BKeeney Briefs

In December 2007 I wrote in my wish list that I wanted them to start using a modern bug tracking system.   Let’s be honest, the old one sucked so I wish everyone would stop moaning that they liked it.  We put up with it, but once you use a real bug tracking system instead of the one they wrote and half implemented, you’ll realize how bad it was.

With that said, those making the decision to kill access to the old were smoking something.  Not everyone is using the most modern version of REALbasic.  Heck, there are more than a few developers still using RB 5.5 so removing access to it was a very bad decision.  Okay, so now they’ve brought it back as read only.  That should have been the plan all along.

FogBugz may be awesome.  I sure can’t tell from RS’ comments.  Can’t search for bug reports and workarounds?  I can’t believe that Joel Spolsky would implement a bug tracking system that you couldn’t search.  Come on, the guy wrote a good portion of Microsoft Excel.  He knows his stuff.  He’s good.  And his bug reporting system doesn’t have public vs private bug reports?  I can do that in my free Mantis bug tracker.

So yeah, RS dropped the ball on this one big time.  So instead of the sh**storm they’re dealing with now, this simple forum post (or one like it) would have prevented some of the outrage:

To All REALbasic Developers:

It has become increasingly obvious over the past several years that the Feedback System (i.e. the Feature Request/Bug Submittal System) for REALbasic and REAL SQL Server is not adequate for our internal needs, nor the needs of our customers.  The Feedback System does not have many of the modern features that we, and our customers need and are now demanding.

After a lengthy evaluation process, we have chosen to use FogBugz, an industry leading bug tracking and reporting system.  We feel that using FogBugz will allow us to meet the increasing demands of not only our customers but our internal developers as well.  Starting April 22, 2008, FogBugz will be the only method of submitting bugs and feature requests to Real Software for all of our products.

This change is not without some drawbacks.  Since the feedback system contains many years of bugs that are no longer relevant we have decided that none of the existing feedback system reports will be migrated to FogBugz.  There is so much old data, however, that we felt that it would cause more problems than it solved.

In addition, the current FogBugz implementation does not allow a public search of bugs, nor is there a way to add yourself to an existing feature request or bug and therefore we will have to write some additional tools and reporting mechanisms into the system.  We understand that these are must have features for many of our users so please be  assured that we are trying to implement these features with the help of the FogBugz developers as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, we do not currently have a timeframe for these to be added back in.

In the meantime, the old Feedback System will remain in place in read-only mode so REALbasic users using older versions may still search and view existing feedback reports.

We understand that this will place hardship on some of you that depend upon existing functionality of the feedback system and we apologize.  If you have any questions or concerns, I will try to answer any and all questions in the forums.  Thank you for the patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

Someone Thinking Ahead

Real Software, we (us developers in the real world) depend upon you to make tough decisions on our behalf in order to make your products better.  However, you still have to keep in mind that we’re developers too and we have to make tough decisions for our products as well.  This week’s situation has the appearance that you are out of control or, even worse, aren’t fully thinking through the implications of your decisions and how they affect the user base.

As a REALbasic developer I’ve have to fight the name.  Basic is well, basic.  Simple.  It can’t get any simpler.  It’s a development language that’s been scorned by developers using ‘real languages’ for years.  Mention basic to a c++, Java or .NET developer and you’ll probably note the sneer on their face.  I’ve heard these folks described as language purists.  It doesn’t matter what language their using because whatever it is is better than any basic language.

Think about the hot languages such as  Java, PHP, .NET, Cocoa and Ruby On Rails.  Each describes their language in an abstract way.  Well, you could argue that, with the exception of Java, none of examples are really a language but a framework that the development environments tie into.  I think these are tiny but significant mindset differences.

Add ‘REAL’ in front of basic and a lot of people get this mental image of QBasic and immediately pooh-pooh it.  So if there’s a ‘real’ basic then where is the ‘unreal’ basic?  Silly, I know, but the two words together just bring a ‘simple’ mental image and from my perspective, simple doesn’t sell well into a corporate environment.

So now let’s add into the mix of negativity all of the really, really bad applications that people have written in Visual Basic, and yes, REALbasic over the years.  Both development environments let an average person do some really silly things from a development standpoint.  It let’s non-programmers create relatively complex applications without having to worry about memory allocation and the like.  Let’s face it, there are probably hundreds of thousands of old Visual Basic 6 applications still being used in corporate environments so VB is, arguably, the most widely used development environment in the world.  Bad programmers are bad programmers in any language it’s just that VB and RB let you get away with some bad things simply because of their easy-to-use nature.

REALbasic is thankfully much more than that.  It’s a full object oriented language that compiles into native executables for Mac, Windows and Linux.  It’s extensible by using plugins (written in C) and by using OS dependent declares.  It’s fully Unicode aware and it works with a wide variety of open source and commercial databases.  Real SQL Server is a nice, very inexpensive database server that can be used by anyone and not just DBA types.

The REALbasic IDE is not just about the language.  It integrates the user interface with the code and even let’s you edit database tables and data.  It lets you easily edit toolbars, container controls, windows and even let you do this in multiple languages.  Heck, you can even develop and debug on one platform while the application is running in an entirely separate environment!

So what’s not to like about REALbasic and Real Software?  The name ‘REALbasic’.

If I could change it, I’d change it to REAL Studio or something completely different.  I think a change has some advantages.  One, it disassociates itself from ‘basic’ even though we all know that it’s a basic language.  Two, it tells potential users that it’s more than just a language.  Three, from a selling it into a corporate environment standpoint, anything that doesn’t have ‘basic’ in the name is one more thing I don’t have to ‘educate’ the client about.

Now the drawback to changing from REALbasic to anything else is huge.  You’re essentially rebranding an existing product and that is never an easy thing to do.  It will hurt until the new name sticks and pain for a business usually means a hit on sales and I’m not sure that RS is ready to survive a six month (or longer) drop in sales until the new name is established.  There is also the risk that the public will absolutely hate the new name or perhaps even worse, find it funny or offensive.

So what are you thoughts on renaming REALbasic?  Good idea or bad?  Why?  What would you rename it as?

“…a great disturbance in the [REAL]Force. It was like a million voices crying out in unison, then suddenly silenced.” – Will B. on Mars’ blog.

Where do you begin on this one?  It’s a sad day for Real Software that someone with that level of experience leaves the company.  It happens.  People come and go.  In the IT industry it’s been my experience that getting five years out of a talented developer is almost impossible.  I’m sure that Microsoft made a good offer from a money, benefits and long term stability perspective and the fact that it’s in Mars’ backyard doesn’t hurt either.

Yes, it will hurt in the short term though it sounds like RS has known about it for a while as Aaron has been shadowing Mars for months.  In the long term, new blood can be good for any product.  Different ideas from a person with a different background is good.  From my perspective, I just hope that Real Software’s testing program gets to work double-time on any language and compiler changes – don’t expect the beta testing program to find subtle compiler bugs!

It does concern me that in the past couple of years that there has been a lot of people leaving.  Thankfully, there has not been a huge letdown in RB features but one has to wonder how departures affect things like Cocoa, Swordfish and release quality.  New people make mistakes because they don’t have a history of the project.  Mistakes also happen when junior developers implement new features that were designated to be worked on by a veteran.  It’s not a criticism, it’s just a statement.

So, good luck to Mars.  I hope he does well at Microsoft and helps convert them to the good side of the force.

But I think another potential barrier is that plugins can’t be registered or licensed.  By this I mean that once a plugin is installed it’s there and can be used.  The MonkeyBread plugins make you enter a registration code in the end users REALbasic code.  The Einhugur plugins come in two versions, the demo version and the full version with the full version being unlocked by a registration system.

The registration codes seem like a good idea but as anyone who spends 10 minutes on the internet can attest, registration codes can easily be found and passed along.  If you’re in a work group situation the version controlled source code has the registration code in it!

The Einhugur plugins are in a similar predicament.  Once you unlock the full version, you can copy them to multiple machines without any hindrance.

I have no idea how it’s done in the Windows world, but I know that the control suites that I use for Visual Basic are registered to one machine and on machine only.  I can install the demo on another machine but every time I compile an application I get a message box saying that it’s a “demo” or that the controls are “unlicensed”.  I’m assuming that this is somehow built-in to Visual Basic because I’ve had instances where the compiled app was built on a demo license and run on a machine that was fully valid and the demo/unlicensed warning message box appears (I dare you to explain that to a tester some day after they’ve filed a bug report on it).

Anyway, my point is that it seems like there should be some sort of mechanism to enforce a plugin license per machine if the developer wanted it that way.  Generally most software (note I have not reviewed the Einhugur or MBS licenses for validity of this statement) give you a per machine license with some leeway as to how many machines it’ll allow licensing on.  Since control suites in Visual Basic can run into the thousands of dollars per year, it seems like this is a huge missing element in REALbasic and hence a potential barrier to entry for anyone wanting to create plugins.

Imagine if you create a new REALbasic plugin, you could charge hundreds of dollars for it and you could guarantee two to three times more licenses than you can get right now?  You’d do it right?

So the question, dear readers, is how does Microsoft do it with Visual Basic (and .NET as well) so that the executable knows that it was built with a properly licensed dll or ocx?  And why can’t that same technology be applied to REALbasic?  And could this technology be extended to allow encrypted RB classes and modules to be licensed as well?

Apple has xCode/Cocoa which they give away for free.  Microsoft has Visual Studio and .NET which can be obtained for next to nothing.  Both products create (arguably) superior applications for their respective platforms.

REALbasic  makes a consistently good application for both platforms.  Keep in mind that RB is nothing but compromises for the supported platforms.  The Microsoft MSHFlexGrid is superior in many ways to what the Apple grid can do so REALbasic has to compromise and give us the lowest common denominator in grids and hence we have an underpowered (but functional) listbox control.  The Einhugur StyleGrid and DataGrid controls do essentially that same thing just wrapped differently with some speed enhancements.

It’s been argued many times in the forums that RB doesn’t make a good Mac application without doing a lot of extra work.  The same is true that Windows applications made in RB suffer from some of the same problems.  Why is this?  Two words:  Cocoa and .NET.

Each frameworks gives developers goodies that highlight the strength of the platform and hence our initial question.  Does Apple or Microsoft really care about REALbasic?  It’s not like RB is going to see extra copies of Windows or sell more Macintosh computers directly.  If anything, you could argue that REALbasic hurts both Apple’s and Microsoft’s plans for “world domination.”

That’s a bold statement but here’s my reasoning.  I’m in charge of Apple the argument might go something like this:  RB allows developers to make software that works on my Mac’s and on the Borg’s own Windows.  I want to show the world that the better platform is the Macintosh so why should I help RS with any bugs on the Mac?  Now developers won’t use Cocoa and all the goodies that it has so all the time and effort to make Cocoa is wasted and our users don’t get all the goodies they’ve come to expect from Mac software.  RB is not enhancing my users’ experience!

If I’m in charge of Windows the argument could go like this.  I have this huge market share that’s being eroded by that toy computer from Apple.  Here’s RS that makes the claim of being a basic, object oriented, development environment that lets it easily create software for Windows and the Mac.  There’s even a utility that converts from VB6 to REALbasic!  Now people aren’t locked into Windows and all that work I’ve done promoting .NET is wasted!

Okay, both arguments seem silly but I’m sure the sentiment exists in Cupertino and Redmond.  I’m sure that neither company is actively sabotaging REAL Software and REALbasic but are they helping it?  In the world of business what seems like a win for the consumer is often perceived as a lose for the company.

What are your thoughts?  Is this idea possible or is it really stupid?  What am I missing?

It seems that the idea of having a professional association for REALbasic has some legs.  Many people have left messages and contacted me privately offering their support and giving us some ideas.  Thank you!

A question that was asked to me privately was one that I think bears repeating:   Why should should you join a REALbasic developer association?  What does it do for you?

An association is an advocate for you.  Individually, none of us mean much to REAL Software.  An organization for professional developers using REALbasic might have a *little* more sway with RS.  I’m not saying it will, but the chances are better.  Some have mentioned having the organization buying into the Developer program and determining what to use the hot fixes for.  I’m not entirely sure that it’s the best use of whatever funds the organization has, but it’s worth looking into.

Another idea that’s been floating around is to provide a survey of all RB users and present this survey data to REAL Software.  RS probably has hundreds of enhancement requests and this is one way that we could influence their decisions for upcoming versions.  Obviously there’s no guarantee that they’d listen, but a bunch of professionals could pull more weight than an individual.

An association is an educational tool.  In the ideal world, RS would have a ton of white papers and general how to examples on their website.  Often their examples are so simple that most people don’t find them useful.  An association is a good place to learn more about the specifics of the language and product.    This could mean a code repository of some sort.

I think it’s entirely possible that the association would eventually do some sort of certification program along with study guides.  Imagine having a spiffy “REALbasic Certification” logo on your website.  It gives you more credibility in the eyes of potential customers.

An association is a marketing tool for REALbasic.  REALbasic is a great cross-platform tool but it is sometimes tough to convince customers that anything with ‘basic’ in the name can be taken seriously.  A professional association tells the world that, yes, RB is serious and that there are professionals using it.  This would also help with people who think that RB is just for hobbyists.

An association is for like minded individuals.  One of the reasons why I like going to Real World is to talk with other REALbasic developers.  I can’t do that everywhere because REALbasic just isn’t used by a lot of individuals.  An association gives me one more place to share and ask questions without the ubiquitous forum monkey badgering me on why “RB Sux”.  I don’t have time for that – my time is too valuable to waste on that garbage.

An association can be a marketing tool for you.  I envision a website that you can go to and find, in a single click, all of the association developers for hire, where they’re located, how many employees and other useful statistics.  As far as I know, there is no such website.  You would no longer have to rely upon REAL Software for your marketing contacts.

Also, imagine having a spiffy logo for use on your website as a member of this professional association.  It gives you more credibility in the eyes of potential customers.

An association can be a money saver.  As association could negotiate deals to save money on magazines, books, tools, libraries, controls and classes about and for REALbasic.  Become a member and get a 10% discount on “X” plugin or “Y” utility.  That alone could have a membership pay for itself.

Those are some quick and dirty ideas on why a professional REALbasic association is a great idea and what it can do for you.  What are your thoughts?

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been talking about things I’d like to see in REALbasic and what, I think we, as users, can do for REALbasic.  The comments have been great – I appreciate all the time and effort all of you have put into them.  I think I’ve settled upon one thing that I’d like to see changed in REALbasic.

The Language Reference in RB is, depending upon who you ask, is either barely adequate or downright horrible.  I tend to leans towards the former because I think it’s lacking depth to be very useful.  For every object, property, method and event there’s information needed but not in the LR.  Sometimes this includes bugs but more often than not, just clarification on what’s changed.

For example, in RB 2007 R5 using “Dim as New Recordset” generates a compiler error.  It’s easy to fix and the release notes showed the change.  However, it would have been nice for the LR to have a note saying that the functionality was changed for that version of RB.  And I don’t blame RS for not having that in the LR either.  With all the things on their plate, this is, I’m sure, not a very high priority and, after all, they DID document it in the release notes.

I’d like to see user contributions to the Language Reference.  Note that this is somewhat different than a regular Wiki in that the users wouldn’t be able to add completely new topics, just add comments to existing topics.

Ideally, I’d like to have the option to turn the user comments on and off in the IDE.  If turned on, the LR would open up as it normally does and user comments would be displayed below the official entries.  Take a look at this documentation page for php.  I think this is a wonderful use of user comments to clarify what the object/property/method/event does.  This would make the LR rock in my opinion.  There are other examples around the web – if you have additional examples, please add them in the comments section.

So why is this different that the RB Wiki (hosted by Charles Y.) that is here now?  For one, this would have to be an official RB add-on.  They’d have to add the hooks into the IDE and the existing LR documentation.  They have also been unwilling to allow the use of the existing LR documentation (even though they’d keep the copyright) in past Wiki efforts.  This limits the options available.

To prevent spam and inappropriate comments, the contributions have to be moderated by someone.  All user comments would have to be approved by the moderator before being posted.  No comment is added without it being approved by the moderator – no matter who the user is.  This eliminates crap and will hopefully assuage RS of the crap and embarrassing entries that often happens on other wiki’s.  I hereby, put my money where my mouth is, and volunteer to be a moderator.

The Terms of Service would make it clear that RS retains the copyright and future use of all user contributions.  Most comments won’t be that useful, but I’m sure there will be a few, but those that are useful can be rolled into the official documentation.  The TOS would make clear that RS reserves the right to clear the comments at any time for any reason.  I see this happening when the official documenter gets around to any specific object and rolls comments into the documentation.

I’m sure there are things that I’ve forgot to mention but I think that’s the basics of it.  So how do we sell this to RS?  It’s work for them and they’ve not been especially enthusiastic about things like this in the past.  How do we propose a system so that it’s a win for RS and win for us users because I think this could be a nice collaboration between RS and the users.

I have my wish list for what RB can do for us.  Now, to be campy, what can we do to help REALbasic?

Become Part of the Beta Program
Use the beta versions and report any issues that come up.  It’s fairly simple and it’s definitely a way to give back to the RB community.  Less bugs is always good in my mind.  It’s also free.

Help Other Users in the Forums and NUG
There is a core set of users that patrol the forums and the NUG list and answer questions.  More people are needed to answer questions.  RS recently added some new moderators which might be another area you could volunteer for though you’ll have to have a long track record before becoming a moderator.

Provide Feedback Through the Proper Channels
Find a bug in RB?  Feel free to complain about it in the forums, but the best place to do it is their Feedback System.  If you’re not using the Feedback system you can rest assured that your bug will not get fixed unless an RS engineer stumbles upon it.

What else do you think we can do to help out?

There’s been an interesting discussion going on over at Norman Palardy’s blog.  It started innocently enough by Norman complaining that he’s been getting support and change requests for some of his free and unsupported code that he has on his site.  The discussion has morphed into a life of its own so I figured I’d start the “My Wish List For REALbasic in 2008″ thread and get some additional feedback.

First, a word of warning.  These are my opinions only.  Let’s not get personal and drag people through the mud.

There are also not in any particular order.

Continue with the bug fixes first and new features last in new releases
The people that use RB are developers and as developers require rock solid performance.  RS has done a great job with recent releases with a lot of bug fixes and for once the forums are actually praising RS.

Keep up the good work, RS, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.  There are bugs that have been present in RB since version 5.5.  These ever present bugs give outsiders (and some current users) the impression that you don’t give a darn about quality.

Continue releasing ‘Pro’ features
Delegates was a good start.  Object introspection would be another great feature.  I think it’s time that RS focuses more on the pro developer than the hobby.  From a money standpoint the hobbyist can’t/won’t pay for anything while pro developers can justify paying extra for pro features.

http://support.realsoftware.com/feedback/viewreport.php?reportid=nblvhwyb

Kill (or Update) the Visual Basic Project Converter (VBPC)
The VBPC is worse than bad.  It’s the first experience many VB6 developers will have of REALbasic.  Remember the old saying that you can only get one first impression?

VBPC mangles code in the worst way.  If you want to try converting from VB6 to REALbasic, try VB Convert! from AYB Software.  It’s not perfect, but it’s a damn site better than the VBPC.

http://support.realsoftware.com/feedback/viewreport.php?reportid=kyrcongy

Eliminate the Not Invented Here Syndrome
It sure seems like RB tries to be all things to all developers.  The problem is that there are too many things that RB can do from games to utilities to database front-ends.  Their limited resources should be focused on making their ‘core product’ markets better.

I suspect we might already be seeing some of this already with a new power tool in the language (delegates) and the deprecation (bindings) or possible open sourcing of other parts of the language (RB3D).  In the long run this is a good thing, in my opinion, because it seems like they’re looking at their core components and jettisoning the ones that don’t make sense or have always been poor substitutes for the real thing.

If there’s a market or need for something they don’t do then some enterprising developer will probably fill the need.  I think of VB Convert! from AYB Software for filling the glaring void left by the incompetence of Visual Basic Project Converter (VBPC).

Use a Standard Bug Reporting/Feedback System
I mean this as no offense to the people that wrote the current feedback system:  It’s not very good.  When compared against Mantis, Trac or Bugzilla it’s really, really bad and it’s hard to use.  It’s marginally better than the old bug tracker system (that was a standalone application) but it just doesn’t look very professional.  Try finding a bug sometime and you’ll know what I mean.

Help Foster a 3rd Party Controls Market
This is a tough one because I don’t think it’s the lack of opportunities for 3rd party developers and it’s not that the price of entry is too high for a thriving 3rd party market – I think the market is too cheap.  If I’m a developer that is interested in developing a killer grid component how can I compete against Einhugur that offers his entire suite of controls for $99?  Don’t get me wrong I love the Einhugur controls and I’m a very satisfied customer but his low prices are a hindrance to other developers trying to enter the market.

On the other hand, I’m also a satisfied customer of True North Software and their Formatted Text Control.  The FTC is a great replacement for the standard EditField and the developer is very, very responsive.  I feel that at $450 it’s a great deal.  It’s written in native RB classes and it does everything that I’ve wanted it to do and I get the source code for it.

REAL needs to foster more developers like True North Software.  They also need to help Einhugur expand their market by promoting these controls as an alternative to their own.  “Don’t like our ‘x’ control, well, here’s a couple of alternatives.”  This might help with the Not Invented Here problem.

Report Generator
Printing with RB is harder than it has to be.  On-Target Reports is a low-end product that works well, but cannot compete with the likes of Crystal Reports and ActiveReports that most VB6 developers use.  For RB to take off in the corporate environment I think this is the most important thing they could do.

http://support.realsoftware.com/feedback/viewreport.php?reportid=bylptiqx

IDE Add-On’s and Power Options
IDE scripting is a nice addition but it’s not what I’m talking about.  In Visual Basic, MZ-Tools was the most important tool I ever used.  Every VB6 developer I know of has used MZ-Tools which allows a VB6 developer to quickly an easily modify code in the IDE:  Add comments, line numbers, error handling, check for unused variables and much more.

Power options would include allowing the user to map keys to what they want.  For me, the F5 button is Run and F8 is the debugger command to step into because that’s what Visual Basic has been for years.  I’m sure there are people that would like to map their keys like xCode or CodeWarrior or the current version of Visual Studio.  This seems like a no brainer!

Other power options would be little mini-programs that would say allow users to generate and insert code templates.  How about implement their own search engines?  What about even the possibility of writing a power-user code editor!?

Fix RBScript
RBScript has been around how long, now?  Give it some of the power features that people have asked for and make it robust.  Fix the bugs that are causing people to stick with RB 2006 versions.

RS stated at last years Real World that they wanted to use REALbasic in stored procedures for REALSQL Server.  I can’t imagine them using regular RB so RBScript is it.  If they can’t get it working in the IDE no one will ever trust it for serious database work.

Fix the Plug-In Documentation and Keep it Up to Date
If you want to write a plugin for RB, good luck.  The documentation has recently changed for the better, but it’s still not good enough.  Aaron on his blog has done some recent posts on how to create the Windows part of the plugin.

This goes back to fostering the 3rd party market.  If you want other people to develop for your product you need to make it easy for them to do so.  As much as I bag on Microsoft products they make using their development products easy because they know once you get locked into their product it’s tough to move to another environment.  RB could do this as well.

Make Better Use of the Web From Within REALbasic
The web is the great communicator.  Take a hint from the likes of php, PostgreSQL and java and integrate user comments into the official language reference.  Make it moderated if you don’t trust people to be civil.  It would eliminate mistakes and would let the community fill in where the Language Reference is shaky.

http://support.realsoftware.com/feedback/viewreport.php?reportid=qdzdtnhl

Support An Official REALbasic Wiki
Unless RS supports a wiki, all efforts will fail.  Anyone remember RBWiki from a few years back?  It died a lonely death.

Charles Yoemans was nice enough to put a wiki up on his site.  As best as I can tell, there’s no one posting to it.  It’s too much work to duplicate the efforts of Language Reference.

Go After the Enterprise Market
At last years Real World conference, Novel was pushing Linux.  If big companies really want to switch to Linux like Novel says they do, then RS should put together a small team and work with Novel to switch some large corporations to REALbasic.  This would be a much better white paper than the current white paper that recommends using the VBPC.

If there’s that much money in the enterprise market then this ‘division’ of RS would earn its keep.  Maybe Novel should front their own RB based organization?  This would be the put your money where your mouth is moment.

I think that about does it for this edition.  In a future article I’ll talk about what we, as users, can do to help REALbasic.