I have been using Aware for a few years now, and I am a very happy camper. However, after using any development tool for a few years, I always explore to see what else might be better, more suited to my requirements, more features, etc. (This is how I found Aware. I was using Sencha ExtJS for 5-6 years and while surveying the RAD tool market I found Aware (Thanks to Mark and Roger for their help!).
So, starting almost a year ago, I decided to spend some time each week seeing if there was a “holy grail” of RAD tools that was brought to market. I won’t bore anyone with the # of tools that I evaluated, and while many of them had “some” compelling features, I have not found one that I thought would do a better job for me. My journey included some open source solutions and some that cost $18,000 / year.
My requirements are simple, I need a tool that:
• Is very fast to prototype / develop in
• Is very fast when the requirements change and I have to modify the structure / logic
• Is fast at runtime (sub second response for most activities, and even complex logic should not keep my impatient customers waiting for more than 3-4 seconds.
• Allows me to write complex business logic without 100’s of lines of low level code.
Now others probably have a different set of requirements for their applications, so I can’t say that Aware is the best “Swiss Army Knife” for all.
Bruce
