G'day - how easy is it to learn revolution?

[Vano]

G'day all,

OK, I joined linkedin Revolution group but seems really quite there so thought I try asking the same questions here.

Couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto Runtime Revolution on apple site only because I decided after acquiring the macbook pro I would like to do something useful for a change and learn a programming language of some sort. I'm not a programmer but had little programming experiences in the past. I dipped into Java, Delphi, scripting like korn/bash shell, little perl but nothing too serious just to get by and made nothing out of it.

From the sounds of it all, supposedly Revolution is an easy or easier language to pick up. OK I'm a tad skeptical but I'll give it a whirl. So how easy is it to grasp the language? Are there plenty of resource around for beginners? Seem affordable and doesn't break the bank.

I was about to go with Windev as I had Webdev, though it stated easy to learn the learning curve is quite high and also it cost a fortune, almost every year there's a upgrade cost which hurts the pocket and the support were down the drain. And the manuals are identical just few more features added and the version numbers changed. Is it worth the cost, no.

Plan is to give some time to something and create something useful I can use.

Your opinion welcome.

Cheers,

Joe

[malte]

Hi Joe,

I suugest you give it a shot. How easy it is to learn is hard to estimate, as your milage may vary depending on personal factors and the time you invest into learning. The first thing you will notice is that Revolution is different from the languages you tried before. It will allow you to create small things quickly. There are many resources you can look at, though there is not a single place to grab those resources from. Most of the experienced users tend to keep up their own support sites. That said, it would be helpful if you could give us a quick desciption of what you would like to do with rev, this would make it easier for us to give advise on resources.

All the best,

Malte

[SparkOut]

Hi Joe,
As Malte says, people are different and so will have different learning experiences. If you are prepared to start from the beginning and follow as many of the "basic concept" tutorials you can find, you should find it quite quick to pick up, especially if you have already dabbled with some coding.
Conceptually I think Revolution is amazing in that it brings the possibility within reach of novices to make "professional quality" applications - there's no way of avoiding a learning curve, of course, but the return on investment you get in both time spent on tutorials and the cost is very good, compared to other solutions.
The other thing about Revolution is that as you become an "advanced user" you do not "outgrow" it - it is a complete Rapid Application Development tool, and the experts use it because it makes it quicker and easier to produce commercial grade software (cross-platform, too) than many other development environments.
Rev does have its frustrations, but usually there is a way to work around those, and if you have at least an idea of how to structure an application's code then you should get on well.
See this post for some more resources: http://forums.runrev.com/phpBB2/viewtop ... =9375#9375

[billworld]

I'm new to RR myself (just about a couple of weeks into it). There's lots of really powerful things with RR. With power comes price, in terms of TIME.

I'm finding that lots of 3rd party tutorials and sample stacks contain errors and/or cause RR 3 to crash. I highly recommend first sticking to the docs and examples supplied directly by RR and avoid 3rd party stuff until you have a strong grasp of everything RR.

So far I'm finding the folks on this list are quite helpful explaining things to newbies. That is encouraging and is a good way to grow the community.

Depending upon where you're coming from in terms of prior programming experience, you may find yourself banging your head against the wall with various unintuitive aspects of the IDE, language and/or runtime engine requirements.

But, my current sense of all of this is that once one gets their mind adjusted to way RR works, the productivity benefits can be considerable when compared with languages such as Java, C, C++ etc.

If your background is in FileMaker Pro scripting, you'll be frustrated that a lot of the built-in controls and functionality in FMP need to be recreated by yourself. But, again, there's folks here helping newbies along these lines.

Anyway, I hope this feedback from a fellow newbie helps.

Bill

[Vano]

G'day Guys,

Thanks for the feedback. My intention is to spend some time to learn RR. The apps I would like to create out of this are personal manager/calendar, notepad with treeview/tab, portfolio data collection etc something similar to this for starter and in the future with possible connection to a db like mysql on the net. Simple useful apps for my needs.

I'm currently deciding on the 3 available version and thinking more towards the Studio version as there will not be any dependencies on a player, right?

Cheers,
Joe

[malte]

Hi Joe,

if you want to connect to databases at some point, do not go below studio. Media can not connect to DBs and right Media can not create standalones.

All the best,

Malte

[Vano]

Hi Malte,

Thanks for the confirmation. Will invest the time and the Studio version seem like the right choice.

Cheers buddy.

Joe

[FourthWorld]

FWIW, having done a lot of "Transcript as a second language" training over the years, I've found the learning curve often follows this pattern:

Day one: "What the hell is going on? Why doesn't anything work like I expect? I hate this damn thing."

Two days: "Omigawd, the potential is incredible! If only I knew how to use it all..."

Two weeks: "After reading the language guide and trying some things out, I'm able to do truly productive work."

One month: "Now I can do productive work efficiently."

Three months: "With the flexibility of the language and the handy tools in Revolution, I'm seeing slightly greater productivity than in my formerly-favorite tool I'd used for years."

Six months: "I love this thing."

One year: "I love this thing like no other."

[billworld]

Don't forget about...

Day 5: "What the hell are you doing all hours of the day" says spouse of RR newbie..

FWIW, having done a lot of "Transcript as a second language" training over the years, I've found the learning curve often follows this pattern:

Day one: "What the hell is going on? Why doesn't anything work like I expect? I hate this damn thing."

Two days: "Omigawd, the potential is incredible! If only I knew how to use it all..."

Two weeks: "After reading the language guide and trying some things out, I'm able to do truly productive work."

One month: "Now I can do productive work efficiently."

Three months: "With the flexibility of the language and the handy tools in Revolution, I'm seeing slightly greater productivity than in my formerly-favorite tool I'd used for years."

Six months: "I love this thing."

One year: "I love this thing like no other."

[Obleo]

With in the revolution it self there, under help (main menu bar) there an great helpful tool the; Revolution search engine. It can open many door to learning many things. One downside it does not link to all things but it a great starting point.

One other important thing is with in revolution: preferences/ compatibility / download the Legacy drivers. many of the demo stacks from other users you may find most likely where built pre version 2.8.1.

Trying to open and use these stacks without the legacy driver may cause problems with the IDE and can cause crashing with older stacks with versions after 2.8.1

One of the best things that can let you learn is revolution it self allows you to peak into most stacks within the IDE. From the main menu bar under view/ Revolution UI Elements in Lists. (when that is checked) you can then open the application browser under menu tools and look at how things where done.


There is a great learning resources by Malte (it really work mentioning because it gives a great overview of revolution and it's message path) Animation Engine Tutorials (it was for Malte's animation library but it has so many great stuff for a beginner, using revolution.) It can be found with in the listing of this revselect page. (It may also get you iinterested in great add on tool also.)

http://www.runrev.com/downloads/all-dow ... on-engine/

Check these out during your demo time.

You also mention working with shell in your past, you can run shell commands from revolution, including python, perl, ruby, and pyObjC (witch can run the cocoa scripting bridge which allow access with many OSX system frameworks .)

All in all It pretty simple to learn if you have some time to keep up using it and asking qustions on this forum when you run into a road block.

good luck, and have fun.

[Garrett]

I'm a hobby programmer who's home bound on disability... A.D.D. being one of my problems. While I do have previous programming experience using various dialects of Basic, Delphi, Perl and some other exotic scripting languages, Revolution was a wonderful (but a bit pricey) find for me. It can be a bit intimidating at first due to the amount of available commands and functions, but once you start getting the basics of it, it all starts to come together.

Sometimes you'll find though, that the most obvious solution isn't so obvious. That's where this forum comes in handy, or the mailing list if you can handle a ton of chatter on things that are irrelevant in general or irrelevant to you. But there are some great minds on that mailing list too. I prefer the forums here myself. Not a lot of people, but those that are here are highly versed in Revolution and very helpful.

Revolutions language makes it much easier for even a new programmer to grasp and learn quicker than most other languages.

And of course, the tutorials are a must have if you're new.

Specifically there is not a "treeview" element available in Rev, but there are some user made ones floating around. I myself have been working on a simple one level deep treeview using a list box and htmltext. Making a text editor is no problem. I've made like 3 of them in Revolution so far. Even made a half working syntax highlighting editor once. And a personal manager and calendar won't be a problem at all.

Ah yes, that WebDev thing.. Saw that once and ran screaming from their site when I saw the prices!!!

Studio is the way to go imho.

Good luck and maybe we'll see you around here soon
~Garrett

[Vano]

This is fantastic guys! The information provided here have really convinced or confirm a definite investment not just the mulla but also the time.

I must agree with you Garrett the price of webdev is way too high for what it is. I've upgraded twice in the past which now wished I didn't. The price are expensive to start and have other dependencies, the claims are just way too high and support are just not there unless you are able to speak french which is unfortunate. Oh well, learnt from it and moving right on.. lol


Day 5 .. lol yeah I get that a lot.. and when are you going to spend some time with me and the kids for Day 6.. I think my wife gave up completely.

Cheers guys, I'll get learning

[Garrett]

My wife and kids gave up on me years ago... And I believe so did my mind o.O