

RunRev - The World's Easiest Programming Language - epall
http://www.runrev.com/home/product-family/

======
Calamitous
I went there, and the first thing I didn't see was any code.

In fact, after clicking around, I failed to find anything that excited me as a
programmer. The closest I got to a look at the actual product/language were a
couple partial screenshots of some IDE, and the opportunity to download some
tutorials in zip files (which I declined).

I did, however, see a whole lot of marketingspeak telling me how awesome it
all was. Pages and pages of text and bullet points, slick graphics, and not
much else.

Consider my bullshit meter pegged.

~~~
Tichy
Same here - if they have the world's easiest programing language, they should
consider pairing it up with a web site that is easy to grasp.

I found something that seems to indicate that they do "programming by using
natural english language" or something like that. Since I consider that
approach flawed (unless better AI comes along), my interest has dropped to
0.05 anyway.

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asnyder
I grew up around RunRev. Tuviah Snyder, the former developer of MetaCard and
former CTO of RunRev is my older brother. RunRev made a deal with Scott Raney,
the creator of MetaCard to basically take it over, redistribute it and make
future modifications. Kevin Miller, the CEO is a pretty decent fellow. They
have a very loyal following, and are trying to branch out with new marketing
and significant upgrades to their products.

Personally, I found developing in RunRev very frustrating. I use to joke that
I would have to start a function with please and end it with thank you.
However, some find the english like syntax pleasing, I find it very
frustrating. I prefer to say x = 3, instead of put 3 into x, or some variant
of that.

~~~
Shooter
Cool. Tuviah helped me out with problems a couple of times when I was using
MC/RR. Nice guy. What's he doing now?

I tend to agree about the syntax, but I didn't have a strong HyperCard
background before I discovered the products. I dislike most C/Algol syntax
too, for that matter. (I struggle with syntax more than I should, in general,
and I like minimal syntax. I'm happiest with S-expressions.)

------
patrickgzill
RunRev is based on MetaCard, which was a cross-platform implementation of
Apple's HyperCard that ran on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, HPUX, AIX, etc.

They took the HyperCard-ish IDE and turned it into a more familiar IDE (from
the standpoint of users of more mainstream IDEs).

~~~
Shooter
Yep. And MetaCard was pretty cool for its time. It actually had some Lispish
qualities mixed in with the cross-platform, multimedia HyperCard stuff (which
was very cool on its own.) There used to be a whitepaper online that explored
that aspect of it (HyperCardy 'macros',etc.) RunRev inherited all of that with
the MetaCard engine, but of course now there are more compelling offerings for
most things...although it's still a pretty neat multimedia tool if you're
mainly targeting the desktop or CD-ROMs for some reason. I wouldn't personally
use it for web stuff or DVD-ROMs anymore, though. It _is_ flexible. I still
know people who use it for _everything_ (including CGIs ;-) ) and I know a
couple of shareware developers who still make their livings using it.

I'd probably use RunRev before I used something like RealBasic, which is
basically in the same market - small, 'soup-to-nuts' shareware developers who
want to create desktop apps with multimedia, internet, and database
capabilities. Heck, I'd use it before I used Authorware or even some of the
Python tools in that general domain (PyCard, etc.) because it was faster to
develop and you put out a more polished product, without cross-platform woes.
The MetaCard kernel engine is actually pretty fast, execution speed-wise. It
could handily beat Perl for some stuff that you wouldn't think it would even
be useful for...we scripted a performance testing tool and a utility to put
database records into HTML, and it trounced Perl for both tasks. Which was
impressive, considering Perl would have sucked at making cross-platform
multimedia apps ;-)

I almost invested in RunRev when they were first getting started...IIRC, Mike
Markkula (Apple fame) _did_ invest in them. The founder, Kevin, is pretty
cool. I ended up just becoming a customer and using it as a prototyping tool.
I still have an older Pro license and a couple books about RR if anyone is
interested...

Anyone remember GLPro? That was another niche app we used to make prototypes
and build small multimedia apps and screensavers. It had a dBase style engine
in it? We used it for a screensaver once and it ended up on an episode of Star
Trek Next Generation. Or iShell? That was a later one we used that was based
on another defunct Apple tool. It's still around, I think. Even with the huge
range of software available today, I miss working with the little, niche
multimedia and audio development tools. Those are what got me into
programming.

~~~
cesare
HyperCard was really cool at the time. Pure genius.

I used it to make a full-featured offline mail reader for a BBS I used to
frequent in a few hours. Anyone remember offline readers
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offline_reader>)? :-)

~~~
Shooter
I don't miss offline readers [:-)], but I still get sad every single time I
think about the demise of HyperCard. I wish someone at Apple would make it a
priority to build a modern version and include it for free with all new Apple
computers. If they could make a cross-platform version, or one that could also
create iPhone apps it would be absolutely killer. Accessing the Core libs in a
tool like that...

Some people don't know the fun they're missing...

~~~
cesare
Agree.

BTW, have you looked at squeak smalltalk? (<http://www.squeak.org/>)

~~~
Shooter
Yeah...I actually had a fixation with it for a bit. Smalltalk in general. I
bought about 30 Smalltalk books and spent loads of time messing with Squeak
and Cincom Smalltalk. Seaside stuff, mostly. Unfortunately, I never really had
a suitable project to use it on.

I never really made the mental connection between HyperCard and Squeak before,
but they really do have quite a bit in common (quirky, low barrier to entry
tools that are immense fun and very flexible.)

------
RunRevKev
Thanks for the comments about Rev. A few responses:

Yes, the product has historically been something of a niche desktop
development tool (perhaps of particular interest to former HyperCard
developers). That said it has seen its share of success, with large scale
enterprise applications, real time systems and commercial shrink wrapped
software, along with the tools, utilities, shareware and educational software
you would expect for this type of tool.

The big news is that we are relaunching the product this year on the Web as a
mainstream, modern language with a free entry-level version for both the
browser and server. Its fast, efficient, with modern features like nested
arrays and OO behaviors. To support this relaunch there will be some major new
site sections on getting started with literally hundreds of code examples and
walk-throughs, so if you're interested please do check the site out again over
the next few weeks.

Contrary to the popular myth, I would argue that English is not a verbose
method of programming, it requires much, much less code than a traditional
lower-level language. And, the typical programmer spends a lot more time
reading code than writing it. English is highly readable, doing a much better
job of reflecting the way the human mind works. Once you get into the mindset,
it really is very productive. We have a really exciting launch coming up and I
think we can make a positive impact on the way that certain types of software
gets written.

Kevin Miller RunRev CEO

------
camccann
A completely closed, proprietary platform, with its own (probably incompatible
with everything else) language, that advertises itself as being "easier" than
other languages?

People keep trying this sort of thing, and the result is almost always slow,
brain-damaged, and painful for actual programmers to use, serving mostly to
allow non-programmers to accomplish just enough to shoot themselves in the
foot.

So, what's the deal? Does this thing actually have any value to it? I sure
can't find anything encouraging from their website.

~~~
Shooter
It does have value, especially for people who have spent _decades_ programming
in HyperCard-style environments. This is not really a new "develop for idiots"
type tool - it is based on a very long tradition that started with the
original HyperCard, a tool that was beloved by many and used a style and
approach that has largely died out. For former HyperCarders it is probably a
last refuge. And it is also a good tool to help some people learn basic
programming and be productive without getting turned off...it's less
intimidating for some people than the alternatives. That's part of what was
neat about HyperCard: average people creating cool, useful programs without
even necessarily wanting to be programmers or thinking of themselves as
programmers.

RunRev is proprietary, weird, and not something a younger web coder would
probably want to pick up, but it does have its niche. People that are already
experts in HyperCard, of course. Small desktop publishers/shareware developers
who would otherwise use something like RealBasic. (It has a similar small
ecosystem of third-party add-ons.) People that want a tool that lets them make
desktop apps with web, database, and multimedia capabilities - without having
to learn all the nitty-gritty details they might otherwise have to. Etc. You
can make cross-platform apps with less headaches than many other more
mainstream tools because of its runtime. It's a great prototyping tool (faster
than anything else I've seen, even today) and people often ended up being able
to ship their 'prototypes' because the mock-ups used native (or native-
looking) controls. The execution speed was very fast the last time I used
it...the core engine was written in C. As I noted in another post, it beat
Perl for some text-processing tasks the last time I used it. It delivered
solid cross-platform capabilities years ago - way before Java realized any of
its heralded 'WORA' benefits.

In many ways, MetaCard/RunRev was a "Beating the Averages" tool for me at one
point. I could create software in literally a fraction of the time it took my
competitors, my software had fewer bugs, more capabilities, and it ran just as
fast if not faster than their C++ monstrosities. And mine ran on Windows, Mac,
and Unix - while theirs usually just ran on Windows. And they had a
professional programming _team_ , while I was a single developer with fairly
limited skills. Naturally, I did everything I could to keep my tool a secret
;-) I eventually drifted away from it because I got more into web stuff, and
it is not ideally suited to the web. (Or at least it wasn't at the time - and
I don't see much that has truly changed in that regard, RunRev marketing
aside.)

I know people who make a full-time living using it, and at least a couple guys
that have made millions using it. (One of my social science professors in
college - who had no prior programming experience - even started a successful
software company on the side with MetaCard/RunRev. He made desktop software
for creating surveys and reports in the academic community. It was a
specialized tool for surveys, but the report engine put Crystal Reports to
shame. He was making nearly half a million a year from it at his peak. The
guys I know who made millions using it were all either professional
programmers or had them on staff, though.) I haven't use it in a few years,
and I definitely think that it is a mistake to try to hype it as a great
language/tool for web apps - because it is not - but I do think it has value
for certain users/uses.

------
epall
I have a professor telling me this is what he wants a project written in. It's
currently a terrible mess of JSPs, and I have half a mind to simply re-write
it in Django or RoR. How do I convince him to switch from JSPs to Django/RoR
instead of this RunRev thing?

~~~
lsb
It's less similar to RoR and more similar to Cappuccino or something.

More often than not, the choice of language is far less important than the
choice of programmer and the comfort in the target language and the amount of
pre-debugged library code that already exists. So if you think you can do
better with Django/RoR, just say so.

------
spectre
Sounds suspiciously like a new-age COBOL.

