From time-to-time Real Software ask our opinion of RealStudio - and here it is:
For me, the worst aspect of RealStudio is the built-in report writer and printer handling (esp in Windows) - complete junk. This needs to be done properly and printer handling needs to work without spurious pages being emitted. We were very interested in using this, until we did, and have had to revert to OTR (which crashes more often than not). We're in the process of developing a visual report designer and PDF render (may add others later) application for both design and runtime use. Reporting is the worst part of RS. I rate this 1/10 - it could be used I suppose, but who would want to.
Second worst is font handling - unordered font list acquisition, unable to use multi-byte unicode input into IDE caption and helptag fields - we can render text in an alternate language at runtime, except for Khmer on Windows. MBS can provide proper font handling plugins, RS should too. And, there should be a means of identifying if a font is real unicode font and not just a rehashed basic ascii font set (like windings etc). I rate this 6/10.
Third worst is updates breaking applications that worked in a previous version. For example, we have (out of hundreds), one PPC Mac user, and we release our Mac builds as Universal binaries - until the latest beta the universal binary would not work on PPC and it caught us quite unawares and was quite embarrassing - we provide their payroll solution and they depend on it. We created a special build using a beta release and we've had to stick to beta versions ever since to keep the Universal binaries usable on PPC. I give this 2/10, but do appreciate the reasonably rapid fixes.
IDE issues include being unable to use unicode font (other unicode languages) in captions and helptext (mentioned above), and doesn't provide very well for key-combo bookmarking and quick access to bookmarks - consider how useful it would be to easily set a bookmark with say ALT+F2, then access each bookmark in the current piece of code (which can get quite lengthy, and may have multiple bookmarks) using F2 - like Visual FoxPro. That would be nice - it's not critical, but it's one of the best time savers I miss from the old VFP days. I give the IDE 9/10.
Debugger: There are still issues too with being able to actually find objects inside complex windows (despite putting in a bug report with screenshots this has been ignored). The contents list isn't sortable, and there's no search facility - if I want to find chkThisBox in a window containing hundreds of objects I have to scroll through - tedious, time consuming and a real pain in the butt - it makes the debugger almost useless.
In many cases it is still not possible to examine inside an object...again making the debugger next to useless. Just a tip from VFP - we could hover over any variable name inside the debugger and the tooltip would display it's value. I give the debugger 4/10.
Windows apps are considerably slower and uglier than their Mac counterparts - frustrating to say the least. But, at least it works. 5/10.
If you're new to RS then you'll have to subclass pretty much every control to make it work the way it should (live data handling and automatic updates, translations etc are all much easier if you use subclassed controls correctly). We have a comprehensive library of controls now, along with associated library code and lots of "Visual Foxpro" functions which eased our transition to RS significantly - it's now a snap to create a working database application.
Watch out for adding Double values - don't simply regard them as containing currency values you might have put in them! The internal representation isn't what you put there, and adding a series and producing a correct result (in terms of currency values anyway) will inevitably result in rounding errors. We use a simple AddCurrency(ParamArray list of double values) to convert each double value to format(v, "-#0.00").val and add that to the return value.
Otherwise, I very much enjoy working in RS and would highly recommend it, though not without advising a prospective user of it's limitations and frustrating aspects.
RS is by far the most productive environment I've used (and I've used many, professionally, for many years). Hence my 8/10 rating.
If you don't think this review is fair or accurate, let me know why - I won't debate these topics, they're just my opinion but I'm interested in what others have to say.