REALbasic 2008 - r4.0

is that it is a tool to develop software, and as any tool it has strengths and weaknesses. Most people complaining seem to miss the point, and would probably use a screw driver to hammer in a nail and complain afterwards.

So what is the truth?


<b>(1) You want to learn to program?</b>

Already you are faced with a plethora of choices: cross-platform or for Mac only? Standalone programs or ones which need a runtime? Just for fun or might it develop into something more serious?

For me the requirements were: easy to learn, good graphical user interface, cross-platform, and if possible cheap (preferable free)

That excluded X-Code (though I still have it on my Mac), Tcl, Python, and a few others and left me seriously looking at REALbasic, Java, SuperCard and Revolution. I tried all of them for a few weeks and REALbasic came out on top by a mile – I hadn’t previously appreciated the difference a fully object-oriented language would make.

X-Code is a good alternative if you (a) program for the Mac only and (b) you can stand the C language (not everyone can).


<b>(2) Is REALbasic as fast as C? </b>

Yes and No.

REALbasic is a fantastic Rapid Application Development Tool. It will usually take you far less time to write a program in REALbasic than in C, and for most programs it makes no difference if they have speed x or 2x (as the user is the slowest component in the chain and the computer waits most of the time for input from the user).

Even better if you have time critical parts then just write a plugin in C/C++ and REALbasic will happily accommodate it. You can also use declares to directly access APIs. And dealing directly with memoryblocks will also give you a speed boost should you need it.

That being said you can usually write a program that is faster in C than in REALbasic. Recently I was curious enough to try this, and my REALbasic program took about 650 milliseconds for the task, while the C program took 570 milliseconds. Was it worth the extra hassle to program it in C? No. But I can see situations where I might still go for a C plugin.

So people complaining about REALbasic being slower than C either don’t know what they are talking about or deliberately deceive the readers.


<b>(3) Why are REALbasic programs so big?</b>

REALbasic programs contain the whole framework – that means they are completely self contained and don’t rely on other bits being installed on your computer (like C# programs). Yes, that means a program doing nothing looks pretty big – and the situation is aggravated on the Mac where Universal programs need to contain both PPC and Intel code.

But the truth is that the size from then on doesn’t increase much as you add your code. And it has one advantage which beats the increased download size: I can run the program without an installer. Anyone who is on a “managed system” where IT does not let you install anything knows what I’m talking about (don’t you hate it when IT isn’t supporting your work anymore but became the masters of the house?). My REALbasic programs will run straight out of the box, no installation necessary, even from a USB stick if necessary.


<b>(4) Is REALbasic buggy?</b>

Sure it is. So is X-Code. VisualBasic. C#. MacOS X.

And don’t get me started on Word and Windows.

Any complex program contains bugs. But the big question is are there bugs which make the program unfit for purpose? So called show stopper bugs?

And there the answer is a resounding <b>“No” </b> for REALbasic.

Furthermore most “bugs” I’ve come across turned out to be errors in my code, so in the meanwhile I’m more carefull about mouthing off and ask politely first.


<b>(5) Can I do everything with REALbasic?</b>

No. No matter how hard you try you can’t make a decent coffee with it.

Sorry, but the question is too general to be meaningful. You could ask “Can I do everything with X-Code” and the answer would still be “No” - for example you can’t compile for Windows or Linux.

But REALbasic can – and as such there are some compromises that must be made. Not everything is supported on all platforms – mainly because there is no equivalent on the other platforms. But the same applies to Java to a much greater extend, and strangely enough you don’t hear people complaining that Java can’t do everything.

Basically anything you want to do can be done, and REALbasic even supports a large amount of platform specific items (like AppleEvents or Spotlight on the Mac or RegistryItems and TrayItems on Windows) - but then using them defeats the purpose of a cross-platform development tool somewhat.


<b>(6) What’s the greatest strength of REALbasic?</b>

Definitely the support both from the developers and the user community – where else do you have the CEO answering questions directly, the developers pinching in with advice on the forums and mailing lists, and an immense number of users eager to help you with your problems? The only other community where I experienced similar support (but not quite as good) is the RapidWeaver forums. Especially Joe Strout and Aaron Ballman deserve mentioning.

The one thing which constantly baffles me though is the politeness of the REALbasic developers – following some exchanges in the newsgroup by a certain individual I would have already been fuming at his personal attacks and unjustified comments, and ready to throw some four letter words in his face, but they still kept their cool. That is simply AMAZING.


<b>(7) What’s the greatest weaknesses of REALbasic?</b>

For me it is the lack of a better EditField control – the current one supports styled text (bold, italic, underlign, alignment, colour, fonts, size) but super/subscript are missing. And it is slow when using large texts. But then I rarely use more than 100,000 characters in a text ... actually, once a week I need to clean up a text with about 160,000 characters which then takes about 3 seconds. I can live with that.


<b>All in all I can heartily recommend REALbasic. I did some Basic and C at University, quite a bit in HyperCard afterwards, but REALbasic is the one which really enabled me to do more than just a few simple demo programs.
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