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#21
 
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Re: Visage, DesignBAIS... -
03-02-2006
, 08:24 PM
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Right on, Ross. Been holding back on this quite for a while, but the comment about school kids knowing more than the average MV developer was the last straw! |
expect it. Better to start afresh when actually going to work for
Stamina I'd say. Better for both employee and employer. There was a
very long and often quite steep learning curve for me when I went to
work for Ross - although it would probably be about the same as for
those students.
I knew quite a lot already about all sorts of things - although,
unfortunately for all concerned, most of what I knew was redundant in
the Stamina context.
For a start I had to become familiar with the UPdate processor - which
I had managed to avoid previously. This was essential in order to use
their green-screen 4GL ("R5") product btw - not Visage.
I am quite certain you won't hear Ross or anyone else promoting that
(R5) (well.. nah - not even Ross, not seriously anyway). Becoming
productive using certainly wasn't an overnight thing.
Then there was the specific user interface - with heavy use of function
keys - required to drive the application software (green-screen).
Then there was the application itself - very different to anything I'd
seen elsewhere, and I'd seen quite a lot. I hadn't seen applications
that *usually* require building up a "batch" file of transactions to be
printed and checked before running the batch-process to post the
transactions. Sure - I was familiar with batch processing, almost every
company uses it - but not as extensively and routinely as Stamina's
apps did. Pretty much every time you want to post any transaction(s) at
all, you did it the batch way.
Then there were the routine in-house procedures - for registering time
spent on various aspects of projects for clients and their release
procedures and change-control.
Then there was the underlying file system beneath the application
software. Working out just which types of item in a given file were
used for which purpose required quite a bit of detective work in quite
a few cases. No wonder Visage has filters and things to allow you to
create several "virtual files" - or views - on the same D3 data file
using stored selection criteria.
Then there was, at last, Visage itself.
It's like using a browser - but different. Buttons that look familiar
turn out to have very different functions to what you'd expect.
The screen, or form, designer is similar to the VB form designer - up
to a point. I really like it. I give this a BIG TICK.
Files have dictionaries - but they're not the dictionaries you're used
to. Again - it's an improvement on the dictionaries we're used to.
There is a library of Javascript functions to familiarise yourself
with. Lot's of goodies in there.
There are myriad check-boxes and settings - outside of the actual
"designer" - and it takes time to learn which combination you have to
use to do what it is you want to do.
It all looks so easy. Really it does. I bet it doesn't take long though
before you find yourself struggling to work out how to do something and
wondering which of the myriad settings are appropriate.
The thing is - the way Ross and his team at Stamina go about things is
very often very good but somewhat idiosyncratic. The programmers he has
working for him, many of whom have never - or hardly ever - worked in
any other environment, find it all so natural. I don't believe they
ever questioned why they do things the way they do. "It works!" was
often heard. Much of what they do they do the way they do for good
reason. (Wow! What a sentence! Made sense to me anyway, so I'll stick
with it. ;-))
So yes - it makes perfect sense to me that a couple of fresh-faced,
intelligent, inexperienced students would do well, and they wouldn't
cost an awful lot either I imagine.
Quote:
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Don't know about the rest of you folk, but I am tired of being *constantly reminded by Tony how primitive and backward we Pick developers are, and how we're not doing the right thing, and how we can't deal with new technologies, and how we won't follow the glory light that gleams in Gates' eye etc*. Wow, you even once suggested we couldn't deal with fancy websites! Respectfully, can you please stop?! And: "typical base of MV developers that want a GUI but don't want to get involved with anything more than a browser and BASIC." Quit the damned condescension, will ya? said before> I make a darned good living working with a company that's doing reasonably good BUI software without ANY of the bells and whistles talked about. It works well, shows well and, apparently sells well. I ascribe it success to: 1- The extreme ease of programming in the dreaded dinosaur of a language, Pick BASIC, 2- The efficiency and simplicity of the Pick database, 3- The decision made 4 years ago to eschew all but javascript and the browser (unknowingly but serendipitously jumping onto the AJAX bandwagon.) for the actual application. |
developing apps to run on a browser. It really does seem very close to
my own. There *is* a perception, shared by many Pickies (including but
certainly not limited to Tony), that some of us persist with PickBasic
when, really, we ought to "Give the past the slip" and "Shape it up!
Get straight! Go forward! Move ahead!" into some other, more modern
language. I maintain that, if you're working with Pick data, you just
can't do better than with PickBasic. Sure - you might, in the end, not
have to do much. Once you've written the "core" subroutines and
programmed-in the right amount of responsiveness to various parameter
settings, you will probably end up doing less and less PickBasic and
more to fancify the client side of things - but behind and supporting
it all and interacting with the Pick data is - yep, PB. And the query
language - which reminds me...
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I sincerely doubt if the productivity, performance or reliability of this product would be *significantly* enhanced by embracing an all-new approach. It's possible that I'm missing some new buzzword and taking the long-way around to do some things, but the core approach is sound and long-lasting.<'nuff said |
to respond to CQL-style (note - that's pronounced SeeQueueEll)
selection criteria and convert it into the kind of selection criteria
we're more familiar with. That way, if we want to provide search
capabilites on our web-site, the users can use a more familiar standard
syntax and we can use our own query language with our own indexes etc..
Ya think?
Cheers,
Mike.
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ad warning>I am setting up a professional services corporation, SeeingClear, Inc, whose focus is to allay any anxiety you may have about all new products, technologies and half-baked ideas. You will be soothed and resassured that, yes, the pieces you have and are comfortable with are workable and sufficient. How to apply the KISS principle and Occam's razor will be shown. You will be given tools to make presentations to upper management about how expensive it would be to change course after 100 man-years of effort. Case studies of failed efforts to do so will be discussed. Cost overruns and ultimate inadequacies of, say, the FBI computer system will be highlighted. Sign up now, 20% discount for nervous MV developers over 40 (proof of age required)! </ad>. Back to post: What do you mean "comparisons are ... not the right question to ask"? Of course a comparison of like products would be extremely helpful!! Don't you do comparisons every time you buy a car, a phone, a can of paint? What can you mean? If DesignBais and Visage are totally dissimilar products, I'd agree, but going by your own posts they CAN be compared. As far as Visage goes, what you're saying makes *no sense*. So it's more than a 4gl. Does that make it inaccurate to say it is, or use as, a 4gl? So it has features you may never use. So does every software product of any merit. You choose to use it at the level you are comfortable with, and if it does the job who cares what else it can do? No, Tony, while Ross may be over-zealous in his proselytizing of Visage, I, for one, have a clear picture of what it is and what it can do! Otoh, after all your pushing .Net, I have no idea what it does, or why I would want to spend my valuable time investing in it. Now I realize it's not your place to educate us non-Netters about it, but can't you write ONE simple, non-mnemonic-infested paragraph about it that's understandable, without a snide remark? (Dawn, write one of your clear-headed mewsings about this subject? Puhlease?) Chandru Murthi "Tony Gravagno" <g6q3x9lu53001 (AT) sneakemail (DOT) com.invalid> wrote in message news:j7sc0298gks0irjd3se1h54h4lccnp5p0u (AT) 4ax (DOT) com... "dawn" wrote: Can you be more specific about which features in Visage you would find undesirable in DesignBAIS? When I say "features" I don't mean what the product has, I mean what it _is_. Visage _is_ "too much". It _is_ all the things that people in these forums say they don't want in other offerings, while DesignBais is the sort of simple to use but very effective tool that they do ask for. Maybe it's good that the term "features" was misinterpreted because Ross went on again about how much is in the software and bragged that people could of course choose to not use some of the features which are packed into the product. That's exactly what I mean. Again, I don't want to take anything away from Visage. I think this market appreciates simplicity coupled with reasonable pricing. I think Visage has identity issues which Ross and I have discussed at great length - it tries to be too much for everyone. Nucleus has some of the same issues and so does the mvToolBox - all great products though. For example, I would challenge the majority of this audience to really tell us what Visage is or does even after years of Ross's marketing and perhaps even after a demo - if you answer it's a 4GL the buzzer sounds - sorry, it's much much more. Don't quite understand it? That's the point. Same with Nucleus and mvToolbox. Now compare that to DesignBais which the average Pick developer "gets" and can use quickly without having to learn other technologies, and without getting confused by all of the other stuff in the kit. This is one of the reasons why I avoid one-for-one comparisons between the products. Discussing the payload capacity of a truck serves no purpose when the customer wants a family vehicle - so to speak. I don't believe your average "I don't want any new fangled gizmos" MV Developer will understand or appreciate Visage. This doesn't seem to square with Ross's "two fresh-out-of-uni kids wrote software the day the started working" scenario. Well, those were school kids and not your average MV developers. Kids in school are more at home with Visual Studio and Eclipse than they are with ED or AE. If a Pick developer knows enough about VS and Eclipse they'll probably "get" Visage too, but this sort of person probably won't be looking at Visage, DesignBais, or many other such packages in our market. The real question is, how many Pick developers have decided to skip Visage after spending a much longer time with it? I've heard a number of those anecdotes too. (No bash, just explaining and balancing.) I think the more Ross adds into Visage the more he distances the product from the typical base of MV developers that want a GUI but don't want to get involved with anything more than a browser and Pick BASIC. While there are some folks like that, I think there are plenty who would like to write good up-to-date software that can be written and maintained while getting a big bang for the buck and don't feel a need to have all of their code in BASIC. And I'm thinking most of the people who are going to make the leap to something else have already done so because these sorts of products have been around for many years. Anyone who's still on the fence has probably already passed up Visage because it doesn't fit their requirements, which is what opens the door to consider something like DesignBais - in fact it helps to explain why DesignBais was developed in the first place. DesignBais was created by a VAR who was fully aware of what was in the market and decided to write their own solution. On a related topic, I'm really surprised how many MV folks seem to think that .NET and Microsoft provide a big bang for the buck, however, since my experience is that MS ravages their installed base more than others do. There is no cost at all for the .NET framework for development or deployment. How many times do I need to keep saying that? I'll post a blog entry on this topic in a few days. I do pay Microsoft about $300 per year (varies) for a bundle which includes every piece of software they publish - not because I have to but because there are extra tools that I like to use. That includes operating systems for development, Office, Virtual PC, Small Business Accounting, monthly updates on DVD, and lots more. If that's called ravaging - take me please!! By your own admission you haven't been doing homework on .NET, which is why I believe you still don't understand why it's gained so much popularity. Guys like Simon and I, and couple million others have done our homework, and we like what we see. Maybe that's a good thing because there is less confusion about where the products fit - and may eliminate these "which one is better" inquiries. Of course not ;-) Is anyone going to invest in both Visage and DesignBAIS? My point, like the truck/car analogy above was that once someone understands that these products don't really play in similar space it will be much easier to decide which one they want based on what "space" they happen to live in. These products are very different despite how much Ross wants to debate about why Visage is in the same class but better. Unfortunately that's disarming because once someone realizes that the products are so different he's got nothing to throw at people. You either buy what he has (good quality, no doubt) or you realize that it's simply not what you want. By maintaining the illusion of a head-to-head proximity, Ross gets more people to spend time looking at his software. I say simplify your life, if you are into gizmos, buy Visage, if not buy DesignBais.  If not, then one would need to know what differentiates them. I know folks who use WebWizard from EagleRock, but not either of these other two products. So, I'm also interested in what either of these products brings that WebWizard doesn't because I suspect that not many folks would want two of these products. Funny you should bring this up. WebWizard is much closer to FlashCONNECT and Coyote than Visage or DesignBais - and have you compared the WebWizard from EagleRock with the WebWizard from Via Systems? WW has the beginnings of a GUI but it's much more back-end intensive than any of the others. WW has no notion of application integration or file updates, nor any of the BASIC or DICT editors of the other products - it's more of a pure tool and certainly not a 4GL. Visage and DesignBais are as far from WW as AccuTerm is from the Windows Telnet client. Neither is "better" because they address different audiences. So for any given situation, it is likely that one is better. I'd like more of a clue what differentiates them in order to know what those situations might be. At this point I think it would be good for you to get a web presentation and/or CD from both sides. DesignBais does a very good job of providing the tools people need without going overboard to add the kitchen sink. What you typically want is that standard stuff is really easy, but everything else, including the kitchen sink, is possible. So, I'm really curious what the overboard part is. Ross? This is your game - no one is paying me for marketing. The people who produce DesignBais are aware of the wants and needs of their audience and have designed the product specifically for that niche. OK, we are getting somewhere. What is the niche audience for DesignBAIS compared to Visage? What would be an example of an MV shop that would not in the target for either product? I think a shop that understood mainstream technologies would not be too interested in either product. Case in point, I like DesignBais but I don' t use it for my product development - there's no paradox here. I think someone does need to know more about mainstream technologies in order to get the full potential from Visage. If you need "more" or "different", then sure, have a look at Visage or ASP.NET or Nucleus, or any of these other products. HTH It felt like marketing, but I like marketing enough at times and I begged for it with this question. Since it felt that way and I might be missing something, I'm just wondering, do you have a horse in this race Tony? --dawn No I don't. I'm supportive of DesignBais but I have not made any agreements with DesignBais. We did have a sort of relationship which may be renewed but I can say that about a lot of companies. Ross will confirm that at some point in the past I was talking with him about working with Visage. I have no axes to grind or seeds to sow. I've done my research and I'm just telling it like I see it. The fact that I say it with conviction is a character trait, not to be confused with ulterior motives. My clients here should confirm for you here that I always put all products on the table for discussion and then slowly take them away as appropriate. Remember, I'm out to help VARs and end-users to be successful. To me tools are irrelevant. (<< frequently discussed topic) All I'm addressing here is the confusion about these particular products - Everyone keeps asking for a comparison and I maintain that's not the right question to ask. The right way to approach it is "here are my needs, which one is right for me?" Anything else just opens people to a barrage of marketing rhetoric that only confuses the matter. BTW, to be fair... Ross, does it seem reasonable for me to spend more time with you at the show to ensure that I'm completely versed with Visage? ... anything you say can but will not be used against you. T |
#22
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"murthi" wrote: can you please stop?! done |
audience to the relationships to which I have just contributed some
sparks. You guys are all great.
smiles. --dawn
#23
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#24
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"dawn" wrote: Can you be more specific about which features in Visage you would find undesirable in DesignBAIS? When I say "features" I don't mean what the product has, I mean what it _is_. Visage _is_ "too much". It _is_ all the things that people in these forums say they don't want in other offerings, while DesignBais is the sort of simple to use but very effective tool that they do ask for. Maybe it's good that the term "features" was misinterpreted because Ross went on again about how much is in the software and bragged that people could of course choose to not use some of the features which are packed into the product. That's exactly what I mean. Again, I don't want to take anything away from Visage. I think this market appreciates simplicity coupled with reasonable pricing. I think Visage has identity issues which Ross and I have discussed at great length - it tries to be too much for everyone. Nucleus has some of the same issues and so does the mvToolBox - all great products though. For example, I would challenge the majority of this audience to really tell us what Visage is or does even after years of Ross's marketing and perhaps even after a demo - if you answer it's a 4GL the buzzer sounds - sorry, it's much much more. Don't quite understand it? That's the point. Same with Nucleus and mvToolbox. Now compare that to DesignBais which the average Pick developer "gets" and can use quickly without having to learn other technologies, and without getting confused by all of the other stuff in the kit. This is one of the reasons why I avoid one-for-one comparisons between the products. Discussing the payload capacity of a truck serves no purpose when the customer wants a family vehicle - so to speak. I don't believe your average "I don't want any new fangled gizmos" MV Developer will understand or appreciate Visage. This doesn't seem to square with Ross's "two fresh-out-of-uni kids wrote software the day the started working" scenario. Well, those were school kids and not your average MV developers. Kids in school are more at home with Visual Studio and Eclipse than they are with ED or AE. If a Pick developer knows enough about VS and Eclipse they'll probably "get" Visage too, but this sort of person probably won't be looking at Visage, DesignBais, or many other such packages in our market. The real question is, how many Pick developers have decided to skip Visage after spending a much longer time with it? I've heard a number of those anecdotes too. (No bash, just explaining and balancing.) I think the more Ross adds into Visage the more he distances the product from the typical base of MV developers that want a GUI but don't want to get involved with anything more than a browser and Pick BASIC. While there are some folks like that, I think there are plenty who would like to write good up-to-date software that can be written and maintained while getting a big bang for the buck and don't feel a need to have all of their code in BASIC. And I'm thinking most of the people who are going to make the leap to something else have already done so because these sorts of products have been around for many years. Anyone who's still on the fence has probably already passed up Visage because it doesn't fit their requirements, which is what opens the door to consider something like DesignBais - in fact it helps to explain why DesignBais was developed in the first place. DesignBais was created by a VAR who was fully aware of what was in the market and decided to write their own solution. On a related topic, I'm really surprised how many MV folks seem to think that .NET and Microsoft provide a big bang for the buck, however, since my experience is that MS ravages their installed base more than others do. There is no cost at all for the .NET framework for development or deployment. How many times do I need to keep saying that? I'll post a blog entry on this topic in a few days. I do pay Microsoft about $300 per year (varies) for a bundle which includes every piece of software they publish - not because I have to but because there are extra tools that I like to use. That includes operating systems for development, Office, Virtual PC, Small Business Accounting, monthly updates on DVD, and lots more. If that's called ravaging - take me please!! By your own admission you haven't been doing homework on .NET, which is why I believe you still don't understand why it's gained so much popularity. Guys like Simon and I, and couple million others have done our homework, and we like what we see. Maybe that's a good thing because there is less confusion about where the products fit - and may eliminate these "which one is better" inquiries. Of course not ;-) Is anyone going to invest in both Visage and DesignBAIS? My point, like the truck/car analogy above was that once someone understands that these products don't really play in similar space it will be much easier to decide which one they want based on what "space" they happen to live in. These products are very different despite how much Ross wants to debate about why Visage is in the same class but better. Unfortunately that's disarming because once someone realizes that the products are so different he's got nothing to throw at people. You either buy what he has (good quality, no doubt) or you realize that it's simply not what you want. By maintaining the illusion of a head-to-head proximity, Ross gets more people to spend time looking at his software. I say simplify your life, if you are into gizmos, buy Visage, if not buy DesignBais. If not, then one would need to know what differentiates them. I know folks who use WebWizard from EagleRock, but not either of these other two products. So, I'm also interested in what either of these products brings that WebWizard doesn't because I suspect that not many folks would want two of these products. Funny you should bring this up. WebWizard is much closer to FlashCONNECT and Coyote than Visage or DesignBais - and have you compared the WebWizard from EagleRock with the WebWizard from Via Systems? WW has the beginnings of a GUI but it's much more back-end intensive than any of the others. WW has no notion of application integration or file updates, nor any of the BASIC or DICT editors of the other products - it's more of a pure tool and certainly not a 4GL. Visage and DesignBais are as far from WW as AccuTerm is from the Windows Telnet client. Neither is "better" because they address different audiences. So for any given situation, it is likely that one is better. I'd like more of a clue what differentiates them in order to know what those situations might be. At this point I think it would be good for you to get a web presentation and/or CD from both sides. DesignBais does a very good job of providing the tools people need without going overboard to add the kitchen sink. What you typically want is that standard stuff is really easy, but everything else, including the kitchen sink, is possible. So, I'm really curious what the overboard part is. Ross? This is your game - no one is paying me for marketing. The people who produce DesignBais are aware of the wants and needs of their audience and have designed the product specifically for that niche. OK, we are getting somewhere. What is the niche audience for DesignBAIS compared to Visage? What would be an example of an MV shop that would not in the target for either product? I think a shop that understood mainstream technologies would not be too interested in either product. Case in point, I like DesignBais but I don' t use it for my product development - there's no paradox here. I think someone does need to know more about mainstream technologies in order to get the full potential from Visage. If you need "more" or "different", then sure, have a look at Visage or ASP.NET or Nucleus, or any of these other products. HTH It felt like marketing, but I like marketing enough at times and I begged for it with this question. Since it felt that way and I might be missing something, I'm just wondering, do you have a horse in this race Tony? --dawn No I don't. I'm supportive of DesignBais but I have not made any agreements with DesignBais. We did have a sort of relationship which may be renewed but I can say that about a lot of companies. Ross will confirm that at some point in the past I was talking with him about working with Visage. I have no axes to grind or seeds to sow. I've done my research and I'm just telling it like I see it. The fact that I say it with conviction is a character trait, not to be confused with ulterior motives. My clients here should confirm for you here that I always put all products on the table for discussion and then slowly take them away as appropriate. Remember, I'm out to help VARs and end-users to be successful. To me tools are irrelevant. (<< frequently discussed topic) All I'm addressing here is the confusion about these particular products - Everyone keeps asking for a comparison and I maintain that's not the right question to ask. The right way to approach it is "here are my needs, which one is right for me?" Anything else just opens people to a barrage of marketing rhetoric that only confuses the matter. BTW, to be fair... Ross, does it seem reasonable for me to spend more time with you at the show to ensure that I'm completely versed with Visage? ... anything you say can but will not be used against you. T |
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