Real Software
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Hello, I was wondering if any of you have tried software from REAL Software. Like RealBasic. The reason I asked is My boss found their site and wants me to get information on it. I looks like it is a dumbed down or simplified version of VB. Can anyone give me any plus of minuses on using this software that is only $500.00.
It depends on what you want to achieve. I often browse the tool section in the DIY store, but wouldn't consider buying anything unless I had a job to do that could be done easier with a new purchase. Similarly, I investigate the programming problems I am trying to solve before looking in too much detail at any particular programming tool. If you want a cross-platform classic VB-like programming tool, and don't mind that the active user base is relatively small (= limited peer support), RealBasic looks fine. In my opinion, if you're working in a commercial environment, you're generally better off with something more mainstream.
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
nobody in their right mind would attempt to go show jumping on a bicycle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct0yd1-gxTo&feature=related[^] Although I'm not entirely certain on their mental status.
My current favourite word is: Nipple!
-SK Genius
So nice to see that Rule 34 has been branching out.
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Hello, I was wondering if any of you have tried software from REAL Software. Like RealBasic. The reason I asked is My boss found their site and wants me to get information on it. I looks like it is a dumbed down or simplified version of VB. Can anyone give me any plus of minuses on using this software that is only $500.00.
Hi Cory. I did only a very small project 2 years ago with RealBasic, so I really don't have much experience with it. However, here are RealBasic's best selling points. 1 - All the RAD simplicity & speed of development of VB6, but is cross platform (Windows, Mac & Linux). 2 - OOP development. 3 - No runtimes or external dependencies(no .NET or Java runtime needed, nor VB external DLLs). This means the applications can even be a self contained "portable"; that is you can run them from a USB key, and you don't need to install them. RB is marketed to developers that are already comfortable with the VB6 language & mode of development, and should be suitable for projects that you would build with VB6. It does appear though that RB's 3rd party add-ons and COM support tool market is a significantly smaller market than VB6's own. Hope this helps you Cory. If you do use RB, please update us all on this forum with your findings.
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Hello, I was wondering if any of you have tried software from REAL Software. Like RealBasic. The reason I asked is My boss found their site and wants me to get information on it. I looks like it is a dumbed down or simplified version of VB. Can anyone give me any plus of minuses on using this software that is only $500.00.
I wouldn't describe it at all as a dumbed down version of VB6. It's like what VB7 should have been. I think a lot of developers who didn't want to go to .NET went to REALbasic. As far as its technical details it compiles to machine code, uses native interface controls, has object-oriented features like inheritance, polymorphism, interfaces, etc. I encourage you to check it out. They have a free 30 or so day trial. Let us know how it works for you.
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ha ha I think you're right in os far as what was probably meant, but as a die-hard VB defender I think ERL was right! ;P Trouble with all you anti-VB lot is that you're all stuck in the past. With the advent of .NET there is really not that much difference in what can be done in either language. If VB is still more forgiving of bad programming practice, such practices are still the fault of the developer, not the language. In some ways, this coming together of the different languages in the .NET framework is a retrograde step, precisely because it takes away the relative advantages of one language over another. In the old days, VB was great for quick and dirty solutions, while C (in whatever guise) was all but essential for anything "heavy-duty". Nowadays, it really doesn't matter - it's purely a question of personal prefernce which language you use - they are all the same under the hood.
I totally agree with you Phil. I'm an old school programmer who worked in assembly language for 15 years, then C for 10 years, then up to C++, Cold Fusion, and now to VB.Net for the last two years. I was naturally attracted to C#, but my employer had standardized on VB.Net so that's what I learned. And I have to say that I like the clarity; brevity isn't always a virtue! But at one point, after reading many anti-VB rants I started to feel that I wasn't a "real" programmer anymore, despite knowing that both languages utilized the same runtime. Anyway, I got over it. And after all, when you get down to it it's all about design isn't it, no matter the language?
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Phil Uribe wrote:
Nowadays, it really doesn't matter - it's purely a question of personal prefernce which language you use - they are all the same under the hood.
This is correct if only because the real language at point here is called MSIL. When you program the .NET platform, you're programming it in MSIL. Any abstraction on top of MSIL ( C#, VB ) is only an illusion.
“Cannot find REALITY.SYS...Universe Halted.” ~ God on phone with Microsoft Customer Support
That statement is equivalent to saying that the differences between every language that compiles to native code is just an illusion as well, because the real language is native machine code. Actually, if you are developing on Windows, it isn't even real machine code - it's abstracted to be executed by the HAL.
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That statement is equivalent to saying that the differences between every language that compiles to native code is just an illusion as well, because the real language is native machine code. Actually, if you are developing on Windows, it isn't even real machine code - it's abstracted to be executed by the HAL.
Mike Marynowski wrote:
Actually, if you are developing on Windows, it isn't even real machine code - it's abstracted to be executed by the HAL.
Where does this weird idea come from? Native code is executed directly by the CPU.
“Cannot find REALITY.SYS...Universe Halted.” ~ God on phone with Microsoft Customer Support
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Mike Marynowski wrote:
Actually, if you are developing on Windows, it isn't even real machine code - it's abstracted to be executed by the HAL.
Where does this weird idea come from? Native code is executed directly by the CPU.
“Cannot find REALITY.SYS...Universe Halted.” ~ God on phone with Microsoft Customer Support
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You're misinterpreting it. The HAL is not a ".NET-like" virtualization of the CPU. It's a software layer that sits between the kernel and the motherboard. If you examine any native x86 PE file, you'll find honest-to-God, native CPU instructions, not some sort of HAL-abstracted P-code.
“Cannot find REALITY.SYS...Universe Halted.” ~ God on phone with Microsoft Customer Support
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You're misinterpreting it. The HAL is not a ".NET-like" virtualization of the CPU. It's a software layer that sits between the kernel and the motherboard. If you examine any native x86 PE file, you'll find honest-to-God, native CPU instructions, not some sort of HAL-abstracted P-code.
“Cannot find REALITY.SYS...Universe Halted.” ~ God on phone with Microsoft Customer Support
I'm not misinterpreting it. It is certainly thinner than the .NET framework (much thinner), but you can virtualize windows to run on just about any hardware by implementing a HAL that translates those CPU instructions accordingly. Yes, the "machine code" in the executables is very close (if not identical) to the X86 instruction set to minimize the translation needed. But we are diverting...my point was that simply that just because everything ends up in a common format (be is MSIL or be it PE format for execution on windows) doesn't mean that every language that compiles down to the common format is equal and any differences are illusions. That's all :)
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I'm not misinterpreting it. It is certainly thinner than the .NET framework (much thinner), but you can virtualize windows to run on just about any hardware by implementing a HAL that translates those CPU instructions accordingly. Yes, the "machine code" in the executables is very close (if not identical) to the X86 instruction set to minimize the translation needed. But we are diverting...my point was that simply that just because everything ends up in a common format (be is MSIL or be it PE format for execution on windows) doesn't mean that every language that compiles down to the common format is equal and any differences are illusions. That's all :)
Thanks for your replies. I understand your main point. But I also found your HAL assertion to be the more interesting part of your post.
“Cannot find REALITY.SYS...Universe Halted.” ~ God on phone with Microsoft Customer Support
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Hello, I was wondering if any of you have tried software from REAL Software. Like RealBasic. The reason I asked is My boss found their site and wants me to get information on it. I looks like it is a dumbed down or simplified version of VB. Can anyone give me any plus of minuses on using this software that is only $500.00.
I've played with it. It is NOT a dumbed down version of VB. It has pretty much the same syntax as VB6, but it supports things that VB6 never supported, such as multithreading, polymorphism, multiplatform, etc. For old VB6 developers who are put off by VB.NET, I think REALbasic is a possible alternative (but then, I like to support the underdog sometimes). They have a free standard edition for LINUX you can download, or you can try a 30 day free trial for the Windows version. I recommend giving it a try, but definately try it before you buy it to make sure it fits your needs.
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Hello, I was wondering if any of you have tried software from REAL Software. Like RealBasic. The reason I asked is My boss found their site and wants me to get information on it. I looks like it is a dumbed down or simplified version of VB. Can anyone give me any plus of minuses on using this software that is only $500.00.
RealBasic predates Visual Basic, and is a compileable version of GWBasic
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Hello, I was wondering if any of you have tried software from REAL Software. Like RealBasic. The reason I asked is My boss found their site and wants me to get information on it. I looks like it is a dumbed down or simplified version of VB. Can anyone give me any plus of minuses on using this software that is only $500.00.
I owned the pre version and version 1, it was for mac only, then they started supporting compiling for pc as well, the version I have never really pulled the pc build off though. All i was using it for is little quick helper apps, like using it to populate text in quark xpress, {recipe cards, for printing company}. I understand it got better at the pc builds, but have not used the newer versions myself. Also, speaking for myself, it seemed to be very similar to vb at the time and the same rules applied. it could make programs that were as complicated or simple as you wanted to work with. It also lacked database support at that time as well, I understand that has been fixed as well, not sure what the support is though. Hope someone with more info drops by to help you, you may want to try asking some mac specific programmers if they ever used it. Oh, and the people involved with the program were very nice, and very helpful. Once had the main programmer, andrew i think was his name, help me out with a problem himself. And he was know for visiting the message boards on the site an helping people out all the time. Hope i got his name right, been a few years. Check they may have a rc version that you can download and play with, eventually it will expire as well as any programs written with it but you could get an idea of how it works. {of course i'm basing this on memory from years ago so..} Good luck.
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Hello, I was wondering if any of you have tried software from REAL Software. Like RealBasic. The reason I asked is My boss found their site and wants me to get information on it. I looks like it is a dumbed down or simplified version of VB. Can anyone give me any plus of minuses on using this software that is only $500.00.
I hadn't programmed since I worked in borland turbo asm so when I started using Realbasic it gave me back the power to control my computer with my own code. It is initially very easy to get started in, much much easier than dotnet. Unfortunately, about the time you get up to speed with it, you realize that it is very limited and that to gain the required functionality you have to spend a lot with third party developers. If you read the Realbasic forums long enough you will get the general idea of what I am saying here. I switched to VB.net and rewrote everything. I was amazed at how much better the dotnet environment was and absolutely loved VB. However, I decided to bite the bullet and then rewrote everything again in C#. I now personally feel that C# is the best way to go, especially because it gets you into the c family of languages the code of which is everywhere. I now find C# much easier than VB but that is personal. Back to Realbasic though. This is the first time I have actually spoken out somewhat against Realbasic and this is because I do respect what the small team there are doing but in the end things have moved on and the huge freedom available in dotnet make it very rewarding. Realbasic is not cheap and the add-ons aren’t either, Visual Studio Express is free. Regards, John.
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Hello, I was wondering if any of you have tried software from REAL Software. Like RealBasic. The reason I asked is My boss found their site and wants me to get information on it. I looks like it is a dumbed down or simplified version of VB. Can anyone give me any plus of minuses on using this software that is only $500.00.
I had a look at this toolkit in 2003, because at the time there weren't any other cross-platform ide tools. There was a demand for a MacOS version of our software at the time. Let's face it, it would have taken me longer to learn to build in raw C for a MacOS app or even Java. Qt & wxWidgets were still in their infancy. It's anything but dumbed down, when you consider what it takes to develop applications that will run on MacOS, Windows & Linux. The language is very similar to VB6 with more emphasis on OO usage. Using this language and software is really aimed at cross-platform development. If this is what you are aiming for at work, then it's a quick, easy and powerful way to do this. If you don't like RealBasic or VB, QT version 4 from Trolltech is excellent and offers development in C++, using various IDE's or compilers. wxWidgets is fairly good, but I find it slightly harder to setup & develop. Darth2008
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I had a look at this toolkit in 2003, because at the time there weren't any other cross-platform ide tools. There was a demand for a MacOS version of our software at the time. Let's face it, it would have taken me longer to learn to build in raw C for a MacOS app or even Java. Qt & wxWidgets were still in their infancy. It's anything but dumbed down, when you consider what it takes to develop applications that will run on MacOS, Windows & Linux. The language is very similar to VB6 with more emphasis on OO usage. Using this language and software is really aimed at cross-platform development. If this is what you are aiming for at work, then it's a quick, easy and powerful way to do this. If you don't like RealBasic or VB, QT version 4 from Trolltech is excellent and offers development in C++, using various IDE's or compilers. wxWidgets is fairly good, but I find it slightly harder to setup & develop. Darth2008
The cross platform advantage is only true to a point. I found I needed to use win32 native api's very early on in the piece and of course the moment you do that you no longer have cross platform. It supports activex but not all com so that is another limitation I could not live with. Regards, John.
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Hello, I was wondering if any of you have tried software from REAL Software. Like RealBasic. The reason I asked is My boss found their site and wants me to get information on it. I looks like it is a dumbed down or simplified version of VB. Can anyone give me any plus of minuses on using this software that is only $500.00.
Hi Corey, I thought I would chime in: I own a software consulting business and I primarily use REALbasic to create solutions for my clients. I come from a background working with Microsoft .NET. REALbasic is much more advanced than VB6. It is fully object-oriented, just like VB.NET. REALbasic is a lot easier to learn because it is not burdened by the large, complex .NET framework. REALbasic works on Windows, Mac OS X and various flavors of Linux. I develop all my software on Mac OS X even though many of my clients want Windows software. REALbasic includes a remote debugger that allows you to, for example, debug on Windows while developing on Mac OS X. REALbasic is updated at least every 90 days, so it is constantly evolving. New features added this year include introspection and a code profiler. It's had features (like extension methods) years before they showed up in .NET 3.0. REALbasic can be a great choice for creating desktop applications. For web applications there is a new 3rd party product, called Yuma (www.yumadev.com), that was recently released. It is a mod for Apache that allows you to embed REALbasic code in HTML much like how PHP or classic ASP works. It's new, but it seems to work well. REALbasic is not perfect, however. The executables it creates are a bit large, which bothers some people. The 3rd party market is small, so there are fewer additional controls and extensions to choose from. If I can answer more specific questions for you, don't hesitate to ask. You might also want to check out the forums at forums.realsoftware.com.
