Heated Debate... Features and Updates and Things...

[mytekcontrols]

Mike you can still save few bytes if you remove the FOR NEXT and replace it with a variable increment and a IF THEN to check the value... i guess 4-6 bytes will be saved.

Mister_E thanks for the info, unfortunately I decided to scrap the whole approach for what I was doing and implemented it in an entirely different way, which saved gobs of bytes (counting changes in surrounding code) and made my life much easier (this is always appreciatted). When I get it into a more final form I'll post it.

Thanks again,

P.S. I like your version of what that guy probably really meant to say :-)

[OXIMBIT]

In case you did not realise I was being sarcastic. For a company to sell this product for so much that offers so little when there are cheaper products that do more for less I think is ......... But If your prepared to pay the price and jump through all those loops trying to implement features that should have been there in the first place is up to you, it's your money.

By "more time than money" means your you prepared to spend all that extra time doing workarounds than spending the money on better product.

[Darrel Taylor]

<img src="http://www.pbpgroup.com/files/dejected.gif"><br>Added 7/2/05: See, I just knew this was going to happen.

[Acetronics2]

By "more time than money" means your you prepared to spend all that extra time doing workarounds than spending the money on better product.[/QUOTE]

The only probem is to sell ...

What ??? that's not a problem ... shiny adds and whatever the "thing" makes : that's in the pocket.

Nowadays, selling a sparkling project is easier than selling a well engineered product ...

doesn't make me laugh at all ...in the end

Alain

[Melanie]

In case you did not realise I was being sarcastic. For a company to sell this product for so much that offers so little when there are cheaper products that do more for less I think is ......... But If your prepared to pay the price and jump through all those loops trying to implement features that should have been there in the first place is up to you, it's your money.

By "more time than money" means your you prepared to spend all that extra time doing workarounds than spending the money on better product.

Firstly, it's only a problem for those who don't know how (and here you have a simple choice, learn, or move-on elsewhere). Secondly, once you have those routines, you don't need to reinvent the wheel the next time you need them. But most importantly - and this counts for more than price-point or frills and features, is that the MeLabs offering is a well designed, RELIABLE, STABLE and MATURE product. You can design your project safe in the knowledge that it will do what you intend and expect it to do. Some competitors products go through more bug fixes and revisions in a single year than the MeLabs product has in it's entire history - that's kinda worrying and not something to be proud of. On an occasion when I used a different compiler, my MD refused to release the product until I had rewritten the software excluding it. His argument centred on RELIABILITY and TRUST which was worth far more than any other adjective you could apply in favour of the competitors compiler.

If I was a hobbyist, especially one with limited skills, I'd have a completely different set of criteria. I would want a product that has every bell and whistle built-in, and costs next to nothing. Reliability would not even enter into my thoughts. There are a lot of products out there that meet that criteria. More "time and money" as you mention is then spent chasing your tail wondering if the reason that your project doesn't work as expected is down to your code, or is it due to a bug in that all singing and dancing compiler?

[Acetronics2]

Hi, Mel

I'm a pure Hobbyist ... who flies models.

You will surely agree reliability is the first thing I'm waiting from PBP ...

I can say, I never had bad surprises ( exept my own beginner's errors ...) with PBP.
It's really a great tool ... and I can enhance or modify it myself !!!

But I agree it needs a little (really little ! ) learning time, that's a good thing nowadays to learn, instead of stupidly paste already done work ...

No other compiler offers that ...

Alain

[bot402]

When you have a product that hasn't actually changed in 5 years its easy to make it stable, especially if it doesn't actually do a great deal in the first place, and even then what it does is bloated, outdated, and inefficient. But where would we be if everything was like that. We'd still be driving Model T fords, and forget Television, the Internet and all the other offerings that have had to briefly go through the "not so stable" stage.

I'm just glad that everyone doesn't have that blinkered approach to things, or progress would come to a grinding halt!!!!!

[Melanie]

Well, in over a thousand posts helping folks both here and when I was on the email forum, I've yet to write a single word of complaint about that bloated, inefficient, outdated product. Which I may add, contributes to consistantly give me a bigger pay-check than the Managing Director of the company I work for and allowed me to pay-off a $500k mortgage in under 3 years. If people don't like the product so much, why are they here on this forum - shouldn't they be on a competitors site? Good example of yours though... ol' Henry earned damn good money out of that Model-T (though I wouldn't give you anything for his current offerings!).

"offerings that have had to briefly go through the "not so stable" stage"

When your designs feed factory production lines making close to half a million units annually, products giving "not so stable" results are just not an option. When those goods ship out the door, it's a one-way journey and we NEVER want them to come back. To even consider "not so stable" has got to be the crazyest thing I've read yet! How many things would you tollerate around your home or workplace that were "not-so-stable" (apart from your chosen compiler)? Your car?, perhaps the plane you next fly in? The air conditioner? Your shower water temperature? The building elevator perhaps? When you complained, what if you got an answer "Well, we used an unstable software tool to build your product, so that's just tough, you'll have to suffer it". Sure you would! You'd be the first in the queue asking for a refund.

[OXIMBIT]

Some observations:-

I have never advocated bells and whistles, it was after seeing people post how to work with > 16 vars and some form of basic data handling. When I used Pbpro many years ago, this was what I wanted and like your doing now I had workarounds. But I got fed up with doing it. Bigger variables eat code space but inevitably some times I have to use them. Luckily I don't have to do it my self now. Better data handling is a must, Most people here will stick a Eeprom on so they can have better lookup tables, unless I have massive tables I fit them all in the pic, it's easy.

As the last post said if every software company froze there development when it was 100% stable we would not even have got to Ada or one of the really early OS's. Product development is a part of life, unfortunately moving forward entails problems. Look at the Melabs site you will see that after years of standing still with a basic compiler there still coming across problems.

Problems always get fixed and you can do what a lot of people do and stick with the version that works for you then until you consider the new version has been around long enough to make you happy or there is a feature you have to have.

What is basically being said is Melabs is not capable after all these years of adding a few basic features with out bringing the lot crashing down around your ankles. They could have added 32 vars and tested it for 2 years but have decided to milk this product for all it's worth.

This is all my own personal opinion and as I always say if you happy with what you've got then stick with it. If not kick up a fuss or go elsewhere. Sitting around trying to make workarounds seems not to make sense, throw a few arrows, kick up a stink it will in the end make a better compiler.

What I don't think works is when there is constructive criticism (however sarcastic) its nice to slam them down. Take it on the chin like a man (or a woman) and be constructive in return.