More then one developer on same project

[Roderick]

Re: More then one developer on same project

I see your point and I understand your need for powerful developer tools within Alpha.

Alpha is focusing on helping entry to mid level developers create powerful applications without much programming. They have made major strides in web application tools (especially AJAX). Most of those hardcore developer tools would go unused by many (or dare I say most) users here. That includes me.

If Alpha 10's new features had your list of hardcore tools it might not have interested me that much. I hope to get to your skill level and possibly need those tools one day.

Suggestion: Maybe Alpha can develop a way for developers to create those hardcore third party plugins and have them work within Alpha? (Like VST plugins for music applications)

[kkfin]

Re: More then one developer on same project

Roderick, this is not a question of skill level. We are now talking about developing software for customers. The tools I mentioned makes your (developer) life just a little easier and therefore your programs maybe a bit better because you can focus things that really matter.

- It is just good to know what software version customer is using.
- Is is just so clever to model databases structure with proper modeling tool. When you use one you will never go back to the old way regardless of your skill level. Now Alpha users have choices because of the Active Link.
- It is just so easy to deliver a program to customer if you have a good installer
- It is just so much easier to make your own code if you have good debugger (maybe the version 10 have?)
- It is just so easy to update the customers software if you have already tools for it

To use these tools you do not have to be a clever programmer. They just help you and makes yours programs maybe a little bit better because you don't have to worry and handle every aspect by yourself.

I just do not understand what you mean saying that Alpha is targeting their software to mid level developers. Are they people who love to work with an outdated software and they are happy with it? Why do the mid level developers not need proper tools to help with their effords to develop good programs?

Alpha should now go forward and offer to developers tools that makes developing a program much easier than it is now. Now you really have to have skills to get the software out to customers. Everybody have to have their own systems because Alpha do not offer tools for it.

The Desktop developers are now in the situation when they are realizing that the development focus is in the Alphas Web side. In version 10 there are some minor improvements to the Desktop side. The best is maybe the new debugger. Not much has happened since version 9. You have to go to version 10 if you want to develop to Windows 7 and if you do not want to risk your computers security if you are using Windows Xp as an development environment.

So you really have to go to version 10 if you want to continue using Aplha as your development enviroment for Desktop. It is absolutely good thing have new versions of Alpha. It is important that Alpha is developing their software. But now we (desktop side) are in situation when we have to undestand that any major improvments will not come anymore.

[MRichard]

Re: More then one developer on same project

Well, this is definitely turning out to be an interesting discussion.

To begin with, I disagree with the approach that Alpha is targeted against mid level developers. That is simply not even the case.
Alpha is making a very strong marketing point of the ability to create an application without any programming. I would even go so far and say that this is the highest priority marketing pinpoint they have! So, which "mid level developer" do you know that needs to create an application "without any programming"?
Even more: which higher level application CAN be created without any programming? My experience is that only the very simple applications can do without ANY programming, and very fast in the chain to high level applications you will need xbasic and other programming skills pretty fast.
So, Alpha is targeted to the low level programmer in my opinion. The amateur. The SOHO "programmer" that wants (or needs) to create an application of his own, and does not want (or can not) buy a ready application or have it developed by an external developer.
Having said that, this does NOT mean, that there are no high level programmers that DO work with Alpha! That is quite another approach. We all know the examples of those programmers which we have in our community that are outstanding specialists. Like for instance Ira, Dr. Wayne, etc etc.
Not only do we have outstanding programmers in our community, we also have specialists in our community that have very deep special knowledge of certain fields, like Daniel Weiss with regards to Xdialog, or Marcel Kollenaar with regards to external connections over RS232 etc etc.
But that is quite something else as to against what type of customers the product is targeted to. And that is definitely NOT a medium level programmer.

Also, the actual business community does not reflect such a statement, if you see how few medium level companies are heavily investing in Alpha, almost none are. The typical medium or high level company invests in more professional database products.

Also, when you look at to which products Alpha is comparing ITSELF, you see that it compares itself to MS-Access and NOT with SQL-Server or Oracle products. Why would that be?

We need to realize, that Alpha is a product that is targeted against the SOHO user. Not against Developers perse.

That is, why indeed lots of necessary tools for developers are missing.
That is, why Alpha does not have (or does not seem to have) a quality controlled release policy.
(which is by the way the main reason as to why bugs keep getting back that were previously repaired.....).

Alpha does not seem to have a well thought out future policy as to where they want to go and what steps they want to take in between. They never have, and they have been asked quite a lot of times. They simply react towards the market in the way they think is best in an ad-hoc way. The product evolves in a sort of free-moving-way into the future. Nobody can tell where it will end up, or what the future will bring. That is not very good.
You should have some kind of policy, a vision, a timeline with targets you want to fullfill in the future. I have never been able to see that happening.
The best I can come up with, is the development of the AJAX tools, which is obviously a thing that has been massively asked for by the Alpha customers over a series of Alpha Seminars which I have been following over the last years. Alpha brought it up, customers reacted to it, and Alpha started to see the importance of Ajax and developed it further into the current state.
That is how it works with Alpha. There is no evidence of any long term planning. It is ad-hoc. And ad-hoc is definitely NOT what medium or high level companies want.

With regards to the desktop side of the product, I too have been pretty much disappointed over the last few versions. Not much has been added. Look at version 10. You can shout whatever you want, but if you look at the actual changes in the product for the desktop side, you can really ask yourself if the value of the new features for the developers is a match towards the extra investments it will take to upgrade. I seriously doubt that.

One can see a tendency to "enhance" the package of feaures of the product by enabling the use of grid components and web facilities/features in the desktop product. The question is whether that will do the trick for the developers or not, because web development is quite a different ballgame then desktop development. I wonder about that. I can see extra features arising, BUT at the same time ask why those features could not be added to the desktopside in the normal way.

Alpha has always been chasing features......
Because that is, what sells.

That tells you something about the Alpha Customer Base now doesn't it? Are most of us chasing the "quick win"?
I guess so..... for most of Alpha's customers.

However, I personally think it would be much wiser to stop adding features now, and start enhancing the quality base of both the product AND the services behind the product.
We have come to a time I think, where Quality should be placed above Features until that quality level reflects a standard that is market proof for medium and high level companies.

Which means for instance the adding of Developer Tooling and developing of a quality controlled policy driven release systems,
the latter both for Alpha itself as for the Alpha Customers.

There have been other threads where this was advocated for, and Alpha chose to not react to that in any way.
If you do not like or support the view, just don't react.
That has always been Alpha's way of dealing with the more important issues brought up, like for instance the quality controlled release policy.

The fact that for instance no system requirements can be found is also a large questionmark. Why not? As many posters already stated, this should be placed on the website on a priority place. But Alpha doesn't. Why not? Affraid of consequences?
I do not have a clue.

[DaveM]

Re: More then one developer on same project

My opinion(2 cents?):

Alpha was an is a beginners easy way to make a more complicated application for their own use. It always was.

We as a community have found ways to push beyond that and sell the applications we make. Alpha has obliged us on many fronts in our efforts with things like a runtime.

Many threads have asked for a compiler for an exe. I do not see that happening, probably ever.

The thought of 2 or more people developing on the same project is the same one faced in any language. Yes there are tools in some of them to enhance your abilities to work on a same project. Most all still can have the code overwritten by another developer in the project if care is not taken.

When working within a same project and many developers, we were all given a specific area to work in and then combined at the end and tested during the work. We did not work on the same functions, scripts, forms, reports. Usually, an area of the application was asigned to one programmer and he did not cross over. Understand, each could help each other with code, or, etc, but not cross over. All planning was in advance and meetings were called to make sure the interaction between the modules were consistent.

In the type software i work most(automotive), the f&i was one module, inventory another, front sales another, parts dept another, service dept another, etc, but it all had to meld into the accounting module. Usually the reports and printed forms were another operation. It would take at least 8+ programmers to do the job quickly. Can this be done in alpha? YES!!!It just takes 8 or more developer packages to do it, some guidance, some cooperation and lots of communication. What is different from any other platform??? Safesource??? or/???

EDIT:

I forgot to mention that coding/forms/tables/etc can be done in seperate adb files and then brought together later as needed with alpha's abilty to copy back and forth. That is great for testing the various components need to work with each other.


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[MRichard]

Re: More then one developer on same project

You forget largely, that Alpha is not Object Ori�nted (O.O.P.) so this delivers quite another perspective on working groups.
Have a look at Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 which can give you an idea of how teamwork in combination with OOP could look like. You can see this is quite a different league now can you? Or not?

Furthermore, and until now largely forgotten in the discussion here, there are no design instruments for your application on a level where you could make an application model working together in a team. Alpha is a RAD instrument.

A RAD instrument is not always the best instrument for an application. It is fast, yes. But fast is not always what you want. Sometimes you want more quality and more control then just throw an app together en juggle with all kinds of third party instruments to get something of a plan together, quick, quick, quick..... Sometimes you need structure, you need approval, you need object planning, you need a system that watches/guards many things. Can it be done with Alpha? Who knows. But if you are looking for such things, who chooses a platform that MIGHT be able to do it? You want something especially designed to do it.
You want to be professional. Because you need to stay on top of quality and time.

Point is, that if you look closely, Alpha uses lots of third party controls, there is a whole list of them. Most of them is freeware..... which means even Alpha has no control over what happens within the control in terms of support, bugfixing etc etc. Those controls are all inside Alpha.

It makes me think of an Admiral who was asked what he saw on the launch of a new aircraftcarrier.......
He is said to respond:
Well, you are looking at a vessel that excists of 2.500.000 parts, each delivered by the cheapest possible supplier, and all installed by the cheapest possible engineers..... how do you expect that I feel?

[JAF]

Re: More then one developer on same project

This is an excellent thread and not well understood here, until recently. Coming from the MS Studio products to A5 requires a lot of consideration. In Studio you have an integrated IDE complete with VSS (sourcesafe). However, it is by no means fool-proof and requires somebody to carefully control who works on what and when, merging changes, etc. Using VSS while in VB/VC/Studio can often be problematic and many use them separately because of unexpected file-overrides, etc. In Studio you can reserve files, such as a dialog, so nobody else can reserve it. That doesn't mean they can't work on it. Obviously if two people work on the same dialog there will be problems merging - this is something to avoid as you can't merge the binary files generated for a dialog.

I'm very new to A5 and haven't really used it much. Source and version control, application installation and registration, on-the-fly connection strings (still haven't figured this out), multi-user development, use of Active X controls (and other 3rd party software), redistribution rights, and the nature of the non-compiled code have all been big concerns for me. Most of these have been resolved but a few remain.

I say this because at the V10 seminar this fall Alpha developers mentioned that a compiler is coming. It will probably be V11 or V12, but it is coming. Being able to use any 3rd party components (ActiveX, .NET, etc.) is also coming. I considered this good news.

VSS is great for source and version control. There are good free alternatives as well. I think it would be a waste of time for Alpha to invest in this. Use what's available. I'd prefer they develop features that allow me to make a better product faster than develop a tool that already works well elsewhere.

Software development should become easier, not more difficult. MS seems to take the opposite approach. I also like the rapidity with which Alpha responds and posts software patches/updates.

[DaveM]

Re: More then one developer on same project

Well, you are looking at a vessel that excists of 2.500.000 parts, each delivered by the cheapest possible supplier, and all installed by the cheapest possible engineers..... how do you expect that I feel?

I can relate having been on an aircraft carrier. Think of the guys on the moon at various times - same cheapest price got the there. LOL

Now think of this, the first manned ship to the moon had less computing power than the average car built over the past 20 years. Isn't flashing a chip just a wonder?


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[Peter.Greulich]

Re: More then one developer on same project

Isn't flashing a chip just a wonder?

Yeah, for now - until EMP.