rather it is my opinion
> that that WOB does a lousy job at solving the problem. It was a
> great tool for building modern apps in 1999, but app demands have
> changed and WOB has most certainly not kept up. There's also the
> reality of the situation which is that developing text-based tools
> is a heck of a lot easier and faster-to-do than developing visual
> tools (particularly cross-platform ones -- say goodbye to the
> productivity gain of Cocoa on that tool). So at the moment, you're
> getting text-based dev tools. They're, IMNSHO, some pretty kick-
> ass text-based development tools for WO. Don't dismiss them
> because they don't let you drag a line between a square and a word
> at this stage of their life.
Actually, I would be satisfied if I could click on an attribute, then
click on a component to connect it. I don't need the springy line.
8^)
Again, I didn't mean to insult the developers of WOLips, nor to say
that they had this philosophical bias. But as you say, it is so much
easier to develop text-based tools, so it makes sense that those of
you who donate your time so generously would go for the best result
per hour.
I'm trying to think how I could positively contribute to all this
without ranting and without having to learn the innards of Eclipse et
al. What If I did the following: take this discussion on to the
WOnder list as well, and list all the useful (to me) functions in WO
Builder and the micro-goals they achieve; ask for suggestions of
other functions used by other developers and the goals they achieve;
set up an opinion poll to ask developers how important each function
is to them. This could then act as encouragement to anybody who was
considering developing a visual tool, whether it is standalone, an
Eclipse plugin, or a plugin for Dreamweaver. Any comments?
Thomas
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Fri Jul 20 2007 - 19:16:44 EDT