REALbasic: right for this project?

[Richard Altenburg]

On 05-06-2003 23:03, "Ruslan Zasukhin" <sunshine at public.kherson.ua> wrote:

>> It would not have been so much fun. I find programming and layout creation
>> in 4D a boring task. RB offers a much nicer approach to developing, and it
>> is fun creating your own classes and stuff. I wish I had that freedom in 4D.
>> On the other hand, I wish I had the power of a database engine as cool as
>> 4D's in RB. I do use Valentina, and it is great, but it is not as tightly
>> integrated into the language.
> 
> What exactly is not fit into your dream?
> IT seems to me classes of Valentina integrate access to Valentina db very
> good. You miss some features? Which exactly?

It is not so much features that I miss in Valentina or in REALbasic, it is
just that 4D has them all in one place.

The database you work on in a 4D project is a tightly integrated part of
your program. 4D is all about data, so every part of the language is there
for you to read, modify and write data. It is also fully ready for server
based work, where a lot of users can handle the same database together. And
the developer doesn't have to worry about it too much.

This makes 4D not so much fun for games and communications (both of them I
do in RB now), but when you handle databases it is very good.

When you modify the database in 4D, your program knows it. When you change
the type of a field, or its name, the code knows it. The 4D IDE can create
layouts for inputting and outputting data for you, because it knows all
about the database design you made. And printing in 4D is also much more
powerful, and many database programs need that. RB sucks at this...

SQL is nice, and the classes you made for RB are good, but when RB and
Valentina were totally integrated everyone would be able to make simpler
database applications with them. I have asked for this integration more than
once, and still feel this could make the true 4D-killer! Because RB is more
fun and more flexible, and Valentina is more speed, and more... speed ;-)

Believe me, I love Valentina. And I love the free type of programming in
REALbasic. And I admire the very active users that talk with each other
around the globe (in 4D, I always felt I was alone in troubles). But
whenever I think of it, I just know 4D would have been a faster way to
create my applications. I know, it is very expensive, and not so much fun,
but for business demands where every minute counts, I would not advise
someone to go for a nice but always somehow buggy RB development cycle.