Clarion 7

(Firstly, sorry about posting this ugly graphic on my blog, but it forms the basis of the post.)

So, put your hands up those of you that think Clarion is 10 times faster at building applications? Yes? Ok, wait… actually, the real question is, 10 times faster than what? Turbo Pascal? Delphi? Java? Aaaah.. maybe, no wait… are you perhaps thinking its .Net?! (Shame on you…)

Well, you all wrong. You can build applications 10 times faster than…. Clarion. Yes, that’s it! Clarion can build applications 10 times faster than itself. Cool hey!

Hello Jason.

“10 times faster using Clarion templates code generation as compared to hand coding”

Regards,

Michael R. Williams, Sales Manager
SoftVelocity, Inc.

So it looks like you are able to get your hands on Clarion.Net now - well the Beta version for a small fee. Exciting hey? Only if $1800 is something you don’t blink an eyelid for. And that price is going up at the end of November 2007, so hurry!

Or wait, pricing for Clarion 7 is also out. How does $2000 smell for Enterprise? Ok, lets not worry about Clarion 7 because it isn’t available yet. But what we can talk about is paying $1800 to try out a Beta version of a development tool that you might or might not like.

Does SV and the Clarion community want more Clarion developers? The way I see it, is that Clarion wants to remain a tight nit community, without any outside interference. No new developers, no youngsters, no entry.

If I was fresh out of college, looking to gain some experience, I’d be able to develop for free in C#. I’d be able to develop a website using ASP.Net, for free. I could hook up a database to both of these languages, for free. And then once I’ve realised, “Hell, I could make money from this”. I could then start selling my freely developed applications and once I have made some money, realise my customers want some added functionality that my free development tools don’t offer and head on over to Amazon and purchase Visual Studio Standard Edition for $250.

I know there are tons of people that are going to say that SV can’t afford to offer anything for free. Well that’s the exact reason why there is this big fat gate around the Clarion community. (What about trial versions? Not even that exists.)

SV’s new website

So SV are developing Clarion.Net, that can create ASP.Net applications. So why is their new site written in static Html?

I had a look at the feature tour of Clarion 7 and am really disappointed in what the application looks like. They now have all the tools to make one really sexy IDE that could sell itself, yet the icons, fonts and layout of some of the screens look very “amatuerish”. Ok, it is still in Beta, but anyone willing to take a bet it will stay that way?

This post doesn’t really flow that well, but I had to get all my points across. I know I have upset some of the hardcore Clarion supporters, and so be it. One thing I can say is that I think Clarion.Net could be a killer software development tool, but with what I am seeing with regards to marketing the tool, all SV are trying to do is convert existing Clarion developers to start developing in Clarion.Net. That also leads them onto a very dangerous road, because you now playing ball with Microsoft, and the chances of some of your beloved Clarion developers jumping over the gated wall are pretty good. What is outside you ask? The .Net world, which is moving at a pace way to quick for Clarion to ever keep up with. Who is doing things 10 times faster now?

And isn’t that the one golden rule in software development? If you stop learning, you going to get left behind.

Install Clarion7, run it, then this happens:

Ok, Click report error to SoftVelocity:

Oh boy. We still have a long way to go until the final release of Clarion 7!

The Aussie Devcon has just completed with tons of demos and information about Clarion 7 and Clarion.net. Bob Z from Soft Velocity gave a couple of demo’s of the power of the new IDE and the new versions of Clarion.

As always Clarionmag have notes and info on the conference. You can read the opening session notes for free. Some of the things that are covered in the article are:

• The new IDE
• Clarion.net and Winforms
• Clarion.net Webapps
• Mobile Apps
• the new dictionary editor
• Data diagrammer
• the infamous appgen - which wasn’t demo’ed as “there is still alot of work to be done to it“

The closing session is behind the paywall, but there are more notes (more of a wrap-up) which is also free to view. Pimpmyclarion.com by Stu has some on-the-ground notes. Not much info yet, but hopefully he will post a couple of decent follow up posts.

Bob Z did say that we will be seeing a Clarion 7 release this year. But what the Devcon showed was that Clarion 7 and Clarion.net is in development, but it also showed that there is a lot of work still to be done, and I still stand by my prediction for the Clarion 7 release date.

It is almost the middle of May, which means that in 5 and a half months since the beginning of 2007, we have seen very little Clarion 7 movement. Yes we have seen some sketchy details on C7 being released in “phases” and that at the end of March, Phase 1 was nearing completion, but that was it.

I have heard a couple of people receiving emails from Soft Velocity’s “sales department”, urging users to buy the subscription plan that will include a Clarion 7 upgrade. But don’t reply and ask for dates, because you ain’t getting any.

Another thing that is slightly upsetting (with regards to C7) is development on C6.3 is still actively happening, with the latest patch 9056 being released on the 5th of May. This only means that SV developers are NOT working on C7 when they are working on C6.3.

My estimated arrival date of Clarion 7 is nowhere near 2007. Based on the vibes coming from SV, I can’t see anything being released within the next couple of months. Which means my estimate is sometime in 2008.

So my estimated Clarion 7 release date is 12 August 2008.

Yes that’s right folks. Stop thinking 2007 is the year of Clarion 7. Rather focus your energy on the arrival date of 2009, and when it arrives on the 12 August 2008, it will have been released 4 months early!

So you think that having no AppGen in Clarion 7 makes it unusable? Listen up because there is a way of getting AppGen to work even though we are only expecting it to be released in Phase 4 of the great Clarion 7 expedition.

• Step 1: Fire up Clarion 6 - yes, version 6.
• Step 2: Generate all your source using C6’s AppGen.
• Step 3: Go to File > Export Project File command, and export your newly generated source to a .PRJ file
• Step 4: Open that .PRJ file in Clarion 7
• Step 5: Build, pat yourself on the back, and then run.

And there you have AppGen for Clarion 7 in 5 easy steps. Another thing is that all of the new C7 code is contained in conditional compile statements, which makes that C6 app of yours virtually unchanged.

Aaah… the beauty of Clarion 7.

Well I know Gary is! Although SoftVelocity are about 8 months behind their initial release date of the 2nd quarter of 2006, it is really great news that at least something resembling Clarion 7 has been pushed outside of SV’s repository.

From the initial announcement made on Friday, SV are going to be releasing Clarion 7 in 4 phases.

Phase 1 - currently at this phase

The first release of Clarion 7 to 3rd party developers who signed up for early access. These fine folk have also signed a NDA, so don’t expect to get too much info out of them. This is an Alpha version, and includes a couple of tweaks as to make it more Vista compatible.

Phase 2 - soon to start this phase

The new dictionary editor is planned for this phase. I find this pretty strange, as you would think that the dictionary editor would be one of the quicker and easier parts of the old IDE to port. This phase will only kick in once SV are happy with the feedback from Phase 1. Update: Unicode support has been implemented, as has support for clear type fonts.

Phase 3

This phase will see the introduction of the new Data Diagrammer. I’m guessing it is somewhat similar to Data Modeler, but I’m really not sure.

Phase 4

This is the big one. The App Gen. Once this beast has been released and is part of Clarion 7, thats where we will see the true potential of the new IDE come into being. Marketers call it your competitive advantage, and thats what the App Gen is to Clarion.

Obviously during these phases, individual IDE components will also be released, tested, broken, tweaked and finally fixed. As SV says, doing it this way will make testing and fixing bugs more manageable as well as shorten the development cycle. (Whatever shorten means.)

Clarion 7 - what can we compare it to?

Gary has compared Clarion 7 to the new Land Rover Discovery 3.

The old Defender was the best there was, but it lacked the fancy gadgets that the mass market wanted (airbags, ABS, HDC, etc), so it was largely overlooked. The new Discovery 3 is as good as the Defender off-road, but has all the bells and whistles on-road, so it’s attracting a whole new (bigger) market.

Me? I’m comparing Clarion 7 and the new IDE to Web 2.0. Web 1.0 harnessed everything we knew at the time about the web. It was ugly, slow, not very usable, but it got the job done. Then came Web 2.0 - and showed everyone what the web can do (think Google maps, AJAX, Youtube, etc) and you have Clarion 7.

Have you got any analogy’s on Clarion 7? Post a comment below and I’ll add it to this post.