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REALbasic University: Column 049

An Exciting Announcement

Faithful readers of this column may have noticed that postings have been a little erratic of late: that's because I've been distracted. (And I'm not going to apologize. You'll see why in a minute. ;-)

Eighteen months ago, when I proposed a REALbasic programming column to the good folks at Applelinks, I decided to link the column with REALbasic Developer, an ezine I'd conceived of back in 1999. I had a vague notion that someday, maybe, my dream of a professional publication devoted to REALbasic would come true.

I've now been writing REALbasic University for just over a year -- this column is the forty-ninth (!) -- and I'm very pleased to announce that my dream is becoming reality.

Starting in July, I'll be publishing REALbasic Developer, a new magazine devoted to all things REALbasic!

REALbasic Developer isn't going to be an ezine, but a real, printed magazine. I feel strongly that there's a market out there hungry for tutorials, tips, news, reviews and good old fashioned basic programming information.

There's risk in going to print immediately, before a market has been established, but I feel it's worth it. Despite all the hype about the Internet, most people still prefer their reading material printed. An ezine just doesn't have the respect and magnitude of a printed publication.

So REALbasic Developer will be printed. It will also be available in digital format (Adobe PDF) for those who prefer their magazines virtual.

For the past six months I've been laying the groundwork for a top-quality magazine. I convinced busy people like REAL Software's Joe Strout and authors Matt Neuburg and Erick Tejkowski to serve on the magazine's Editorial Board (they'll also write articles, of course). Between us we'll make decisions about the magazine's content, making sure we cover a wide variety of interesting subjects, as well as articles that target beginners, intermediate, and advanced users.

I've also signed up editors and writers, and the team is working hard to produce columns and features which will fascinate and educate. I must insert that I'm impressed with the depth and quality of these individuals: they're talented people, with a passion for REALbasic, and their suggestions for articles and columns are top quality. In fact, it seems our chief problem may end up being too much content instead of not enough! (That's a great problem to have.)

For years I've been dreaming about this, making vague, distant plans, and now it's almost reality. In case you can't tell, I'm very excited -- this is a huge adventure, an adventure I hope you'll share with me.

What Will REALbasic Developer Be Like?

I'm going to give you, the readers of RBU, a sneak peak!

We'll have REALbasic news and announcements; reviews of products programmers can use, such as books and software tools; interviews with prominent people in the REALbasic community; a "postmortem" feature, which analyzes a project after completion, revealing what worked and didn't work in the development process; in-depth tutorials, explaining how to do various tasks in REALbasic. For example, for the first issue, Joe Strout has written a great article on various methods of animating graphics in REALbasic.

We've also got some terrific columnists who will write on a specific topic in every issue. For instance, Matt Neuburg is writing an Algorithms column. That's going to be great for folks like me, who aren't computer scientists. We'll finally get standard computer science algorithms presented to us in REALbasic syntax!

We'll also have a column each for Beginners and Advanced users; columns on working with 3D graphics, compiling for Intel, User Interface issues, and more. We'll have an "Ask the Expert" section, where you can send in your toughest REALbasic questions and we'll answer them.

We're even going to have the RB Challenge, a bimonthly programming problem you'll have to solve. Those who come up with the best solutions can even win prizes! (And don't worry if you can't solve it: the answer will be presented in the next issue.)

Need to promote your website? There'll also be a Classified Ads section, where readers can advertise products, skills, or seek an expert REALbasic consultant. (We'll also be accepting display ads for companies interested in reaching the vast audience of REALbasic users.)

There's more, of course, but that gets you a taste. As we get closer to publication, I'll be posting more details about the contents of REALbasic Developer on the RBD website.

Speaking of the RBD website, we have big plans for it as well. There will be some free content for everyone, and subscribers will have special access to additional resources (articles, source code, project files, discussion forums, etc.).

How can you help?

First, a publication like this needs subscribers. Lots of them. If you're interested in REALbasic programming: learning it, using it, creating software for any use, you need to subscribe to REALbasic Developer. It's going to be awesome.

The normal print subscription price for one year (six issues) of REALbasic Developer is $32 (this is for U.S. addresses). But I've got a special one-time offer. I'm making available a limited number of Charter Membership subscriptions at 50% off the normal subscription price!

However, this offer expires April 15, 2002, and it's limited to the first 500 subscribers. So subscribe now!

If you miss the Charter deadline, don't be too devastated: I'll be offering Early Bird subscription rates at 25% off (that's $24 for U.S. addresses).

Some of you may prefer to wait until REALbasic Developer begins publishing this summer: that's fine. Either way, it's a great deal. A subscription to RBD is about the cost of a typical computer book, which isn't bad at all.

Some of you may prefer to receive your subscription in PDF format instead of print. That's also an option we're offering, and the cost is half of the print subscription ($16/year). We aren't offering any special discounts for early digital subscriptions, however.

Besides subscribing, there are other things you can do. Purchasing advertising (classified or display) in REALbasic Developer will certainly help. We aren't planning on having too many ads, but we would like to fill our quota.

You can also buy overpriced RBD clothing and merchandise from CafePress: we don't make much money off it, but it looks cool, and it's great publicity.

Telling others about REALbasic Developer is a huge help. Link your websites to the magazine site, and let everyone know you're a REALbasic fan. If you like, you can use this small version of the RBD logo as a link graphic:

There's also always a need for contributors: if you have ideas for an article or review you'd like to write, our door is always open. Even if you're not a writer but have a suggestion for something you'd like to see in REALbasic Developer, tell us about it.

How will this affect RBU?

As of right now, the changes will be minimal. I plan to continue REALbasic University. It's good publicity for the magazine, and I enjoy it. I have no plans to incorporate RBU into the magazine, but I might mirror RBU on the RBD website as free content (new columns will be posted on AppleLinks first).

In the short-term, there might be several consequences. For one, I'm very busy launching the magazine, so it's possible over the next few months I'll miss a column or two (I'm going to try my best not to, but there's no sense killing myself either ;-). Column postings might be a little irregular as well (I shoot for Wednesdays, but don't always make it).

I will also shorten the columns. Some of the RBU Pyramid columns were over 4,000 words! (That's a lot for a weekly column.) I'll write tutorials that are more focused and teach a single technique.

Long-term, the magazine will make REALbasic University even better. I'll be focusing a great deal of my attention on REALbasic issues and I'll have more time to write.

I might make other changes, however: for instance, the magazine will feature a question-and-answer column, so I'm wondering if I need my Letters section. I'd keep it for feedback issues, of course, but perhaps technical questions would be better served in the magazine?

Conclusion

I hope you're as excited as I am about the magazine. It's a dream I've had for a long time, and I love being able to help people. Sharing great REALbasic solutions to problems is just totally cool.

I also hope you didn't mind me using this column as a plug for the magazine, but it's such a huge event, I felt it was warranted. (Don't worry: RBU won't become a shill for the magazine. In the future I'll mention what's happening at RBD, perhaps as a news item, but I don't plan to devote entire columns the publication.)

Next Week

We get back to programming with the SpamBlocker utility.

Letters

For our letters this week, we have a follow-up on the "refresh" issue addressed last time, and some comments on my critique of the RBU Pyramid tutorial.

First, Jacqueline from France writes back:

Dear Marc,

Thank you very much for your long and interesting answer. It made me thinking a lot. I read again the two methods "newGame" and "freshDeck" and I noticed the following facts: the last line of "newGame" is "freshDeck" and the last line of "freshDeck" is: gameWindow.refresh

In the Language Reference, Rb says in Window Class methods

"refresh : repaints the entire contents of the window".

So, when I put the two lines

g.Scores = 0 g.Pyramids = 0

at the end of newGame, the "gameWindow.refresh" was performed with the old scores and scoreCanvas remained unchanged. But you put the two lines at the top of newGame and when gameWindow "repaints its entire contents" the scores were already initialized to zero. So it worked perfectly, scoreCanvas was refreshed by the window with the good scores. I tried to put the two lines just before the last line of newGame (i.e. before "refresh") and it works good. It seems very clear now, and your "sink in" theory is the good one!

I enjoy to can exchange and discuss with someone who knows much more than me. The Pyramid was very instructive, but it is necessary to read and read again and think about all the lines of code! I found the "Undo" method specially difficult. Please go on with columns like these ones. Thanks again

Thanks, Jacqueline! I'm glad you're learning.

Next, we've got some comments from Harrie, who signs himself "A Mac addict in Tennessee."

Marc,

I think that you did a fantastic job with RBU Pyramid. Sure it took 20 lessons to get it done but considering all that was covered along with the fact that I know this isn't your only task in life, I think that the number is very reasonable.

I recently retired from a major electrical utility company in Michigan after 33 years of developing computer programs and systems on IBM mainframe computers. So while I am a novice at writing code for the Mac OS, I have a long experience at writing code. The last 15 years I was the main support person for the company's in-house time sharing system which was IBM's VM operating system which ran on its own machine. A lot of the code that I wrote was in the form of programs that the user could use to make it easier for them to interface with major systems offered on the computer. As well as coding systems I designed classes and wrote manuals that were compilations from a number of IBM manuals aimed at better explaining what the typical user would need to get their tasks accomplished. So I am very familiar with what it takes to aid people in learning something new and therefore am very familiar with the effort that you have put in to RBU University. Knowing that I commend you for what you have done. I also say that I am very appreciative for what you have done. It is never an easy task to jump in to a totally new language, and this is my very first OOPs language, believe it or not. Yes, RB does a lot for you but there is still a lot of coding the user has to do and a lot of little tricks to learn. Thanks to RBU pyramid I now feel much better about creating the preferences file and an undo system in my programs along with a number of other little tricks that you have brought out to date.

Thanks for your effort and thanks for all the knowledge that you are so willing to share.

Just one more thing that I would like to mention. In all of my years writing mainframe code I was often teased about the method I used in writing the code. Believe it or not, I always wrote every line of code on paper before I ever sat down at the screen and entered it in to the editor. I originally did this because when I started things were done on punched cards and you were lucky if you could get two runs in one day. By writing all of the code on paper I would find logic errors before I even entered the code in to the computer. I could see where some original idea was weak and improve on it before I went to the computer. It would also inform me that I did not have all of the information I needed in some instances and could go back to the user(s) and get the answers needed. When machines got faster this way of doing things was ingrained in me and I never stopped. The funny thing was that in my career I rarely had bugs in my code when it went in to production. I would have customers sometimes ask for additional features that neither they or I thought of in the initial design phase. I will admit that I am not as faithful at doing that with REALbasic but then I am only writing code for my own personal use so I don't have to worry about someone else suffering if a bug crops up.

Keep up the good work and may our upcoming project that you have mentioned be a huge success.

Sounds like you've had an interesting career! Your point on paper coding is excellent. While I rarely write out actual code on paper, I often make sketches of my data structures or interface. It's faster that doing it on computer, and changes are easy. Almost every time I do this I catch mistakes I would have made if I'd just dived into the project without a few seconds of thought first.

Dear Marc,

I have found your recent RBU Pyramid columns invaluable, as I try my hand at a project which, sadly, is not feasible in Hypercard. It takes a lot of code to make a program that actually does something novel and useful as opposed to a glorified "Hello World" and it's not often that you get someone willing to make a tutorial on this scale.

I also learned a lot from the Beginning Mac Programming book and the MyPaint program, for the same reason.

Best wishes

Peter G, Quebec City

Peter was also kind enough to give me a brief French tutorial. :-)

Finally, an enthusiast letter from Drew, who obviously has a problem with his Shift key (though he surprisingly gets REALbasic correct ;-).

I absolutely love your site man!! I desperately wanted to learn a programming language for the longest time. I tried C, Java, and UNIX but I got bored after awhile, i felt like i was getting nowhere so i stop. Then I heard about REALbasic, downloaded it and tried it out... i love it. everyday i'm at my computer trying to learn more. Now that i found your site i will be in tune. You are doing a wonderful job.

drew

Thanks to everyone who reads this column, and I hope you'll all become part of REALbasic Developer as well. Here's to an exciting future!

Each week we answer select reader questions, and we're always open to ideas for future columns. Send your questions to . (Keep your questions simple and specific. General queries like "How do I write my own web browser?" will be neglected.) Your question won't be answered immediately, but will be answered in a future column. (If you don't want your correspondence published, just be sure to indicate that when you write. Otherwise it's fair game.)

About the Author
is an author, philosopher, graphic designer, photographer, film director, soccer fanatic, and programmer (among other things). He writes for MacOpinion, runs his own software company, Stone Table Software, which sells the revolutionary Z-Write word processor, and is Publisher and Editor of REALbasic Developer. He lives in Northern California with his cats, Mischief and Mayhem, and is rapidly running out of free time.

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