[projos]

How's that for an informative subject line? ;-)

Anyway, I need to hire an expert RealBasic developer to make a RSS creation and management system for my company. In many ways, it will resemble a "light" version of FeedForAll or NewzAlert.

Some of the features:

* Simple data entry and storage in a local RealBasic database
* Ability to add and manage "Channels"
* Ability to publish both Atom and RSS -- including somewhat advanced date formating
* FTP upload capacity
* Integration of pre-made eSellerate software registration libraries

Software will be designed primarily for the Mac, but also for Windows users. Bonus $$$ if created for Linux also.

Toolbar icons have already been made.

Again, I would suggest you look at FeedForAll or NewzAlert if you want an idea of the RSS management functionality (though I won't be needing image manipulation, WYSIWYG editor, etc).

I need this project finished soon, so please email me at projos {at} gmail {dot} com if you're interested. Please include the following info in your email:

* Previous experience with similar work
* Estimated time frame to completion
* Cost

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Josiah

P.S. You can catch me on AIM if you have questions: imnetscripter

[Kristoff]

Is RealBasic a requirement?
I mean, why not Java, or any other language?

[projos]

Yes, RealBasic is a requirement. I need to use RealBasic for many reasons, including cross-platform compatibility.

[Kristoff]

What are the reasons? I can't think of a better portable platform than java.

[projos]

Actually, it's because I need to learn RealBasic for another project -- so I'd like all my apps to be in the same language.

[osxisfun]

>What are the reasons? I can't think of a better portable platform than java.

I can. Java apps feel icky (IMO) the interface is a little off, the way it starts is a little off (menu bar)...

As long as it wasn't a highend - intesive app, i'd much rather use an rb app.

But that's just me.

[projos]

Yeah, same here. To me, Java apps just don't feel like "real" software (no pun intended).

[Propofol]

OT (sorry)

Are RB apps real compiled apps on all platforms, or are they like old VB apps which are interpreted...?

Are they slow?

[osxisfun]

Originally posted by Propofol:
OT (sorry)

Are RB apps real compiled apps on all platforms, or are they like old VB apps which are interpreted...?

Are they slow?

they each use some type of JIT compiler unless i am mistaken. native to each platform.

slow is a relative term but if you are building something that is less than photoshop you probably won't see slow downs.

if you where building a cad app that scrolled a whole canvas i would probably not use it.

apps that hold LOTS of data can slow down if you put all the data in a single listbox for instance. overall though its about as fast a normal app.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by projos:
Yeah, same here. To me, Java apps just don't feel like "real" software (no pun intended).

To me (and apparently the good folks at PerversionTracker), the same is true for RealBasic apps. RealBasic probably has a worse rep among Mac users than Java, whether deserved or not.

At any rate, I wouldn't say either is heinously slow on reasonably modern computers. They're both kind of doggish for graphical operations on my iMac 400, but what can you expect?

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
they each use some type of JIT compiler unless i am mistaken.

I'm pretty sure you are mistaken.

Originally posted by Chuckit:
To me (and apparently the good folks at PerversionTracker), the same is true for RealBasic apps. RealBasic probably has a worse rep among Mac users than Java, whether deserved or not.

I would say it's undeserved. The thing is about RealBasic is that it is fairly easy, which means it is popular among less experienced software devlepers. So you are going to see some lesser quality apps. But that is more the problem with the developer than the tool. A very good app can be made with RealBasic, and a very poor app can be made with Cocoa.

It is like how the computer opened the door up to really bad graphic design. There is lots of good stuff out there, but now that the tool is in the hands of novices, there is lots of bad stuff too.

[osxisfun]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
I'm pretty sure you are mistaken.

maybe puesdo code ? I'm just lazy otherwise i would look it up.

found this: don't know if it answers any questions

The current compiler computes the relevant values on the fly. It doesn't
copy machine language from anywhere; it creates the values as needed. There
is no reason a compiler written in REALbasic would have to work differently.

Specifically, there are classes called "PPCOpWriter" and "IA32OpWriter".
These classes have methods for the instructions we might want to generate.
Each method performs appropriate shifting and masking arithmetic to produce
the relevant opcodes. No assembly language or canned machine code is
involved at any part of the process.

> Technically, those bits and bytes could also come from a compiled REALbasic
> framework, but then the framework would be much larger, slower, and more
> inefficient.

I think you're mixing up two different parts of the system. The framework is
a library full of classes and methods providing standard functionality for
every project. The compiler converts source code into machine language and
builds finished applications.

Mars Saxman
REAL Software

[Chuckit]

I'm pretty sure RealBasic is a compiled language, since (if I recall) you have to create different executables for each platform you want to run it on. So it doesn't seem to be interpreted or use a virtual machine like Java does.

[ashtoash]

Originally posted by Kristoff:
What are the reasons? I can't think of a better portable platform than java.

Do you know any java applets that have a "great" interface? I've never found any. Java's cross platform portability is fantastic however the front end the part often refected MOST to the user doesn't transpose well across OSes. Kinda a dissapointment for me. Thoughts?

[itistoday]

Originally posted by ashtoash:
Do you know any java applets that have a "great" interface? I've never found any. Java's cross platform portability is fantastic however the front end the part often refected MOST to the user doesn't transpose well across OSes. Kinda a dissapointment for me. Thoughts?

Have you used Acquisition? That's a java app, and it has one of the best interfaces I've ever seen. Granted, however, that it uses java-cocoa bindings for the OS X style interface. Or how about Azureus, the best bittorrent client out there. It has an excellent interface and is pure java (with SWT, but that's cross-platform too).

[ashtoash]

perversiontracker? What did you setup your own website? This site has been around for what like a day? (EDIT I see it's been "registered" since 2001) I'm still laughing, a site to post useless software? Seems kinda like a useless site. Quick before you download anything check out "perversiontracker.com or you might end up with useless software! Nooooooooooo!

Originally posted by Chuckit:
To me (and apparently the good folks at PerversionTracker), the same is true for RealBasic apps. RealBasic probably has a worse rep among Mac users than Java, whether deserved or not.

At any rate, I wouldn't say either is heinously slow on reasonably modern computers. They're both kind of doggish for graphical operations on my iMac 400, but what can you expect?

[ashtoash]

The only reason that application is ANY good is the interface. Which as you said is all in cocoa. It's a pain in the ass if your for portability.

Originally posted by itistoday:
Have you used Acquisition? That's a java app, and it has one of the best interfaces I've ever seen. Granted, however, that it uses java-cocoa bindings for the OS X style interface. Or how about Azureus, the best bittorrent client out there. It has an excellent interface and is pure java (with SWT, but that's cross-platform too).

[iJed]

I have to agree with almost everyone here that Java is a much better choice than RealBASIC. Java is a concise language with a excellent and mostly mature class library. Whereas RealBASIC is a horribly verbose language with a notoriously buggy and oversized runtime library. I wouldn't even consider any type of BASIC for real application development. Use the excellent Eclipse + SWT to create rich applications which call the underlying C APIs of the host OS.

My work recently picked VB.NET over (my recommendation of) Java to write our next generation systems and I've really not been happy about it. They picked VB.NET because the VB6 guys thought it was great even though not one of them really understands object oriented programming. They didn't even try any alternatives.

There are enough bad BASIC developers out there (and in my company) and I don't want people encouraging others to learn, promote and use language that should have died out years ago.

Just incase some of you didn't notice: I HATE BASIC!

EDIT: added comment about SWT

[osxisfun]

Originally posted by iJed:
I have to agree with almost everyone here that Java is a much better choice than RealBASIC. Java is a concise language with a excellent and mostly mature class library. Whereas RealBASIC is a horribly verbose language with a notoriously buggy and oversized runtime library. I wouldn't even consider any type of BASIC for real application development. Use the excellent Eclipse + SWT to create rich applications which call the underlying C APIs of the host OS.

My work recently picked VB.NET over (my recommendation of) Java to write our next generation systems and I've really not been happy about it. They picked VB.NET because the VB6 guys thought it was great even though not one of them really understands object oriented programming. They didn't even try any alternatives.

There are enough bad BASIC developers out there (and in my company) and I don't want people encouraging others to learn, promote and use language that should have died out years ago.

Just incase some of you didn't notice: I HATE BASIC!

EDIT: added comment about SWT

a) Realbasic should really be called RealJavaScript as its much closer to that now.

b) Consise a language as it may be, it still makes apps whose interface's tend to be about as good looking as a monkey's ass.

[iJed]

a) Realbasic should really be called RealJavaScript as its much closer to that now.

I don't really see the relation with JavaScript. RB is most certainly a descendent of BASIC and looks nothing like the C derived syntax of JavaScript.

b) Consise a language as it may be, it still makes apps whose interface's tend to be about as good looking as a monkey's ass.

Possibly if you use Swing or AWT although this doesn't need to be the case. However SWT and Cocoa Java apps looks very much like Carbon and ObjC Cocoa apps. The reason being that SWT wraps a thin layer around the Carbon functions while Cocoa Java is Cocoa (obviously).

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by ashtoash:
perversiontracker? What did you setup your own website?

Whoa, I totally missed this little bit o' conspiracy theorism.

At any rate, Java is a much more popular language than REALbasic, for what it's worth. So unless REALbasic is actively better in some large way, I don't see the point of it. Though I do think it's kind of strange to say REALbasic has an oversized class library while Java doesn't. I've never heard anyone accuse Java of being small...