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FEATURE
Coming of Age
The REALbasic 3rd Party Solution Market
Issue: 4.3 (January/February 2006)
Author: Joe Nastasi
Author Bio: Joe Nastasi is the president of Pyramid Design, the developers of A-OK! The Wings of Mercury, A-OK! Spacecraft Simulation System, and FTP Suite.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 6,427
Starting Page Number: 23
Article Number: 4310
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Excerpt of article text...
REALbasic and the development community it has spawned has been around for over seven years. It has its humble beginnings as a programming tool "for the rest of us" that was very quickly adopted by programming hobbyists. Many programmers have gotten their start using REALbasic, and many projects -- and even products -- have been produced that probably would not have been attempted in another IDE.
There are quite a large number of free example programs, classes, components, and developer tools available on the Internet, which is great. They provide hobbyists, and even professionals willing to support these offerings themselves, with great starting points for many functionalities.
Sometimes hobbyists come up with a nifty tool or class and decide to sell it as a product. And many times, they are a great deal for programmers who do not need professional support.
Finally, there are tools, classes, and components that are developed and supported by full-time companies. Most of the time these products are aimed at professional developers and companies who require professional support. These consumers would like to know that the company that sells them the tool or component is going to be around for a while.
It all sounds good, except for one thing: pricing. The price of many professional REALbasic development tools and components is way below the industry standard. In fact, many suppliers of professional level tools price their products at the same price level as products sold by part-time hobbyists.
So why is this bad? It sounds like the REALbasic developer has an assortment of great deals to choose from. On the surface, it would appear so. Many of the offerings are of very high quality. For the hobbyist or even a professional requiring a component that doesn't require much support, it's a great state of affairs.
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