BKeeney Briefs

Will VB6 Apps Continue to Work in Windows 8?  That single question has driven more traffic to this website in the past month than nearly any other question.  I believe VB6 still has a very large user base so it’s very pertinent question for many organizations and developers.  Perhaps Real Studio is an option for them, but we’ll get to that at the end of the post.

Visual Basic 6 is 20 years old.  It’s stood the test of time and it while it’s showing its age it still functions and apps written on it still run in Vista and Windows 7.  To its credit, Microsoft has made sure that this venerable product still runs on modern computers.

But the question of Windows 8 compatibility has hit the fan, so to say, in the past month or so with Microsoft saying that apps can be written in html and javascript.  That threw many developers into a tizzy.

I don’t believe for a second that Microsoft is abandoning .NET, Win32 or COM simply because those are the foundation for nearly everything ever written at Microsoft.  It simply doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to move to another set of API’s even if you believe that Microsoft moves to a new technology every now and then to make themselves a moving target.  If anything, I believe that this might simply be a new way to develop apps but not replace anything.

While doing research for this post I ran across an unattributed quote supposedly from a person in Microsoft Support:

“We can’t make an official comment on our Windows 8 plans yet but it would be a likely outcome that VB6 applications will continue to work. “

I believe that statement but it’s not exactly a definitive statement.  The real question, I think, is how bad will it suck?  VB6 apps work in Windows 7 but without some work they look like they’re from the 90′s.  Most app developers I know don’t want their apps to look that dated.

Microsoft has stated that the Visual Basic 6 runtimes will not ship after Window 7.  This presumably means Windows 8 and beyond.  I have heard that Windows 8 will be 64 bit only and that means that the VB6 runtimes will either not work at all or will have to be run in some sort of compatibility layer.  So this means that existing apps MAY work, but only after jumping through hoops to install the runtime libraries and making sure the compatibility is set.

Let’s face it.  VB6 is an old, old development environment.  It was written in an age where computers didn’t have much memory and only one processor.  Threading isn’t impossible, but the few times I tried to get it working in a VB6 app the result was instability and crashes.  Threading is such an important thing in modern applications.

VB6 is object oriented – somewhat.  For the time it was state of the art but since subclassing controls is impossible it makes for interesting workarounds and wrappers.  Frankly it makes life more complicated than it needs to be.

Twenty years ago, VB6 was the cats-meow.  The Macintosh was around but it was considered a toy (I disagree but that’s not the argument) and few cared about it.  Microsoft was pretty much the only game in town.  Linux hadn’t been invented yet and the internet was for a few hard core geeks.

This is where Real Studio starts to look more attractive.  It works the same on Mac, Windows, and Linux.  Web Edition brings some of the same ease of developing desktop apps to the web.  In Real Studio I can subclass controls and objects (for the most part) all day long.  It’s a modern object oriented programming language.  Is it without foibles and inconsistencies?  Certainly not, but it’s way more powerful than VB6 in many ways.  Threading isn’t perfect, but it’s still light years ahead of VB6.

We’ve seen an uptick recently with people asking us to convert their VB6 application to Real Studio.  Our VB6 Analyzer utility (found at http://www.bkeeney.com/consulting/vb2rbconversion) has been downloaded a lot recently.  It allows users to scan their VB6 project and sends us a simple report detailing the number of forms, classes, libraries and OCX’s in use and lines of code and some other simple metrics.  It’s no substitute for seeing the whole project but it gives us a nice way to guestimate the costs of rewriting the app in Real Studio.

Notice that I said rewrite the application.  The only thing that Visual Basic and RealBasic have in common is that they have ‘basic’ in the name.  It’s like comparing a computer from twenty years ago to a modern computer.  Real Studio does things so much easier, better, and faster than Visual Basic that it’s really not worth trying to convert it line by line or even form by form.  Believe me we’ve tried – the end result is that you end up spending as much time fixing VB6 code that has a better equivalent in RB than it would be to just rewrite it from scratch.

Is Real Studio a suitable replacement for every app?  The answer is simple:  no.  Real Studio makes a really good cross-platform app, but that doesn’t always mean it will have all of the buzzers and bells available in development environments meant for each platform (grids in Windows come come to mind).

We are Real Studio consultants.  That’s what we do and we’ve been doing it for ten years.  Most of us spent a fair amount of time in Visual Basic before moving to Real Studio.  If you decide to do the transition yourself you will hate it at first because Real Studio is different than VB.  We all went through it and for a while you want Real Studio to be just like Visual Basic – trust me it’s not – and after you stop trying make Real Studio function like VB6 you’ll start to like it and get it.  Transitions are never easy.  For training videos, we have over 30 hours available at http://www.bkeeney.com/realbasic-training-section plus you could always hire us to come on site for training.

If you have VB6 project you want to transition please drop us a line and we can talk.  If you want to get multiple Real Studio developers looking at your project, make a post at http://www.realsoftware.com/support/consultants.php which gets sent out to the Real Studio developers network.

I was a Visual Basic developer for many years.  Despite the perception that VB 6 made crappy apps, I know of many successful commercial apps that were written in VB6 and, what matters more, is that those apps are still in service.  Despite Microsoft dropping support for VB6 years ago developers were able to limp along and get their apps working in Vista and Windows 7 with few headaches.

Does this change with Windows 8?  I don’t know, but I’m already seeing an uptick in developers that are looking to convert from Visual Basic 6 to Real Studio.  Uncertainty is a bad thing and even the full-time Windows developers I know don’t seem to know what’s going on.  Some of them are even worried that .NET and Silverlight support is up in the air.

The only thing that’s been mentioned for Win8 is JavaScript and HTML5.  No mention of .NET, Silverlight, or even Win32.  It’s very uncharacteristic of Microsoft to be so secretive and up-in-the-air over a future product.  Are they trying to be more Apple-like?  Perhaps that’s why people are freaking out.

Do I think MS is going to drop support for .NET, Silverlight, or even Win32?  Not a chance.  They have way too much invested in each of those to abandon them.  From a corporate standpoint there would be a revolt since almost everyone has invested, heavily, in one or more of those technologies/platforms.

But are Visual Basic 6 apps still safe?  That is a very good question and from the research I’ve done it appears that the VB6 runtime will not be shipped with Win8 though some in the community suspect that a hack will be found before release.  Other comments I’ve seen indicate that Win8 will ship as only 64 bit.  The VB6 runtime is 32bit only so that will mean running in compatibility mode which adds to the possibility of it not working properly for all applications.

Microsoft, at some point, has to kill compatibility.  Visual Basic is an old development environment that doesn’t take advantage of many new technologies.  It’s also not a very good object oriented language – it just wasn’t designed to be that way.  If the MS dev tools of the future are Silverlight, .NET, and JavaScript/HTML5 (does anyone really believe that!?), then it sure seems that VB6 might be on its way out.

So while VB6 apps might work with Win8 using hacks and compatibility mode, I believe developers have every right to be worried.  They’ve invested heavily in VB6 tools and controls and now the (long) honeymoon is over and it’s time to look at alternatives.

If you are only interested in Microsoft then the options are easy with .NET or Silverlight (assuming they aren’t going away).  If you’re thinking of a Mac or Linux version than the options are limited.  You could do Java, but as a long-time Mac user I’m not a big Java fan and try to avoid them because their UI generally isn’t native (I’m a Mac snob, but then most of us are).  Qt is a possibility but it’s not a RAD option either.

I am a little biased but I think Real Studio is a good choice for those coming from Visual Basic.  They are very much alike in how they work though REALbasic is MUCH better at object oriented programming than VB ever was.  It’s newer and is on a regular update schedule.  And, with just a little work, you can easily make apps for Mac, Windows, and Linux that look the same on all three platforms.  And now that Real Studio can make Web Apps there’s a fourth platform that you could potential support (though making a web app involves different controls, editors, etc so it’s not as easy as clicking a checkbox).

Is it a quick and easy conversion?  No.  Don’t trust any conversion program and, from experience, any converter will be just as time consuming (if not slightly worse) as rewriting from scratch.  We’ve found that taking a look at the UI and making it a bit more object oriented to take advantage of the strengths of REALbasic is always worth the investment.  We like to say you’re writing the apps for the next ten years and not only for right now.  So doing the extra work now will pay off for years.

Is Real Studio perfect?  Absolutely not.  It currently is not 64 bit compatible either though I know of many developers that have no issues with running in Windows 7 64 bit.  I do know that 64 bit compatibility is the next big upgrade for Windows after Real Software finishes up on Cocoa builds for the Macintosh side.  If memory serves they are on track for late 2011 64 bit compatibility (though that’s always subject to change).

With Win8 on schedule to be released next year (does anyone really believe that either?), you might need to be proactive and start thinking about the alternatives now.  Waiting until Win8 is released might be too late for your product.  Do you really want to be under the gun from management to get something that works on the CEO’s new shiny Win8 laptop?

If you would like to get a rough estimate on cost to convert from VB6 to Real Studio, we (BKeeney Software) have a VB6 Analyzer Tool for you to download (written in RB of course) that analyzes your project and gives us some metrics on lines of code, controls used, numbers of classes, etc, that help us give you an estimate.  More information can be found at http://www.bkeeney.com/consulting/vb2rbconversion.

In the first part of this series I talked about how I got involved with Real Studio.  In part two I talked about some of things I’m currently doing in Real Studio.  In this post I’ll talk a little about the future and what I think where Real Studio will be in the future and my needs and wants as a professional user.

For many people, using Real Studio is a Love-Hate relationship.  Mine is no different.  I’ve been using it for over ten years and while I find it easy to use and very powerful, there are times I feel like putting my fist through the monitor due to frustration.

Real Software releases a new version of Real Studio roughly every ninety days as part of their Rapid Release Model.  From one aspect it’s nice since I know when a new version is going to get released and plan for it.  I know that there will be some new features and a whole bunch of bug fixes.

Unfortunately getting a new version is often an exercise in futility because new releases can sometimes break existing functionality.  Since I work on so many projects I’m often waiting on a particular bug fix in the next version so I’m forced to upgrade.  The frustration of finding yet another bug upon trying the new release is sometimes too much.  If you find me grousing about Real Studio (see last summers Windows rants) it’s generally after one of these types of upgrades.

I’ve been very critical of RS in past because of new features that just plain don’t work.  Rightly so, in my opinion.  New features don’t get tested in the beta process because there’s usually no documentation and usually no example projects showing how it’s used.  Either case is bad and it has to get better.  The perception that Real Studio is buggy, wether right or wrong, has to improve.

Look, I know that every release has significant bug fixes and only a few new features.  I know because I’m part of the beta program and have been for a long time.  But as a beta member I don’t feel like the program lets me help Real Software very much.  I can’t tell you how many times I report a bug, it’s gets marked as fixed and then I have to scour the release notes looking for bug reports that look like mine.

The feedback system and releases aren’t designed to help me verify the fix.  I feel that a bug isn’t fixed until the bug reporter has verified the fix.  From my aspect it’s very inefficient and I wish it was better.  But since it’s not my system I can’t do much about other than offer suggestions.

The future on Mac OS X is Cocoa.  I expect that in the next release or two, the Mac OS X IDE will be built for Cocoa.  When that happens, you’ll know that Cocoa is really ready.  Building for Cocoa will give RB users the ability to harness some of the Cocoa goodies that Mac users come to expect from their applications.

Unfortunately, Cocoa isn’t going to help Windows or Linux as it just makes the platforms that much more different.  However, I do know that much of the work that has gone into Cocoa has involved rewriting major portions of Windows and Linux to fit the newer event models rather than the old Carbon/Classic model.  I don’t know the specifics but it wouldn’t surprise me if almost all of the frameworks was rewritten accomplish this.

I’m not sure where Windows is heading in the future.  Real Software is a Mac heavy company and it’s hard to know how serious they are about Windows.  Last summer there were some very easy and very serious Windows bugs that bit me very hard (because of the upgrade cycle) that very nearly cost me a big project.  I just don’t see much going on for advanced Windows support but perhaps that is just a byproduct of the march to Cocoa.  After ten years they still don’t have full COM support and without it there’s just a bunch of stuff that Real Studio won’t be able to do.  It’s also unknown when 64bit support is coming and when Microsoft will switch over to a full 64 bit OS.  I think this is as every bit as important as the switch to Cocoa on the Mac side.

I have reservations about Linux support.  I wonder if the time and effort is worth it in sales for Real Software.  As a consultant I get no one asking for Linux apps but perhaps that’s anecdotal evidence since I’m heavy into Mac and Windows development.  Also anecdotally my blog and website just have a few percentage points of Linux users that visit on a regular basis.

We know that a User Interface change is coming.  Geoff demoed it at the Atlanta Summit but no pictures have surfaced yet.  From what I can remember, it should reduce mouse clicks as the Project Tab will be easily accessible all the time.  Unused events will not show in the Events list until you add them (I believe the most common event(s) will automatically be added).  A new tool palette was revealed that reminded me very much of xCode/Interface Builder.

I would also expect a lot of the Web Edition editor features will make it into the new IDE.  The in-line editors are generally okay but I’m not a huge fan of them.  I really hate the new Tab Order Editor as it’s confusing once you get more than a dozen controls on the window.  I’m also not a big fan of the object handles (that allow you to resize controls) since they’re a major pain to use – they disappear when you’re resizing.  This means that controls have to have special visual modes to show their sizes unlike the current Window Editor where controls have a visible outline.

One feature that I do like is the pasteboard that is automatically populated at the bottom of the WE page editor when placing non-visual objects (like timers).  This probably means that Dialogs will be rewritten to act just like the new WebDialogs.  One can hope that they will retain the existing methods.  I also expect the Radio Button control to be replaced by the RadioGroup – again, similar to what Web Edition did.

Some of these changes make a lot of sense from a beginner perspective.  They are common questions from new users and are a solution to aid them.  From a power user perspective I’m trying to be as open as I can to the changes.  Some will grow on me I’m sure with usage.  Others, I’m just as sure, will make me pine for the ‘old days’.

We can only hope that Real Software has a feature complete IDE when it makes it into the beta program and lets hope that they’re not adding major functionality to it during the beta.  Otherwise I expect a chorus of very vocal naysayers and boo birds.  A User Interface change is a big deal and should not be taken lightly.  I hope they do their own (very strenuous) internal testing on it before foisting it on us.

Eventually, Real Software will switch the back-end compiler to LLVM.  RBScript is already using LLVM and while that was a significant step, it’s probably going to be a lot of work to switch over all of Real Studio to it.  If my sources are correct, they’re going to writing their own linker for Windows which I have no doubt is more work than they expect (Cocoa was only going to take 18 months remember?).

Will LLVM lead to Real Studio being able to compile for iPhone and other mobile devices?  My answer is a big maybe.  I have a hard time figuring out the marketing for including mobile devices in the current product other than to saying you can reuse much of the same code, but just like with Web Edition you really have a separate product with separate editors and separate compilers.  I have no problem with a mobile optimized IDE that leaves the cruft of desktop and web apps behind.  I think it could be brought to market faster that way too.  Like much of the rest of this post, it’s pure speculation on my part.

One thing I wish was improved was the Real Studio debugger.  Anyone that’s come from the Visual Basic and .NET world understands what I’m saying.  The Real Studio IDE debugger just isn’t easy to use.  No watchpoints and always having to refer to the listbox to view variable values is huge pain (wouldn’t it be nice to hover your mouse over a variable and get the value in a tooltip?).  Many Real Studio users don’t even realize that you can view the call stack since it’s a popup menu (poor UI choice, in my opinion).  Many also don’t get the whole breakpoint and exception handling either.

There is still a bunch of essential controls missing from the standard control list.  After ten years there’s still no date, time, or calendar control.  While the standard listbox is fairly powerful, it’s a beast and you just get to a certain point where it’s too slow and cumbersome to use.  For those needing them, they’re forced to use a 3rd party set of controls.

I think much of these limitations is all based on how Real Software uses the tool themselves.  The IDE has absolutely no need for grid, date, time, or calendar controls.  You could certainly argue that the reason why the TextArea RTF support is so weak is because the IDE has no need for it.  The same with the lackluster support for TextField masks.  Likewise, to the best of my knowledge, the IDE does not use the built-in reporting tool and, it too, suffers from having no strenuous use from the company that designed it.  Modern toolbars?  Need I say more?

I’ve argued for years that RS could really use a consulting group that bids and works on projects just like the rest of us consultants.  A lot of the projects I work on run into the same constraints time and time again and I’m forced into less that optimal solutions.  I can submit Feedback reports until my fingers bleed, but until RS has to fulfill a need for themselves it probably won’t happen.  Personally, I’d welcome them into the consulting business.  Sure, it means more competition for me personally, but I’m okay with that as it will make the product better.

Sorry for the rambling post as there are lot of things that I’d love to see RS do a better job at and improve in the product.  I really do appreciate the work they’ve done as it pays for my, and my employees, salaries.  As a professional user my needs are vastly different than a majority of Studio users but as someone who spends a considerable amount of money on yearly license updates and the referral program, and spend a lot of effort selling the product to clients I feel that my needs should be aired publicly.  My time with ARBP has shown that many of you agree to varying degrees.

Those are some of my wants, needs, future predictions, fears, worries and gripes.  What say you?

 

In part one of this series I talked about the early chapters of my Real Studio story.  Today I’ll talk about some of the things we (because we have multiple employees) with Real Studio.

Let’s go back to the 2008.  That was the last year that Real Software held the REAL World conference in Austin, Texas.  I begged Real Software to let me have a meeting at 8:00 AM to hold an organizational meeting for a REALbasic users group of some sort.  I was surprised at the turnout and the Association of REALbasic Professionals (ARBP) was born.  http://www.arbp.org

Starting ARBP has been a job of persistence and overcoming inertia.  Since we started with nothing: no organization, no leaders, no website, no expectations, we really had no idea what we were going to be when we grew up.  Thankfully I was supported by an awesome group of dedicated individuals that really helped push the organization, and me, along.

In three years, ARBP has hosted two conferences.  The first was in Boulder, Colorado in 2009 and the second was in Atlanta, Georgia this past March.  Both of those conferences were recorded and are available for ARBP paid members.

Besides helping organize both events I’ve spoken at both of them.  So has my #1 employee, über programmer, Seth Verrinder.  Seth has been with us for three and a half years and has been an awesome addition to the team.  Without him, we wouldn’t be as successful as we are.  Between the two of us we’ve also written a fair number of the tutorials, newer projects in the source code repository, and articles.

Sharing code with the community is great way to contribute.  Many of us ‘old timers’ have a library of code just sitting around that would contribute to the community and help people just starting out with Real Studio.  Think about adding your source code to the ARBP Source Code Repository.

Speaking of training, in late 2009 I was contacted to do some video training for Real Studio.  They only wanted about eight hours of video and I felt that I couldn’t do the language or the IDE justice in that short amount of time.  But it did start my creative juices flowing and now I have over 30 hours of Real Studio video training material available at http://www.bkeeney.com.  That 30 hours comprises over 110 separate videos including most of the common Real Studio controls for both desktop and Web Edition.  Most videos come with a project file that you’re free to use in your own projects.  I have two complete series where I start at the beginning of a project and follow it through to the end.  Needless to say, I’ve been very happy with the results and the comments I get from users are very encouraging.

What sort of work do we do with Real Studio?  Well, it varies all the time since we’re a consulting firm.  In the past year we’ve done major updates to professional athletic training system (we did version 1 as well), updates to teleprompting software (we did the version 2 rewrite), major work a Web Edition project for an underwriting company, fixed some right-to-left language support in an existing Real Studio app, updates to a veterinary management app, and updates to credit repair software.

From-scratch projects include a PDF viewer/annotation/organizer app, a military strategy simulator, a family genealogy organizer, a front end user interface to a serial lightning detection device, a neurological test for patients with brain damage, a proof-of-concept app for a Mac OS X computer to talk to a electronic keyboard that uses a proprietary ethernet protocol, and a Web Edition app to share URL’s among registered users.  Most desktop projects are cross-platform.

On top of all that, we’ve created a number of smaller, proof-of-concept/training projects for folks that want to do something specific in RB but don’t have the time or inclination to learn it on their own.  These projects are actually kind of fun since they’re very specific and allow us to explore a control or API that we’ve not spent much time on without having to worry about the nit picky details of a full-blown application.

I’m very picky on how I organize documents (I am an engineer after all) so every now and then I go through the older directories as a refresher.  We’ve done a LOT of projects over the years and not one of them is similar to another one.

So how do I find the clients?  At this point we’ve been doing Real Studio consulting for a long time and a lot of long-term clients keep coming back for rewrites and major new additions.  I’m very happy about that as the relationship is already in place and they trust us.  It’s an awesome feeling.

Believe it or not, the video training has been a nice addition to our consulting business.  The progression is that people sign up for the videos and then after a couple of weeks (or months) they send us an email asking if we are available for work.  Because of the videos we already have a ‘relationship’ even if I’ve never talked to them before because they see how I work with Real Studio.

I’m also a member of the Real Studio Consulting Referral Program https://secure.realsoftware.com/store/consulting.php.  It currently costs $495 for twelve months and $295 for six months.  It’s worth it.  By the time a potential client sends in their information to the Find a Developer Page at https://secure.realsoftware.com/support/consultants.php they’ve already decided that Real Studio is what they’re looking for.

At one Real World I said being part of the Referral Program is “like shooting fish in a barrel”.  I still believe that.  The cost is insignificant.  One very small project and it pays for itself.  If you want to start working with Real Studio on a full-time basis, this is the place to start.

One last note on ARBP.  I’m happy, and a little sad, to say that today is my last official day as leader of the organization.  Tonight is our board meeting where a new board will take over and a new president will lead ARBP into the future.  I’m still on the board as Treasurer (assuming no one else wants it) but the day to day stuff will no longer be in my hands.  I urge you to volunteer as it’s a great organization that is always looking for help.  You don’t have to be a Real Studio expert (or professional) help out.

So those are the current chapters in the BKeeney Software Real Studio story.  What sort of projects are you working on?  How are you finding work?

 

I was asked this year to be a coach for my sons robotics team through First Lego League (FLL).  It was my honor and privilege to coach these fourth and fifth grade boys.  It is when I see activities like this I feel good about the future of our country as I fully expect each one of these kids to be the future scientists and engineers of our country.

For our school it was our first year in FLL.  We had 4 teams, each with 6 kids.  The season lasts from start of school to until the end of February and for our team we met once a week and for the last month we met twice a week.  All meetings were 90 minutes long.  That is an incredible commitment for coaches, kids and parents.  It spans football, volleyball, soccer, wrestling and basketball seasons (and I’m sure several others).

This years theme was Body Forward and the competition consists of two major components.  The first is the research project where you identify a problem and come up with a solution.  Our team had fun and chose the brain as their topic and our presentation was ‘Zombie Brain Inspectors’ because, as we all know, zombies like BRAINS!

The second part of the competition is where the real fun is.  There is a 4 by 8 foot playing field with a number of field pieces (made out of LEGO’s of course) with tasks (each with their own set of rules for completion) that you have to do in two and half minutes.  You build your robot using the Lego Mindstorms kit and software.  Our robot did well, partly I think, because we went through three major robot designs, and finally settled on a tank design that offered stability, flexibility, and repeatability (things you really want in your robot!).

The LEGO Mindstorms NXT programming software stinks, which is unfortunate, because it has marred an otherwise awesome experience.  It’s written in LabVIEW and while I’ve heard people rave about how good LabVIEW is – our experience was anything but that.

First, getting it to run on Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6 was difficult (PPC or Intel didn’t seem to matter).  In fact, after trying for a month I gave up on it and went back to an old Dell laptop running Windows XP.  The installers on the CD’s don’t work in those Mac operating systems.  Period.  There’s a hack where you have to copy all of the files to your hard drive, modify one of the installation files and then install from hard disk.  Really!?  Leopard was introduced by Apple in October of 2007.  Simply unacceptable.

Once we did get it installed on my two year old Mac laptop the darn thing never worked right.  The mouse was always jittery and made it next to impossible to select the blocks.  It didn’t seem to matter if they used the built-in trackpad or an external mouse.  My team got so frustrated they all voted to switch to the Dell laptop.

Even once we got onto the Dell, our problems didn’t really go away.  We had permission issues with the help files that required fixing.  We had file corruption issues:  once during one of the practice rumbles!  Because of this we (okay, this one was mine but the boys loved it), “Save As will save your…bacon” and it did after we learned the ‘save as’ lesson the hard way.  Unfortunately, we discovered that saving to a thumb drive didn’t always work.  A file length of zero is a bad thing!  We also discovered that doing a Save As will sometimes rearrange your blocks for you and another coach reported having severe issues copying programming files from one computer to another.  Ya.  Not good.

Once you get into the development environment a couple of things strike you as being odd.  First, everything is a shade of white and grey making it hard on the eyes.  A lot of the really important text, while black, is tiny when it should probably be the most important thing on the screen at the time.  The  User Interface in the environment isn’t Windows, it’s not Mac OS X, heck it’s not even Java it’s some weird thing that I’ve never seen before.  One has to presume that this is the environment that LabVIEW creates.

The whole left to right programming paradigm is odd.  I think you could argue that a top to bottom approach would make more sense and would certainly make it easier to print out.  I don’t have a strong opinion about this as there might be some very good reasons to do it the way they did.  Frankly, making it look like LEGO’s is eye candy and could be left out in my opinion as it adds absolutely no value.

The NXT brick only has 4 input ports and 3 output ports.  Why do I have to specify which port on every block?  Why can’t I just say, somewhere, that Port B is the LEFT motor, Port C is the RIGHT motor, and Port A is the ARM?  Or that Port 1 is the LIGHT sensor, Port 2 TOUCH sensor, etc?  I can’t tell you how many times the kids kept changing the wrong motor or used the wrong sensor because they chose the wrong port.  Why can’t I customize the names of the ports?  That simple change alone would have made life simpler.

The Mindstorms software has the ability to add comments to your code.  It’s less than optimal because you can’t tie it to a block or group of blocks.  So if you make a comment and then insert or remove a block it doesn’t move and I’ll be darned if I can figure out how to move a comment once you’ve created it.  End result is we’ve taught the kids not to bother with comments and I find that to be troubling.

I live and breathe cross-platform software development on a daily basis so I am being very critical.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about how cool it would be to use Real Studio to develop a better, more modern Mindstorms application.  It would be  a MUCH better experience for kids learning how to program using the LEGO Mindstorms kit.  It would be a native Mac OS X and Windows application with the appropriate installation methods.

Alas, it is but a pipe dream.  FLL requires that the kids use the LEGO Mindstorms software.  I can’t tell you how much money I’ve spent on Lego’s for kids over the years.  You’d think LEGO could come up with some better software for all the money I’ve given them.  The software came out in 2008 and hopefully a new version is in the works.

Now that the season is over I will remember the good things about the season.  I will also try to forget the crappy experience we had with their software.

 

Quick note.  ARBP is now hosting the Windows Functionality Suite.  Official announcement at http://arbpmembers.org/arbp-blogs-and-opinions/article/3-ARBP%20Blogs/229-windows-functionality-suite-blog

More info on Windows Functionality Suite at http://arbpmembers.org/windows-functionality-suite.  We at BKeeney Software have found the Windows Functionality Suite to be very valuable in creating excellent Windows applications.  It has many functions that add the finishing touch to a Windows app that many users expect.

It was originally written by Aaron Ballman, a former engineer at REAL Software.  Since he no longer works for the company it has languished from lack of attention and in recent releases of REAL Studio it no longer works out of the box.  We are looking for a few individuals to help spearhead the effort to update it for use with modern versions of REAL Studio.  I don’t think it will take much work, just someone to be in charge of tracking and merging changes and maybe creating some new documentation and example projects.

We’ve been very busy recently.  Besides all of our cross-platform desktop app consulting work we’re now iOS developers as well (feel free to contact me if you’re looking for iOS developers).  Our first iOS app, Task Timer for iOS, is now on the App Store.  This is the Lite, iAd supported version, of Task Timer, and simply lets you track your life and hopefully bill for it. This version works on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Want to track how much time you spend commuting to and from your job?  Create a Personal project and add a Commuting task and the next time you get in your vehicle hit the start button and when you leave the car hit the stop button.  It doesn’t get much easier than that.

The same goes with your on-site with clients.  After the initial setup it’s as simple are pressing the start and stop buttons.  At the end of the day, week, or month, you can view a summary of all the time you’ve spent.

Task Timer supports multiple simultaneous timers for those multi-taskers out there that can bill multiple clients at the same time (yeah, I’m looking at you, lawyers).  The Lite version supports unlimited projects and tasks but does not sync to the desktop version.

What’s it worth to you to increase your billing by 30%?  Did I mention that the Lite version is FREE?

An upcoming (paid) version will be able to synchronize with the desktop version of Task Timer (for Mac OS X or Windows) all without being plugged in to your computer!  This will be a free upgrade for current owners of Task Timer for Mac OS X or Windows.

So never lose money again!  When we developed the desktop version years ago we saw an immediate 30% rise in billing!  Why?  Because we know, down to the minute, how much time we spend on a billable (and non-billable) projects.  It helps our bottom line with billing AND it helps us track how well we’ve done with our estimates.  If you’re not tracking your time you’re not doing a very good job at managing it!

We hope you enjoy this free version.

It’s not been a great week – even though it’s been a short week.  I’ve now seen two separate bugs that are HUGE and affecting me for Windows.  In REAL Studio Release 3.1 there is memory leak in the Timer Class and in the StaticText class.  The end result is that my app, in Windows, will eventually chew up all available memory and bog the entire machine down to the point of being unusable.

Not good at any time, but this mean that both 3 and 3.1 are not usable for me, at least for Windows builds.  R 3 has some issues and a memory leak as well.  Thankfully, the leak is not as bad. I would go back to R 2.1 but since *that* release also has a nasty Windows bug I can’t go back to it.  Dare I go back to R 2?

Initial indications are that RS will not be issuing an interim 3.2 release, however.  This is why I think their Rapid Release Model stinks.  I’ve got two bugs that keep me from using the latest and greatest release and now have to wait to get a fix.

Your plan runs out in the next 60 days or so?  Sorry.  You’re S.O.L.  It might be great for RS but the Rapid Release Model is becoming the Rapid Bug Model for me.  Pretty soon, it’s going to start costing me clients.

———-

A couple people have asked me what I think about Apple changing their stance on letting 3rd party development tools for developing iOS apps and what that means for REAL Software.  Meh.

Really, there are so many items RS has to get done before thinking about iOS that it’s not even a concern right now.  The only thing that would concern me is if they decided to jump both feet first and devote a lot of resources to it.  Cocoa has taken way longer than anyone ever dreamed of (I feel that personnel changes have bit them hard on that one) and now the highly anticipated Web Edition will distract them too.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to the Web Edition.  I think being able to leverage all my RB knowledge for iOS apps is a great idea too.  But, as they say in Missouri, “Show Me!” – I’ll get excited when I see them and can work with them and keep my business in the black.

I’ve had one of those weeks where I thought I was going crazy (crazier?).  My cross-platform application that works fine on Mac OS X was behaving very strangely in Windows but only sometimes.  This particular application talks to a hardware via a serial port.  My standard test platform is Windows 7 with Windows XP as the secondary and both of these are run in VMWare on my Mac.  So a bunch of things might be at fault but after trying this out on an old Windows XP laptop I quickly narrowed the problem down.

The data packet the hardware device sends is very small – 4 characters to be exact.  What I was experiencing was that RB captured the first character on the first send – but not the whole packet.  Then it would complete the first message on the 2nd message and only get part of the 2nd message.  It would go something like this:

1. A
2. B | A
3. C | A
4. D | A

Where A is common to all messages so they should be AB, AC, AD and so on.

These messages in the real world are sporadic and with the exception of a regular hardware pass message it might be days or weeks in between messages so as you can imagine, this problem mucks up the logic quite a bit.

If you are not familiar with the Serial control, the DataAvailable event fires when there is data available (duh) and there you can check what’s in the serial buffer by using the LookAhead function.  LookAhead in this case showed just the first character.  The other property to check is  BytesAvailable which should tell you how much is still in the buffer.  It simply returned zero so I should have a complete message.  Definitely something screwy going on there.

Invoking Serial.Poll via timer did not produce any different results.  Neither did forcing a ReadAll.

One other thing that I discovered was the Serial Port Monitors are worth their weight in gold.  Using one, you can at least verify that the data got to the computer.  A free 14 day trial was good enough but if I do any other serial projects it will be worth it.

The good news is that I wasn’t crazy.  The client is okay with Windows XP for now.  The bad news is that it might take a release cycle (or more) to get it fixed. Oh well, battles for another day….

For those that care, the Feedback id is 12723.

Be aware that RB 2010 R2.1 has a nasty Windows-only bug that might affect you.  It seems that the keyboard accessibility for pushbuttons (and possibly other controls) no longer works properly.

To duplicate, put two pushbuttons on a window.  Put a message box in the Action event saying which one has been pushed.

Test it with the mouse.  Works fine.  Now tab to each pushbutton and press the spacebar.  Works fine.

Now, tab to each one and press the Return or Enter key.  Nothing.  If you happen to have a default pushbutton the Enter/Return key will activate that button regardless of where the focus is.

Nasty bug that leads the average Windows user to curse your name in vain if they rely on the keyboard to navigate.  I spent hours trying to figure this one out because it manifests itself in the MessageDialog class too.

Yeah, I’m a little pissed.   I have to revert to RB 2010 R1 where it does not manifest itself.  The hard deadline for the project I’m working on is today.  Gives me a black eye for a problem outside of my control.

For those that care, Feedback ID 12626