World: r3wp

I can say "when R3 comes out, everything will be good", but the reality 
is that there will probably be as much work after the first beta 
as has been before it.

Those expectations were entirely created

I don't need a perfect R3. I just need to make some forms... 

 <-- For that you need VID3 to be complete and the view system as 
 well. You need skins and you need a functioning event system. You 
 need keyboard input and a proper way to direct form text data to 
 objects or file storage. Furthermore since you don't want to change 
 it, we have to have the layout dialect in feature freeze, which it 
 isn't. It's currently undergoing design review, before we add more 
 features. Not simple. :-)

Than even a lot less was done so far than I thought until now. Why 
did we hear that implementing basic View would "take a day" after 
Core?

where did you hear that?

Gabriele said something to that effect when Carl opened development 
and the beta promises were still in effect

ok. that's not a good thing to say.

I understand that geeks tend to brag about their abilities, but this 
is a business that has been running for a decade, for heaven's sake

ok. I can only say, don't trust release dates until after beta is 
out. then we can talk more about it.

You're saying don't trust dates until they have become meaningless?

I'm sorry, but there is a breaking point for everyone

Kaj, I don't know what to say, other than a lot of work is being 
done. Please don't resort to planning around R3 yet. Use R2.

It's far too late for that. The promises started almost two years 
ago, as an extension of much earlier promises. You shouldn't be the 
one to field this criticism, but I am putting my reputation on the 
line for this in a number of places, and I hate to be pushed around

its seems like an issue of transparency

or lack of it

Exactly

I can understand your situation and it's an unfortunate thing. The 
only thing I can say that might help, is that there have been suggestions 
about a plan to extend the alpha to the users in this world, so experienced 
REBOLers can take a look at it and "kick the tires", so to speak.


The problem with doing that is that it creates talk. Lots of talk. 
"why is this there? why does this function do that? I don't like 
this!" We have had a TON of discussions over the design of VID3 on 
how to do this and that, and we're not done with that yet. It's very 
time consuming to do that, when one man (Gabriele) wants to sit quietly 
and work out the design on his own until it's ready. It's just faster 
that way in the long run. Every time a new guy comes in, 500 questions 
need to be answered and it's usually the same 500 questions as the 
last new guy. :-)


Ideally, no questions should be asked until after about a week of 
use and start testing it right away. If there is a problem or a bug, 
consult the bug tracker or the documentation database, look at the 
discussions and the design documents and keep out of particularly 
Carl's, Gabriele's and Cyphre's hair until they crawl out from their 
holes on their own.

Again, these demons were called up by the very people who wanted 
to avoid them

I'm in a big project myself, and there's no way you can ignore these 
issues. You have to deal with them as best you can. The world isn't 
perfect, and neither will R3 ever be

Nor its development process

RT is making it impossible to plan REBOL development. And if you 
can't plan it, you can't use it

I use R2 in all my products. Sure you can use it. I have no plan 
to move to R3 until a good time after R3.0 is done, perhaps for R3.1.

R2 is unusable in most of my designs. It might as well not exist 
for them

Well, then you will have to use something else. I also have products 
in the pipeline that are impossible to do in R2. They will be done 
in R3 in about a year.

So we just have to increase all given estimates by a year or so?

let's say 5 years, just to be sure.

You do realise this is placing REBOL outside any real market?

probably only the market that expects R3 to be done next week.

You can try to make a joke out of it, but I'm not amused

But I can already see now that the given dates should not have been 
released at all, since people react strongly to it. Let's make it 
10 years.

You're not amused, because you made a plan around what Carl said 
(and again, I think he really shouldn't have said). I agree it's 
not funny, and it may put your reputation on the line, but use it 
as an experience in when to plan around an alpha product the next 
time, no matter what the manufacturer says.

This is not the point. I deal with shifting schedules every day, 
and if necessary, I produce running estimates as best I can. I just 
want RT to start doing the same

All my scheduling is worthless if it includes an RT component, and 
I will be blamed for false promises made by RT

don't include it then.

You really want me to conclude that RT is placing REBOL outside a 
real market?

go ahead. I have to go back to work. :-)

Look. This place is meant to take the burden off of RT development, 
as you said above. You can either choose to relay the feelings of 
the market place to RT, or choose to ignore it

Since we're still in the alpha state, it'll probably be ignored. 
RT has no time to talk about R3 right now, so as a countermeasure, 
I and a few others do that.

Yes, and as I said, you should not be the one to field this criticism, 
but my intention is that my deep concerns are relayed to RT

the only way to win you over would be to invite you behind the curtains 
to see R3 :-) but you'd probably have to contribute to it.

I don't believe nothing can be done about this. As I suggested on 
Carl's blog, a decent stepwise release plan would already help a 
lot

I already offered Gabriele to contribute

I was won over some six years ago. My issue is with planning, and 
not just for myself, but everyone who needs to be able to plan REBOL 
projects

I guess I'm more "fortunate". All my projects are R2 only and there 
is probably 2-3 years of work left if I would have the time and money 
to pursue them all. For me there are many things left to do with 
R2 that will be useful for R3 later, such as native Windows printing.

I can take a more relaxed view and pick whatever I want for my first 
R3 project.

For me, I have been rescheduling to other things for a long time. 
If I can't start working on R3, it makes most sense to work on non-REBOL 
projects

I've become a Ruby programmer over the past five years, for example, 
while I wanted to be a REBOL programmer

out of curiosity, what do you think of it?

(Ruby)

It's good, but not inspiring such as REBOL. Code-wise, it leads to 
very similar results, but usually not as elegant (although there 
are a few exceptions). But it lacks all the data capabilities