by ZvezdanD » Mon Nov 25, 2019 6:32 am
I don't know what kind of answer do you expect from MM developers about pros and cons. It is obvious that they will praise their decision about the new scripting model mentioning some questionable benefits. They will not tell you "we jumped the shark" for sure.
I think many of you don't know or just forget, the old MediaMonkey scripting model had a support not only for VBScript, but also for JScript. Yes, you could write MM4 add-ons using JScript. The new program supports only JavaScript. It is not a good thing if you reduce the number of options.
The analogy with VCR and DVD is wrong since DVD was clearly much better technology than VCR. The DVD media is smaller and don't degrade fast as a magnetic tape, the recorders/players are smaller, the picture/audio quality is dramatically better, there is immediate jump to any location in the record without waiting the tape for fast forward/rewind, and so on. There was so many benefits in that transition to the new format.
However, JavaScript is not better than VBScript as MM developers want you to think. It is just another language with very similar basic concepts. It is just a matter of personal preference which language will be used and the fact that almost all MM scripts was written in VBScript tells me that that language is preferred among scripters for one or another reason.
Now, if we don't talk about the main scripting language of MM4 vs MM5, but about their API's, I already told you in this thread that the new API is very unintuitive, poorly documented and severely crippled comparing to the old one. I am telling you that as a long time MM scripter who wrote more than 3MB of scripts in total. You could compare APIs by yourself, here is the old one:
https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index. ... on_objects
and here is the new one:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/webhelp/MM5Preview
There is a whole bunch of objects/properties/methods/events that I have used in my scripts which don't exist in the new API or don't have any alternative. If you have a single script which is 1,000 bytes long, maybe you will not have any problems in port, but if you have 1,000,000 bytes long script which uses hundreds of those object/properties..., then you are in trouble.
If you really want to use the analogy with VCR vs DVD, imagine the next situation: there is a tech company that manufactured thousands or even millions of DVD players and there is not a single movie released on DVD for 4 years and a half since not a single movie studio want to support such new format.
There is one thing related to the mentioned analogy with DVD. When Phillips and Sony decided to invent a new media format, they talked to the major movie studios like Universal and Fox. They asked them for their opinion about it. However, when MM developers decided to implement the new scripting model, they didn't inform any of existing scripters about it until it was already implemented. It was a
fait accompli for us, a done deal.
I don't know what kind of answer do you expect from MM developers about pros and cons. It is obvious that they will praise their decision about the new scripting model mentioning some questionable benefits. They will not tell you "we jumped the shark" for sure.
I think many of you don't know or just forget, the old MediaMonkey scripting model had a support not only for VBScript, but also for JScript. Yes, you could write MM4 add-ons using JScript. The new program supports only JavaScript. It is not a good thing if you reduce the number of options.
The analogy with VCR and DVD is wrong since DVD was clearly much better technology than VCR. The DVD media is smaller and don't degrade fast as a magnetic tape, the recorders/players are smaller, the picture/audio quality is dramatically better, there is immediate jump to any location in the record without waiting the tape for fast forward/rewind, and so on. There was so many benefits in that transition to the new format.
However, JavaScript is not better than VBScript as MM developers want you to think. It is just another language with very similar basic concepts. It is just a matter of personal preference which language will be used and the fact that almost all MM scripts was written in VBScript tells me that that language is preferred among scripters for one or another reason.
Now, if we don't talk about the main scripting language of MM4 vs MM5, but about their API's, I already told you in this thread that the new API is very unintuitive, poorly documented and severely crippled comparing to the old one. I am telling you that as a long time MM scripter who wrote more than 3MB of scripts in total. You could compare APIs by yourself, here is the old one:
https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.php?title=MediaMonkey_Automation_objects
and here is the new one:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/webhelp/MM5Preview
There is a whole bunch of objects/properties/methods/events that I have used in my scripts which don't exist in the new API or don't have any alternative. If you have a single script which is 1,000 bytes long, maybe you will not have any problems in port, but if you have 1,000,000 bytes long script which uses hundreds of those object/properties..., then you are in trouble.
If you really want to use the analogy with VCR vs DVD, imagine the next situation: there is a tech company that manufactured thousands or even millions of DVD players and there is not a single movie released on DVD for 4 years and a half since not a single movie studio want to support such new format.
There is one thing related to the mentioned analogy with DVD. When Phillips and Sony decided to invent a new media format, they talked to the major movie studios like Universal and Fox. They asked them for their opinion about it. However, when MM developers decided to implement the new scripting model, they didn't inform any of existing scripters about it until it was already implemented. It was a [i]fait accompli[/i] for us, a done deal.