BKeeney Briefs

When we got the Wii for the kids last summer we bought it because my (then) 7 year old gave a pretty convincing argument for it:  It was fun.  We hemmed and hawed for a while but after playing it for a while at my cousins house we were convinced and bought the system.

Since then, my interest in boxing and bowling has waned a bit.  I purchased the Legend of Zelda and after an hour of playing decided that I’d rather program for fun.  I guess I’m not into those types of games.  My teenager has since solved it after spending several weekends on it.

So when my youngest asked for the Wii Fit I was interested.  The Wii breaks the mould of video gaming as I’ve known them (I was a teenager when Asteroids and Space Invaders was the rage at the arcade and I owned an Intellivision) and no longer are you relegated to sitting in one spot getting sore thumbs.

The Wii Fit comes with a Balance Board that measures weight and balance and responds to your body movement when you’re on it.  The ‘game’ comes with 4 main sections:  Yoga, Strength, Aerobics and Balance.  Starting out, your Mii (pronounced me) is weighed and you can do a baseline balance test.  It adjusts your Mii’s onscreen appearance to match your Body Mass Index (BMI) so if you weren’t truthful in the creation of your Mii it’ll be ‘adjusted’ accordingly.

The yoga portion is interesting.  You start with a basic breathing exercise and can quickly graduate to the “Warrior” pose.  When performing each pose the balance board tracks your balance and you get a score based on your balance.  The better your balance the more points you get.  Onscreen, a helpful male or female instructor (your choice) shows you how to do the pose and gives instructions.  During the pose there is feedback indicating how well your balance is working.  I’ve since unlocked 5 others poses and I guess my decade doing Aikido has helped a bit there.

The aerobics portion starts with a hula hoop simulation.  As someone who’s never mastered the art of hula hooping in the real world, this is a much better version.  It will get your heart pumping and is sort of fun (for adults – the kids love it) and points are awarded based on how many hoops you’ve hula hooped.  The next game is a beginning step program where you step on and off the board to music while the screens shows you when and where to step. Points are awarded on how accurate you are with the music.  The next game is running which is running in place where an animated pacer runs in front of you.  Running is simple, but very good exercise.

The balance portion starts with a simple soccer goalie game where you shift your weight left and right on the board to hit the balls kicked at you and dodge the occasional shoe.  Next is the downhill skiing which is tough as you have to lean forward (trying to hit a very small blue dot to gain speed) and shift your weight left and right to turn and go between the gates.  This is probably the toughest one I’ve done so far as it requires multiple things happening at once.  It is also probably my favorite.  My second favorite is the ski jump where you have to balance properly to hit yet another really small blue dot to get speed and then straighten your legs at just the right time and then balance evenly for the flight.

Since I regularly go to the gym for weights I haven’t done any of the strength training exercises.  I’m sure it would make me work in a few areas I’m not doing now.  When I get bored I’ll think about trying it out.

As you continue to play, I mean do the exercises, it tracks how much time you spent doing it.  At about the 45 minute mark it will recommend that you stop and get a drink of water.  It’s pretty good at giving verbal feedback and telling you how to do things better.  Some of the games are more interesting to kids but there’s enough there for the adults to like as well.

All-in-all, Santa made a pretty smart decision.  My kid likes it.  My wife likes it. I like it.  I have no idea if it will keep my interest long term but it’s been an interesting diversion while the weather has been less than stellar in Kansas City (well, it’s been alternating between miserable and gorgeous about every 24 hours).  If your New Years Resolution is get in better shape for 2009 and you’d like to have a little fun along the way then I’d recommend the Wii Fit.

Continue with bug fixes first and new features last in new releases:
I’ll call this one a positive.  I think for the most part Real Software has done a good job in 2008 with the bug fix to new features ratio.  With the exception of Release 2 that had a nasty bug where nil object exceptions couldn’t be caught in Windows apps, RB was pretty solid this year.

With that said, I think Real Software needs to focus on ‘quality as job 1’.  My previous post about R5 still stands.  I think it’s a ‘good enough’ release but it’s lacking some polish that previous releases had.  In my opinion any new features that get released need to be fully thought out.  With a smaller staff at RS, due to layoffs, I think it’s even more important for them to be vigilant about the quality of their releases and full implementation of features.

Continue To Release ‘Pro’ Features
I’ll call this one a positive.  The big pro features this year were introspection and attributes.  Most RB users will never use them but when you need them you need them.

I’ll give RS a sneak peak at what RB users want the most:  Reporting Tools.  It has consistently been a hot topic whenever it’s come up.

Kill The Visual Basic Project Converter (VBPC)
I’ll call this one a positive.  It’s gone.  Yay!  It might be gone but if you’re interested in an alternative I’d recommend looking at VBConvert! from AYB Computers.

Eliminate the Not Invented Here Syndrome
I’ll give this one a negative though I’m not sure how to really rate this one.  RS is obviously committed to REAL SQL Server, but is that a good thing?  In my opinion they will always be trying to catch a moving target.  How can they compete with MySQL, PostrgreSQL or any number of the database servers that have hundreds (thousands?) of developers working on it.  If you wanted to save some money, this would be the area I’d cut back on.

At this years Real World Geoff showed off some new features for Real SQL Server and some ORM technologies.  Both seem good at first glance.  But it strikes me that RB is moving more towards being 4D every year.  Do we as users really want REALbasic to become as database centric as 4D is?  I don’t think so.  Let’s think about making RB a great cross-platform, general purpose development tool first.

Use a Standard Bug Reporting/Feedback System
I’ll give this one a neutral.  Yes, the old feedback system is gone.  Yes, FogBugz seems to work better for the RS engineers.  It’s not that great for us, though.  We can’t search bug reports.  We have no idea if someone has already reported it.  We have no idea if an RS engineer gave the poster a workaround.  Perhaps a 3rd party bug reporting mirror can be implemented to make life easier, or RS can somehow make FogBugz reports searchable.

Help Foster a 3rd Party Controls Market
I’ll give this one a neutral as well.  Einhugur and MonkeyBread are the heavyweights in the market, but there are signs of smaller developers finally getting product out.  I personally use the Formatted Text Control from True North Software, the Interface Toolkit from Sam Rowlands and have looked at the Graffiti Suite from Envied Designs on more than one occasion.  So while there are newcomers to this space, it’s still not a thriving marketplace.

Report Generator
I’ll give this a big negative.  This topic comes up again and again.  I cornered every RS engineer I could at Real World explaining the pent up demand for a report generator.  At the time that I wrote my 2008 Wish List, On-Target Reports had some very serious shortcomings.  I can state now that it is better, but still not as robust and full-featured as I need.

I know probably half a dozen people (myself included) that have their own proprietary reporting tools.  The #1 tutorial on ARBP is how to print using the graphics object.  Printing is a topic that always gets views in the RB and ARBP forums.

RS needs to do something about Reports.  There are some huge holes in the current reporting engine that need to be addressed before any serious work can be done on a report generator.  I consider this priority #1 for 2009 after Cocoa support.

IDE Add-Ons and Power Options
Big negative.  Not much movement on this with the exception of a much improved Language Reference which isn’t really a power option or add-on.

Fix RBScript
Another negative.  Some bugs have been fixed but documentation is still miserable.

Plugin Documentation
I’ll give this one a neutral as I’m not familiar enough with plugins.  I can say that the documentation has been updated but there are still references to using CodeWarrior in some of the docs which doesn’t inspire great confidence.

Better Use of the Web From Within RB
Slightly positive.  No change from last year though there are some new URL’s in the Help menu.  The auto bug reporting feature is kind of nice.

Support An Office RB Wiki
Negative.  No movement on this at all.  Until something changes, you’ll have to use Charles Yoemans wiki.

Go After Enterprise Market
Neutral.  No movement that I can tell.  If a Novel, Ford, Exxon, Bank of America or IBM was going to use REALbasic I’m sure we would have heard about it.

Totals:
4 Positives
5 Negatives
4 Neutrals

All in all I’d say it was a mixed grade for Real Software and REALbasic in 2008.  Did I rate anything too high or too low?  What’s your opinion?

The big new feature in release 5 is a revamped AutoComplete.  If you use NameSpaces then you’ll definitely find this a welcome change.  It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s a damn site better than the previous 2008 releases.

Another new feature is Build Steps scripts.  Meh, I can’t say much, but I thought what they had in the alpha builds was better even if it did need some UI enhancements.  The Build Step scripts are useful but doesn’t it seem… silly?… to put IDE scripts in a specifically named folder right next to the project file?  Seems to me that something could have been integrated into the IDE to have this work better or at least make it easier on the user.

The rest of release 5 is bug fixes and presumably some work to prepare for the 2009 series (Cocoa support anyone?).  Bug fixes are nice and from my own personal list they’ve fixed a half dozen or so.

The complete list of changes can be found here in the release notes. It’s an impressive list and if you’ve been holding up on upgrading to REALbasic I recommend you take a look to see if your pet bug has been addressed.  That’s the good news.

Now the bad news.  This release doesn’t have the ‘spit and polish’ finish that Release 3 and 4 had on it.  I’ve already logged 4 or 5 bugs mostly nuisance bugs but there was one IDE assertion error.  It’s all about the little things that make a release feel polished.  Here is a partial list of the things I’ve reported.

•    Auto Completion will sometimes duplicate objects.
•    Auto Completion does not work with namespace objects in an array.
•    The Go To contextual menu item still doesn’t work with namespaced objects.
•    Funny drawing occurs at the very bottom of the IDE window.
•    Trying to change the super of an already subclassed window won’t always work and can sometimes result in an assertion error.

Perhaps the biggest change is the one that Aaron reported in his blog comments about the compiler no longer being threaded.  This change is to fix a Windows compiling glitch, but I think Aaron’s use of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” is telling.  Take Aaron’s comments with a grain of salt since he’s a former employee of RS so I would expect some bitterness, but his analysis is probably pretty close to the mark.  The change doesn’t fix anything, it simply penalizes everyone equally.

This isn’t to say that REALbasic 2008 R5 isn’t good enough for use – it is!  Just expect some things not to be quite right.  If anything it seems that RS is back to their normal habits.  Stay tuned…2009 should be a bumpy ride!

What are your thoughts?  Is R5 solid and good enough for everyday use?

I’ll be honest.  I love Real World.  Oops, I loved Real World.  It was the one event of the year that I could hang out and really be an RB geek.  When RS announced that Real World would not happen in 2009 I was disappointed and a little distressed.

I understand the reasons why they cancelled it.  In today’s economic climate you have to be prudent with your money and it would be foolish to throw money away on an event that loses money.  However, if you think Real World was around to make money you forget that it’s really a big public relations and marketing event.  It’s a big deal to be able to say, “Hey, look at us!  We have this big developers conference every year.  We’re happening!”  So from that aspect it doesn’t matter if RW is a money losing event because it isn’t about making money directly.  RS loses a little something by cancelling it.

It’s really the same thing as having the Forums.  They don’t make money for RS and costs RS moderators time and keeps them from doing other important things.  But NOT having forums would cost them stature because forums are expected.  So I look at losing Real World as losing something I expected a ‘happening’ development company to have.

I’ve attended Real World four times and for the last two years I’ve given a talk about running an RB based business.  I like talking to people about my success with REALbasic and Real World is the one place where I don’t have to preface all discussions with what REALbasic is.  The after-hours conversations with the engineers and attendees are the real draw (for me) and I consider many of the people I’ve met to be friends as well as colleagues.  I will miss that part of it.

I won’t miss Austin.  Not that Austin’s a bad place – I like it but it’s not a destination that draws people year after year like a Las Vegas, New Orleans, Orlando or even San Antonio which is just over an hour away from Austin.  I think if you had it in a tourist destination you might actually draw more people.  The drawback is that then RS has to make arrangements for their staff to be in the new location so costs go up even more.  And, let’s be honest for a second, destination cities charge a premium for holding a conference in their city.

I’m not sure what to think of the regional events.  Part of me says they’ll be smaller because they will not be as technical in nature.  Another part of me says that it might attract more people because the travel costs are much less.  I think it mostly depends upon what RS decides to do at these events.  One thing that I would advise against is making it nothing more than a PR and marketing event – it has to have some technical content to get experienced RB users to show up.

The plus side is that smaller venues can fit in smaller (but yet nice) hotels that don’t cost as much as the Omni Hotel.  The Omni is an awesome hotel but it’s pricey.  I was in Austin a month ago and stayed at the Sheraton which was not even a mile away but cost $50 less a night.  I would imagine that the conference facilities are similarly priced.  We’re mostly geeks, right?  I know I don’t need a fancy hotel room to feel comfortable.  Heck, as long as I have wireless access I would settle for a Motel 6 and a nice bar and grill next door.

So what do you think?  Is the announcement good?  Bad?  Indifferent to the whole thing?