ProIV Information Poll (Old)

Hi,

It's been a while, so I thought I would gather some information about what you are all doing with ProIV.

This is to help me make some decisions around ProIV IDE and the direction that I take.

The options are multiple choice, so you can select more than one answer to each question.

Thanks for your help,

Rob D.

Actually, Rob, it is spelled STUPIDLayer.

Well someone voted for it

Well someone voted for it

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAA There, my friend.....
I voted that I USED it. I would NEVER vote FOR it.

So the poll has been up for over two weeks and has a grand total of 44 votes, hardly impressive if this is supposed to be the centre of the active proiv world.

One third of replies are using green screen - Ok they have their place but i can't remember the last time i saw a green screen application, must have been last century.

Ok so here's where i get raise people's temperature more and apologies Rob if you are offended by my comments but it's my opinion as someone who has to make the call on what we use.

The majority of developers are using VIP. Well it comes with the product and is supported by the supplier so no real surprise there I guess considering the other option is to go with a product supported by one guy in his spare time - Rob you might be the best and most responsive developer in the world but you are still just one guy and I think you have a day job. I think many people will acknowledge that VIP could "be improved" but unless there is positive feedback from the activists then it just won't happen. This topic does not score in the User Group meetings I have been to and suposedly this drives the development - but that's another thread.

Given the history of both products, the time invested, agendas, insults traded, egos etc, etc I am not surprised that there has never been a serious attempt to bring both products together which IMHO would be the best solution. Or has there ??

So come on, how about all sides getting together putting aside any baggage and working to improve the IDE and have a good product? Open Source the IDE?

Edited by Tony Waszkiewicz, 10 May 2007 - 05:09 PM.

Tony, surely the question is why does ProIV not open source their bootstrap defs. How would it possibly harm them to have additional development tools out there?

To try and force VIP on people that simply don't like it is ludicrous - you yourself acknowledge that VIP could stand to be improved. Hell, make that open source too - there are a lot of very talented ProIV people out there. Let them do the work for you !!

Why are P4 so afraid of giving people a genuine choice? And if Rob chooses to try and make an income from his work then what is wrong with that? VIP generates no income - it is packaged with the software so P4 aren't losing any revenue there.

So come on, open up the market for new development tools and let Rob's sink or swim on it's own merits.

//Mike

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply, been a bit busy.

No apologies needed Tony, I value any kind of feed back, and it can only help me make things better for you and other members of the ProIV world.

I wouldn't say that 'Most developers are using VIP'. Where do you get that from? According to the poll, only 18 out of 47 are using VIP. I know of alot of sites that are not on VIP, in fact I know of more sites NOT on VIP.

There are 2 large world wide companies (and other smaller companies), with over 50 developers between them, that use IDE and they don’t seem to have any problems with IDE being supported by me. I give them good support and have fixed any problems for them. Just because ProIV LTD is a big company doesn’t mean you are safer or will get better help from them. In fact you will get a better service from me judging by what I (and others) get from them.

However, I have tried to get ProIV LTD involved more with IDE so that it might make some companies feel better about using IDE. I have tried to talk to ProIV LTD about IDE / VIP, but they just don’t want to listen. All I get from them is that VIP is great and all our users want to use VIP. I've told them what is wrong with VIP, and in my opinion the problems with VIP are not able to be fixed in ProIV. ProIV GUI just is not up to writing a development language tool. To get VIP working correctly you would have to embed so much ActiveX that you might as well write it in another language.

Every time I try to talk to them nothing happens. I get led on & on by them and then it just stops in a dead end. I'm really sick and tired of it I have to say.

I keep getting told, "Oh we are fixing VIP, we will make it better" and then nothing happens.

I'm sure that the VIP developers know ProIV well, to have been able to have even produced VIP, but it’s not that. It’s the ProIV GUI client that’s the problem and the GUI side of ProIV and screen design. You just can’t develop top end windows compliant GUI systems with ProIV. Therefore it is ridiculous to try to write an editor in ProIV.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing with ProIV. All languages have their strong / weak points. For example, you would not try to write a low level defrag program in VB because VB is not the correct tool for that, you would write it in C.

As for open source, in a large development language then open source is worth it, as money can be made supporting and distributing it. However in such a small area like ProIV, there would be no way of making any money from it. Although I am primarily trying to make a great environment for ProIV, money is something we all need to earn. Also, I don’t think there are enough people who would be dedicated enough to want to join an open source project in ProIV, but I could be wrong there.

ProIV LTD need to make all source stored in text type files, just like any other language, then we can build what ever utilities, editors, version control systems we like, and ProIV LTD can concentrate on the kernel and client.

Rob.

Well I didn't even vote! And, obviously we have a GUI product (from the user perspective), but we only use ProIV for the server components. So I can't really speak for anyone else. Our whole development infrastructure is built around a repository so we can handle multiple versions and build dependencies so VIP doesn't do anything for me apart from make life more complicated, our "source code" is in ascii flat files anyway. How they think spreading a Function across more and more files is a better way of doing things I don't know!

Now I've got some stuff up on 5.5 and there's more chance of moving to a Unix/Linux development environment I might finally get around to running an evaluation on IDE, Rob. Soon...ish... I promise!

Anyway the ProIV market is fragmented with people doing whatever niche stuff they are doing in whatever way they are doing it. If Northgate want to develop VIP driven by their own internal projects then it's clear that that will be their main focus. Have there been any real sales of ProIV Development to new clients in the last year? two years? three years?

Oh, if we're voting active numbers of developers we've still got over 30 ProIV developers (or developers who do ProIV at least some of the time).

Guys a quick reply,
I am not promoting VIP or any other tool, the point of my post was to stir things up becasue I totally agree that "You just can’t develop top end windows compliant GUI systems with ProIV" and it pains me to see such a small community pulling in all directions.

The proiv market is tiny and i cannot see any serious number of new companies doing development in proiv. Because it is a tiny market IMHO the only way to get any real results/progress is to combine everyone's efforts. Compare this against Java with the Eclipse, AJAX, Adobe Flex products and numerous Open Source products backed by giant companies such as IBM, SUN... i am just talking about the IDE not the kernel or client.

By 'Most developers are using VIP' I meant the highest percentage of replies at the time, and still true as i reply (just with 24%). Many development shops will stick with the manufacturer supplied product especially when it is included in the price.

Of course i know that you and proiv will find it difficult to work together.

Mike, i can see that "How would it possibly harm them to have additional development tools out there?" could cause additional support problems if the tool generates code that differs from VIP.


regards tony

Mike, i can see that "How would it possibly harm them to have additional development tools out there?" could cause additional support problems if the tool generates code that differs from VIP.

That would be true were it not for the fact that IDE doesn't generate code - it merely lets you modify the standard bootstraps.

It is VIP that has it's own boostrap base and, as such, generates the code for the compiler when it writes it to the standard boots. So by adding the extra layer VIP is more likely to cause a problem.

//Mike

Mike

Don't forget that Northgate could change the gen process to compile straight from the VIP bootstraps and not bother with the old bootraps files at all. It would speed things up a bit and where would that leave IDE?

Steve

There seems to be a problem with this poll .... There is no 1.x option!!

We are on version 1.8 (Mainframe).

Steve,

Yes, if they change to gen from the VIP boots then currently IDE will obviously not work.

However, the VIP boots are not 'that' different from the native boots, and looking into it it should not take me too much effort to change over to the VIP boots.

Currently I dont update the VIP boots, because of 2 reasons, 1) It would slow down performance as I have to update 2 sets of source & 2) It doesnt look like they are going to do this anytime soon, and I have other things I need to do to make IDE better.

Rob.

Sorry Scott,

Forgot about you Mainframe guys...

I've added 1.x for you...

Rob.