Clarion 7

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.

So SV has secretly released Clarion.NET to its alpha testers. Seems that no-one is supposed to know but there are always folk that will let it slip - especially if they need help.

I was trolling the SV forums when I came across this post - DataGrid Control for Clarion.Net.

Enlarge by clicking on the thumbnail

By the looks of it you need a small workaround in the Clarion 7 IDE to get it to use the Clarion.NET compiler. Are there any of you alpha testers out there that will confirm this release? (I bet not!)

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.