I went there, and the first thing I didn't see was any code.<p>In fact, after clicking around, I failed to find anything that excited me as a programmer. The closest I got to a look at the actual product/language were a couple partial screenshots of some IDE, and the opportunity to download some tutorials in zip files (which I declined).<p>I did, however, see a whole lot of marketingspeak telling me how awesome it all was. Pages and pages of text and bullet points, slick graphics, and not much else.<p>Consider my bullshit meter pegged.
I grew up around RunRev. Tuviah Snyder, the former developer of MetaCard and former CTO of RunRev is my older brother. RunRev made a deal with Scott Raney, the creator of MetaCard to basically take it over, redistribute it and make future modifications. Kevin Miller, the CEO is a pretty decent fellow. They have a very loyal following, and are trying to branch out with new marketing and significant upgrades to their products.<p>Personally, I found developing in RunRev very frustrating. I use to joke that I would have to start a function with please and end it with thank you. However, some find the english like syntax pleasing, I find it very frustrating. I prefer to say x = 3, instead of put 3 into x, or some variant of that.
RunRev is based on MetaCard, which was a cross-platform implementation of Apple's HyperCard that ran on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, HPUX, AIX, etc.<p>They took the HyperCard-ish IDE and turned it into a more familiar IDE (from the standpoint of users of more mainstream IDEs).
Thanks for the comments about Rev. A few responses:<p>Yes, the product has historically been something of a niche desktop development tool (perhaps of particular interest to former HyperCard developers). That said it has seen its share of success, with large scale enterprise applications, real time systems and commercial shrink wrapped software, along with the tools, utilities, shareware and educational software you would expect for this type of tool.<p>The big news is that we are relaunching the product this year on the Web as a mainstream, modern language with a free entry-level version for both the browser and server. Its fast, efficient, with modern features like nested arrays and OO behaviors. To support this relaunch there will be some major new site sections on getting started with literally hundreds of code examples and walk-throughs, so if you're interested please do check the site out again over the next few weeks.<p>Contrary to the popular myth, I would argue that English is not a verbose method of programming, it requires much, much less code than a traditional lower-level language. And, the typical programmer spends a lot more time reading code than writing it. English is highly readable, doing a much better job of reflecting the way the human mind works. Once you get into the mindset, it really is very productive. We have a really exciting launch coming up and I think we can make a positive impact on the way that certain types of software gets written.<p>Kevin Miller
RunRev CEO
A completely closed, proprietary platform, with its own (probably incompatible with everything else) language, that advertises itself as being "easier" than other languages?<p>People keep trying this sort of thing, and the result is almost always slow, brain-damaged, and painful for actual programmers to use, serving mostly to allow non-programmers to accomplish just enough to shoot themselves in the foot.<p>So, what's the deal? Does this thing actually have any value to it? I sure can't find anything encouraging from their website.
I have a professor telling me this is what he wants a project written in. It's currently a terrible mess of JSPs, and I have half a mind to simply re-write it in Django or RoR. How do I convince him to switch from JSPs to Django/RoR instead of this RunRev thing?