forum.vdsworld.com

Rubes_sw · Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:38 pm Post subject: Forum activity

Its a shame that the vds community is drifting, this used to be a great place of activity and now its more like a ghost town...

Does this spell the end for VDS ?, as the forums over there seem to be barren...

Hopefully something happens....

regards

nathan

Rubes_sw · Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 10:10 pm Post subject:

I just nipped on www.download.com and found that VDS only had 1 download last week !

and from other shareware sites, the downloads are quite poor...

Im just concered that the bugs, fixes needed arent going to get done !
After buying the software, theres been very little response or words from ed/commercial

nathan

jwfv · Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 12:43 am Post subject:

I'm still reading and checking every day or so for messages. It does seem like less activity than in the old days, though. Not as much .dll and .dsu development.

But then again, I have a hard time thinking of what we need in the way of VDS DLLs ....

Anyone have any suggestions for potential developers?

WidgetCoder · Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 3:37 am Post subject:

Sadly enough most developers tend to rely on the language that they are the most familiar with for all programming task. Few will ever take the time necessary to learn a new language regardless of how appropriate to a particular task or intuitive its syntax may be.

The exception to the rule of course is when the IDE is being offered free of charge. The big players MS and Borland have certainly figured that out with their free offerings of reduced feature (Express/Turbo) IDEs. Perhaps if there was a free personal VDS version that was not two versions behind the current release more users may try it and possibly overcome their fear of learning another language. I would bet that once they experience Julian Moss’s brain child which IMHO is shear brilliance of simplicity they would quickly upgrade to the full version to obtain more advanced capabilities. I believe VDS just needs a good marketing hook to compete with all of the free tools currently being offered by others.

FreezingFire · **Admin Team** Joined: 23 Jun 2002 Posts: 3508

Garrett · Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 8:25 pm Post subject:

In this world of programming and buying and selling on the internet, change is required on a frequent and regular basis. If one fails to keep up with the pace, then one gets left behind.

VDS does not keep up with the pace at all, which causes stagnation. People get tired of waiting and eventually seek something else to fill the gap.

Doesn't mean VDS is bad of course. VDS rocks, damn good product. But updates and upgrades every few years won't keep it alive no matter how good it is.

vdsalchemist · Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 8:44 pm Post subject:

Hmm, IMHO VDS upgrades come at the right time for the product. Most computer languages do not get updated as often as say a Game or utility. Also VDS target audience is not that broad. It was designed for the beginner however most people just out grow the language due to it's limited scope. That scope is widening a little bit but it is still just a beginners language.

webdaddy · Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 8:40 pm Post subject: VDS Activity

I agree with most everything everybody is saying here. I think something else may be causing the lack of activity also. The language (VDS) is fairly easy to learn and use and therefor probably does not need the level of support that learning a more complex program needs. I do know that I personally have never been happy with the support of the product. I also know that there are a few very large clients that I have used the product with that wanted enterprise licensing (site license) which is not currently offered so they ended up going with PureBasic or some other product that provides the feature. I am not bashing VDS as I use it everyday in conjunction with WinBatch, Perl and PureBasic to do pretty much whatever it is that I need to do.

I have learned as a developer that you can have the best product in the world or even a one of a kind product but if you don't know how to market it correctly you might was well just sit on your hands. One of my products (written in VDS) brought in nearly $100000.00 in 4 months in revenue. The product has been in use since 2005 and is now on its third revision and each time additional features are added as the landscape changes. The difference here is that I am willing to change the product, upgrade the product and maintain the source code for the client.

The development cycle is open to suggestions (as VDS development cycle is supposed to be). How many of the request of the end users actually make it into the final product at the end of the day? Again im not knocking it but unwillingness to change will likely cause stagnant interest when it comes to new users. I love VDS as it gets the job done and has shortened my development time dramatically even if I don't end up coding the end product in VDS I still use it to demonstrate what my end products can do so it will always have a place with my development team.

I do not see a major difference in the versions and have not upgraded to Version 6 yet (I may never) as there is no real compelling reason to upgrade and everything that was added can probably be done in some other manner anyway.

If I were in charge of the marketing I would be approaching colleges and universities that teach programming and would be providing an educational license for the product so professors can teach it as part of their discussions on rapid application development languages (which is what I consider VDS). When I was learning we were taught Perl which can be as easy or as complex as you need it to be. If you teach students a language and they like it they will probably stick with what they are comfortable with but until there are channels to get it out there it will remain a language of the few (meaning you and me) that have realized the usefulness of using it and also its limitations.

Theres my 2 cents, no change required...

WD