Is Scriptcase people is listening our comments?

Scriptcase 8 Discussion
#21

These kind of Rapid Application Development tools are all to some degree ridden with the same kind of maladies (things that are bad or problematic). I remember using WinDev some years ago. There were also complaints about PCSoft (the company owning the product) being greedy and just wanting to release new versions with features and not fixing the bugs. Their product is $1.000-$1.600 per development license and $300 for an application server needed for every end user installation. They now have WebDev as well, a product that generates PHP like ScriptCase. Just out of curiosity I went to PCsoft’s forum for WebDev and what do you know, it does not seem to be nearly as active as our forum here. Also it has several posts describing problems with the product:
http://forum.pcsoft.fr/en-US/pcsoft…dev/page/1.awp

Another tool is Realbasic that later became Xojo, which I also considered at one point in time. Again, there were the same complaints in the community of many new releases you had to pay for and bugs not getting fixed. I spent quite some time looking at tools and finally chose ScriptCase as the best of them for web development in regards to features. It is quite reasonable priced as well with no per end user fees and no application server license fees.

To be sure, there are things that I would like ScriptCase to improve on. In particular, make the documentation cover ScriptCase in great detail on all features with more examples. This would go a long way to attract professional developers alone through word of mouth. ScriptCase could become an accepted general development tool and move to another order of magnitude as a company. I really wish that ScriptCase could envision this and act on it.

Moving on to a higher order of magnitude is also the solution to being better at handling the minor bugs. As it is now, ScriptCase has to push on with new features to stay relevant and thus have to prioritise which bugs to fix. It is the fate of all software tool makers with smaller markets. PCSoft and Xojo are the same, as are probably most of them. I remember one of the developers of ScriptCase some time back mentioned that ScriptCase has a huge legacy code base. Thus, I think that part of the problem is changing this code base to something better and at the same time introduce new features as well as fixing bugs.

However, all in all, I find that the solutions that I create with ScriptCase, do work at the installations. When I run into bugs and contact Netmake, they do come back to me in a timely manner to get a resolution. I think that as long as one maintains an active license, they will do that.

I think that Arthur (AKA) is very creative and active in the forum, but I also feel that he sometimes goes overboard in his criticism – most likely in frustration over not being able to force a change in Netmake. I have been there myself, but have decided that my energy is better spent focusing on my development rather than ranting about things that I cannot change anyway, and which in most cases does not really prevent me from moving on with my projects.

I must say that I do not find it helpful to create an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, painting a picture that is worse than the actual reality as a way to get back at Netmake. I have worked with ScriptCase about 1? year. I find that I can create applications in a fast manner, deploy them and have them work for the end users. In that time, ScriptCase has only become better as a product. To also remember the positive, let’s look at what has happened with ScriptCase:

  1. They have added tabbed applications so that several parts of the overall application can be open at the same time. My users love that feature.

  2. ScriptCase has been moved to PHP 5.6 for performance improvement

  3. The overall look of the development environment had a bit of a face lift

  4. The grids had the infinite scroll added to them

  5. Search features of grids and forms were improved

  6. Refined search was added to grid to enhance the pivot table functions

  7. Including whole external class libraries in a project, making for easier use of them

I am sure there are others that I do not remember.

#22

Nice write-up, Frank.

I like SC myself. I just wish their staff communicated with us more. It would be good if they showed us (their customers) more love!!

Eg:When we make a suggestion or report a bug, it would be nice if they could tell us they have seen it and if they plan to look into it or not.

#23

Thanks!

Yes, it would be nice with more interaction on the forum. I think the staff are just very busy and time is not set aside in anyone’s job for forum interaction.

#24

I think that all in this forum, we want that. The original reason for this topic is find some way in order that SC listen to us!

AYMG

#25

That is precisely why I sometimes SCREAM on the forum hoping that the screaming will bring some attention of the company. As far as new features I DO NOT WANT THEM unless major bugs are fixed. I do not want the company to spend energy on new features while I’m having issues with running the software. NOW - the bugs and issues can fall (in my opinion) in 3 categories:
1- preventing development or production
2- making job very hard to complete
3- documentation, IDE, Help, etc

While I understand the 1 Cat takes longer time to fix and sometimes needs more documentation, I must say that 3rd category in many cases takes few minutes to fix issues. Category 2 is something ca can live with although if not taken care of it will show lack of professionalism from the company.
What really pisses me of that issues/bugs in category 3 are not fixed and ignored. bugs in category 1 are often considered no to be a bugs. For example I received one about 5-6 emails from the support arguing with me weather the problem should be called a BUG or an ISSUE ? instead concentrating on fixing it.

Here comes the worst part of SC development and company interaction:

  1. Company never asks users about priorities or features which need to be implemented
  2. Company claims that BUGS ARE REPORTED AND WILL BE FIXED, but does not fix them
  3. Out of many times my interaction with support was satisfied maybe up to 10-20%. Most of the time it was an language issue where the support could neither understand the problem or was able to explain their point of view (simply English barrier).

I do not know how many of you had recorded time spent on your project and how much of that time is wasted on struggling with Help, manuals, finding workarounds or interacting with NM support. I’m not talking about learning something, I’m talking about the process which should work (according to the manuals) but it doesn’t . If you add this time into your development time the time spent on the project might change drastically.

Once again if NetMake will not listen and react to this forum sooner or later will end up as other companies. I really want to like SC and I really want them to succeed although it will require some change in the attitude and that might come hard to change. I hope that no one will deny the fact that fixing bugs in software is and will always be a PRIORITY (even over implementing new features). So far NetMake has proven it is not. I see minor changes - as they finally publish the channel log on their website but this is not enough. We have asked here on this forum number of times to publish the bug fixing list and this is CRUCIAL, although it is ignored for several years. That is what pisses me the most.

As far as other products - yes PCSOFT is french company and also has some issues with documentation. Forum is as active as this one and when I talk to WebDev developers they also have some complains although those complaints are more towards the documentation and not so much bug fixing. The bottom line is that PCSOFT is much better in bug fixes than NETMAKE. Using WebDev and other products once you master W language you use only one language for all development platforms while using SC you deal with several languages. This might be another advantage of using RAD tool, although I’m not saying that using W is better than using JS, PHP HTML, CSS etc…

I would really love to see some public discussion with the involvement of NetMake to prioritize main issues and features. I you really want to know/understand what am I talking about I would strongly recommend to take a look at B4X (anywhere Software Company). This is the place where most other companies should learn how to build products, documentation, how to market is, do the support and all other tasks involved. Out of all companies I have met in my 35+ years in IT this would be absolutely number 1.
If NetMAKE would take their approach and philosophy and just do the same way I would prize them for the rest of my life.

#26

Eg:When we make a suggestion or report a bug, it would be nice if they could tell us they have seen it and if they plan to look into it or not.

This happened in the past. Just search for Bartho in the forums ROFL.

I would really love to see some public discussion with the involvement of NetMake to prioritize main issues and features. I you really want to know/understand what am I talking about I would strongly recommend to take a look at B4X (anywhere Software Company). This is the place where most other companies should learn how to build products, documentation, how to market is, do the support and all other tasks involved. Out of all companies I have met in my 35+ years in IT this would be absolutely number 1.

Totally agree.

Just to add, don’t think they listen too much to us (partners). I would like to avoid to express my complete opinion about the situation, I just want to +1 what @Orion sais in his post. SC is a good tool, and with some bugs and problems here or there, it works great for his job. Negativity only looks like SC don’t works, and this is not the real situation. Problems behind SC is more complicated than 1 paragraph of words. It’s a problem of culture, resources, management and a lot of more things, on a butterfly effect.

Just my 2 cents. Hiding again on my cave lol

#27

When it comes to serious bugs, I agree that fixing them should be a priority. In the quite frequent ScriptCase releases from Netmake there are various bug fixes, which must be what they consider serious. It is of course a matter of opinion, which bugs are the important ones. Anything for which there is a work-around will probably not be prioritised. However, all tools developers prioritise bugs and some gets pushed for later fixing in order to release new features.

I can imagine that PCSoft, Xojo and other similar tool developers may also not have public bug tracking systems. There is a certain vulnerability to that, which many of them may not like.

When it comes to documentation I totally agree with you. It would not require that much effort to improve the language and over time they could extend the documentation with more depth and examples. You, I and others have even offered our help with this, but it has been rejected for reasons that one can only speculate about. There are now and then efforts to document from Netmake, but they are sporadic, short lived and not organised. As time goes by, it matters less for me personally as I learn the different parts of ScriptCase as well as the mix of JavaScript and HTML as needed. However, it would mean a lot for new programmers and ScriptCase’s repution if these things were in order.

I find that ScriptCase Support’s level of English when reporting and describing problems has improved a lot over the last ? year or so. For me, their English level is now quite sufficient that I can describe any problem I encounter.

B4X looks like an interesting tool for desktop, mobile and IoT stuff with a single common language as the base. For web development it is difficult to get around JavaScript and handling HTML’s document model. This has, however, not particular to do with ScriptCase, but web development in general. Both Xojo and WebDev offers a total abstraction from the HTML / JavaScript in the programming tool / language. I am not sure how effective or good it is in comparison.

I really do not agree with you, Arthur, that Netmake is headed for sure oblivion because they will not listen to you :). They have been the way they are for very long and, regardless, have managed to stay alive for many years, releasing new versions of their software with useful features. This is not to say that their unwillingness to change and handle the mentioned issues does not have an effect. I think that it is what will keep them at a certain level as a company, when they could instead be heading for the stars – and that is really a pity. However, I do believe they will be around with their RAD tool in the years to come. Albert is running a succesful business software development shop with 10 developers using ScriptCase and there are others like GIU with a long track of using ScriptCase. I do not know how long Albert, Giu, etc. have been in the game, but that fact also speaks of the usefulness of the tool over several years and versions.

#28

Orion - I agree with you for the most part although you missing one important point of vew. Evaluating SC by the fact that it is on the market for some time or somebnody is using it is bad idea. I still use it simply because it would be more costly to rewrite some projects using another tool but I very likely use another tool for new projects. If you start recording your time spend on multiple issues and tasks which are not productive because one from NM just messed something up you would see that SC is not as efficient as one could imagine. Yes for simple tasks like creating simple forms, grids etc is is super efficient, but when it comes to more advanced features one can spend more time using SC than programing by hand.
BTW - this dscussion (I believe) is not about the question is SC is usable or not. It is rather how to make the company LISTEN TO THE USERS NEEDS.

I think in that matter most active users of this forum have very bad experience - PERIOD. Is there anything we can do to have NetMake pay more attention to what users need ?
I guess people like Giu or Albert have already gave up because they see that no effort will change it (let me hope I’m wrong).
This thread was started bo somebody else and the question was “IF THEY LISTEN?”

I would say they DO NOT or even if they do they do not pay attention or care abour requested changes. NetMake seem to have their own agenda and we can only watch their mistakes.

I disagree with your belief that SC stands so strong on the market that it will last forever. It is only a matter of another company creating similar but more sophisticated tool with better docs, support bug fix etc. Until this happens , yes SC will somehow survive. PCSOFT is good example how they beaten TopSpeed (Soft Velocity on CLARION). B4X is example how to kill PhoneGap or VB, and there are more examples like that. We are all riding the same horse. If you don’t care enough for your customers they will go elsewhere.

When I started using SC5 I was in love with this product. Slowly year by year I’m loosing my faith and I have a feeling that many others as well. The reason for that is described pretty well in this thread.

REGARDS - Art

#29

I guess people like Giu or Albert have already gave up because they see that no effort will change it (let me hope I’m wrong).

I’m too busy right now to gave up or not. Just “ignoring” the situation because I don’t have time to fight. Right now I’m focused on our outsourcing and own projects, and is not possible for me to get the time to talk with Netmake for, probably, get the same answer as always.

#30

Yes Giu - you are not the one to fix NetMake issues. They just need to take some actions because this is getting worse and worse.

I’m getting more and more pissed of simply because I spend more time on development and every day I face some new issue with SC. I have sent 4 messages in last 5 days to NetMake BUGS dept. guess what ? NO response, no action, no NOTHING!

This gets frustrating to the point I want to scream or hit something. I’m just simply pissed of on the number of bugs and issues with this product. Just today I faced 2 new issues and each of them got me stuck on the project completely. The first one is possibly fixable but would require extra time to find a workaround and the 2nd one is a clear bug in SC. None of us wants to work as BETA tester. Just between the time this topic has started and today I have found several new issues in SC. To make problem worse I use SC v8.1.20. Possibly the bugs that I face right now are fixed (I have no info about this because NetMake makes bug issues SECRET). Even if those bugs were fixed and I download the latest SC 8.1.50 then I will encounter new bugs which were introduced, so neither version works as supposed. The BUG ISSUES are becoming CRUCIAL…
At this point if any programmer asks me if I would recommend SC for development I would say NO, NO NO!

#31

hello there and thank you for your wonderful discussion here, it is indeed a way to criticize and hope that NM make things happen, lets just agree this not just shout negatively

I’ve been here for so long, it is true not always active, sometimes i get away from SC for a while but usually come back… it is true i can’t always be useful and problem solver like the other guys due to SC is not my primary concern nor my core business, but usually read and add 2 cents if something i know about, i subscribe and watch for a solution

most of the guys here became friends, learnt a lot from this forum, experienced many previous volcanos like this one in this thread, believe me, nothing will change easy

last 2 days spent reading this thread it was open in my browser for a week wanted to have good time to read it all, and I agree with many many points you guys raised

let’s just take facts first,

  • do we have a place where all bugs are listed and tracked? no
  • can we do this? yes we can, I’m sure all of us can google free opensource bug tracker php and install it on his server then can request volunteers to monitor it… even if I’m not wrong, Mr. Albert done that earlier, I don’t know if it is updated
  • I read once before that they have bug tracker internally at NM, but they don’t make it public for security reasons…

Well, lets assume that is true, lets don’t judge them yet… lets ask ourselves, how we can help them get this at once, do we have all bugs logged in one place with priority and impact level and so? did anybody made this list?

how about compiling one lists of bugs with priority… simply, partners like Giu and Albert can send them in batches to NM and get official answers from them… I still believe adding a post for each bug will not help in tracking them or make them look at them seriously, (even if Bartho is there, it is useless), since a public bug tracker is something not within NM radar, why we dont make a neat list so they can have a look at it and advise? I’m sure the partners will convey the messare

in other words, we need an active moderator in this form that gather the fragmented posts that have bugs and list them nicely in a sticky topic perhaps with link to each one for details? a small table with status, priority… indexing them in a list may at least give an idea about the load required from them so they may start to think positively

just thinking…
​

cheers

#32

No time to write more, just an annotation.

how about compiling one lists of bugs with priority… simply, partners like Giu and Albert can send them in batches to NM and get official answers from them.

This is why still don’t exists a public tracker. We can track all bugs in forums, but, first, not all are bugs (a great amount of posts on bugs, are not bugs, but developer fails), and I don’t have time to test each one. Second, there aren’t any bidirectional communication with NetMake. We can track a bug in our own mantis, but then, how to know if it’s fixed or not? I don’t have time to do all of this job manually asking them. The main idea of Albert, was to have a Mantis read only publicly, and write access for partners and Netmake. Then, we as partners can write on mantis to notify to Netmake, and NetMake update status (on work, finished, notified, and so on…).

For this reason…

do we have a place where all bugs are listed and tracked? no and now you know why

  • can we do this? yes we can no, I’m sure all of us can google free opensource bug tracker php and install it on his server then can request volunteers to monitor it… even if I’m not wrong, Mr. Albert done that earlier, I don’t know if it is updated
  • I read once before that they have bug tracker internally at NM, but they don’t make it public for security reasons… and because is not in english, and because, if they have a public mantis means SC users can see they are not working on some fix since years ago