Developer Available

[Das Goravani]

> On Sep 28, 2022, at 12:04 PM, Martin Obongita via omnisdev-en <omnisdev-en at lists.omnis-dev.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Shah,
> Are you in a veiled speech pointing to Python alternative?
> The taste of Omnis makes me feel like I am hooked to a cult.
> I just wish that the community would be bigger and open source.
> Martin.


Oh this issue again, is it SpringTime?

The following is the best I can do at this time. With each day comes new learning and the conclusions in this article change. 

Open Source: What this does usually is save you money. Omnis has a price. However, you can buy it and stick with that version for many years as many developers and companies on this list demonstrate with their apps still in old versions of Omnis. So this is NOT the end of the world as we know it.  One can handle the cost of the dev. License. 

Then, as far as companies buying runtimes, they are not all that heavily priced. A small company, say 5 users, gets away with paying $600 every so many years. That is not that much given that development of a solution costs so much more, including if done in an Open Source language like Django/Python.  The cost of Omnis runtimes or App Server users is a small part of what a company must pay to drum up a real solution in any language. I don’t think companies buying runtimes is anything to cry about. 

Developers in Numbers: What one needs from other developers is that help, that support. Gotten through StackOverflow or something. That is a very unfriendly place especially when starting out on it.  They have judgement systems. With big Open Source products, There is nobody "behind it" that you can contact for ultimate resolution of problems. With Omnis, there is a responsible company behind the product and you can actually get ahold of them, report bugs, ask questions, provide a library for them to look at, and so on.  

When one needs help, this list is there. It may not be SO active, but it doesn’t need to be.  One DOES get the help they need here.  Maybe not always, but usually. 

I have been very active with Omnis learning and expansion over the last 3 years. During that time I have posted to the list more than anyone else for sure.  Almost always I received help.  Occasionally a post goes by without being answered.  Often I found in me and my post some immaturity that caused it to not be answered.  The archives contain TONS of tech support.. the entire history of this list.  

Omnis is a very fine product. It’s finest act is it’s desktop windows approach, which is not dead, it just has the web as competition now. As far as I know, Omnis is the only game in town for desktop windows, cross platform, a powerful RAD, anywhere. It does a fine job with the Javascript Client too. 

Omnis is highly integrated. It handles everything itself.  So it’s a nice language to work in.

Soon they will have a lower end entry product, which should help bring in new blood, more users. 

Today I looked at Idle, which is Pythons development environment app.  It comes up as just a blank page, like a script writing page. There are no windows you can examine and glean things from. You can only type "help()"… I typed help and it did nothing. You have to type help().  See how that is?  See how it is?  From the get go Python is wholly unfriendly. There is no interface to their dev environment at all. Now I’m sure one gets used to this and finds it clean eventually.  At first it is unfriendly.  

Go to download Django and you are greeted with the need to do it on the command line.. like Linux software. See the difference?  I had "Certbot" woes some time back and ultimately had to give up trying to get a certificate for my server. It just won’t work. And there is nobody I can turn to for exacting help with that issue. So for my Mac server I have to go with CloudFlare’s "Flexible SSL" available on their free account, for my server to have SSL at all. And that is only "half SSL".  It works for surfing. May not work for database protection. I don’t know. We’ll see someday probably. But this thing about "nobody is responsible" or available as responsible is kind of annoying. 

Open Source means that the biggest corporations have the say over the product. You receive the droppings from their table. In a way it’s communistic too.. everything is free.  But I am not a communist nor am I Chinese.. one of the great sad masses.  I like being able to pay for a product. It makes sense.

With all this said, there is the sad aspect. It is sad that Omnis is not more widely adopted.  Such a fine product should get more play in the world.  However, when YOUTH approaches computers, they are looking for "Where everyone is going" which takes them right up to the door of Javascript, Python, Django, etc.  They also do not have money yet.. they are young.  So they go for "free".  So YOUTH ends up going with the Open Source biggest names.  Thus they are taken away at an early age and don’t really look around much.  It is sad to think that big corporations may knowingly do this: Open Source companies to get young developers in droves and free features written for their tool of choice. 

Just today I was looking at Django. Why? Because although I have received some, it is true that there is not much work available in the field for Omnis Developers. 

And I am in a personal situation in life whereby I will have to be working for the next so many years until I die or retire.. for I do not have savings for retirement, so I have to keep working.  Although I love Omnis and do wish to stay with it, I may be forced to learn something else that HAS work available with it.  I could find that with Django.  Django is like the Javascript Client in that it is mainly for making websites where forms are heavily used, just like the JS Client in Omnis.  I had a look online at "Forms made with Django" and the pictures looked no better than the JS Clients output.  So forms are forms on the web, and that’s how databases work the front end.. with forms. 

So I may have to learn Django in order to be working in the future. I may take this up as a hobby soon.  Because for now, Omnis isn’t growing.. jobs are not opening up.

If I had a product that was selling, with Omnis, I would just stay with Omnis. If I were a VAR that had product(s) on Omnis I would just stay with Omnis. 

If one needs things that Django has that Omnis does not have, that is another consideration in itself. Omnis has most of what is going on, though not all. 

Like for example, I do not know how to do Captcha with Omnis. I think you can do it with Django. 

Vik Shah said to me "We Omnis Developers are too good for this world".  There is a shade of truth in that.  Omnis is a fine product, perhaps too good for this world. 

This world, is open source quite a bit.  But that really means that corporations are supporting them. They live off grants that come regularly from big corporations who use the products. So they are not free to their biggest users. 

With their coming entry level product, Omnis may again, like it was one day long ago, take back market share, may become a happening thing. 

With Omnis, things are more padded. You have a nice ride. 

With the big name open source, they may not try to pad it as much. You are one of a large mass of people.. there is no name recognition.. no friendliness, in large open source venues like StackOverflow.  

You cannot type a letter like this, that is for sure. 

This is quite a friendly list. It is almost a private luxury club. I joined the SQLite forum and was taken to pieces for asking my questions.  RUDE.  VERY RUDE.  It was a negative experience and it happened a few times.  Ultimately I was on my own with my problems.  They had NO respect for SQL being done FOR YOU the way Omnis does it.  It is dominated by very aggressive unfriendly SQL snobs.  

I think with the free and large it is more "you against the world" which is not how one feels here on this list. 

Each world has it’s pros and cons. 

Forgive me more experienced developers, if I have said anything wrong herein.  I am trying to be balanced and speak the truth.