LiveCode Forums.

I only found out about LiveCode about 3 days after the KickStarter project ended - but when I found out about it I was very excited.

I've been hoping to learn something that will allow me to create Apps for Android and iOS and LiveCode seems to fit the bill as it's quite human like in the way the language is structured.

BUT I think the actual company employees know their product too well. And have forgotten what it's like to be a total newcomer to LiveCode and try and figure out what this entire thing is all about.

It's been a month since I discovered LiveCode and most of my knowledge about it I got from YouTube.

I tried looking at the main website but there's not actually that much useful information on the website.
Now today a month later I've finally discovered the LiveCode Academy where the first 3 video's are free to watch.

I'm kinda shocked it's taken so long to find the academy, work out what it is and even more shocked those 3 free video's weren't simply on YouTube int he first place because they're a great sales tool for the company.

I'm looking forward to the OpenSource version of LiveCode coming out - I'd have major 2nd thoughts about touching LiveCode with a barge poll without the element of OpenSource because in the past I've been badly bitten by adopting closed source software and then the company goes out of business, or the people in the company have an argument and start suing each other and the software gets shut down. So knowing there is an OpenSource version coming gives me peace of mind that LiveCode is worth investing time in learning.

But I really think the company needs to get someone in who hasn't got a clue about LiveCode and try and change a few things around to see how a total newbie understand things.

Now it's going OpenSource you're going to have thousands of newbies like me who never heard of LiveCode before, never used HyperCard, etc who are interested, but quite confused.

It's a shame the Academy Videos are a paid for service because those of us looking at the OpenSource version and on a tight budget don't get the benefit of being able to learn from them right now.
It seems quite strange to me that a company would charge for access to those videos because charging is an additional source of income but it's also a major barrier to learning the product and convincing people to switch from other development tools to LiveCode.

If I understand how the Academy works (2 lessons a day for 30 days) - then I actually find the whole idea of the Academy a little insulting- because RunRev is putting the brakes on people's pace of learning and telling us you can only see two videos each day.

It's like being talked to by you mother and told what you can and can't learn.

"We'll send you two short videos every day that will show you how to complete a specific business task"

What happens if the business task they send me isn't hat I'm actually interested in, and what I am interested in is 29 days away?

I may have the wrong end of the stick but this is exactly what I mean by RunRev's website being confusing.

No time for a long answer, but as far as resources go you might look at

http://lessons.runrev.com
http://www.runrev.com/developers/lesson ... tutorials/ (some cross linking here with the previous site)
http://www.runrev.com/developers/lesson ... nferences/

As for the already pre-existing academies, if you already own them, and if you log in to the runrev store, then click the "my products" button, or direclty on the business academy button you can go in and pick and choose any or all of the videos you wish to see.

I do agree that finding good resources to get one over the very beginning hurdles can be tough. The forum is probably the best place for that. Quite a while back I looked at rev, got a trial, messed around but just did NOT grok it, and didn't easily find resources (Things are considerably better now in that respect, with a ways to go) The 2nd time, during the revisit, I found the forums. Asked a question here or there, got pointed to resources and had a few "AH HAH!" Gestalt moments, and have never looked back. LC is the language for me.

archer2009BUSknbj wrote:BUT I think the actual company employees know their product too well. And have forgotten what it's like to be a total newcomer to LiveCode and try and figure out what this entire thing is all about.
...
But I really think the company needs to get someone in who hasn't got a clue about LiveCode and try and change a few things around to see how a total newbie understand things.

At this point in the industry's growth, technology alone is rarely a differentiator. They key distinction that allows software to gain an audience today is all about usability, and RunRev is far from alone in "knowing the product too well" - indeed, I would argue that it's the central challenge the industry as a whole faces in this modern era.

People are overloaded with information, so when you want to bring people into a new technology you need to exercise great care in the presentation of available options to get people started productively.

At the application level, user testing plays a key role in allowing the development team to gain an understanding of the preconceptions the user brings to the experience of the work. Similarly, feedback like yours here provides invaluable guidance for refining learning ecosystems like LiveCode's.

In LiveCode's earliest years its audience faced a different problem, almost the opposite of the one we face today: great tech, but too few learning resources to get started with it quickly.

So to their credit, the team at RunRev has put considerable effort into expanding the range of learning materials for LiveCode, including its 370+ page User Guide, its more searchable Dictionary, the Online Conference stacks, the community-driven Lessons at the web site, and more recently the Academies.

Now the challenge is to provide a centralized place so newcomers can both understand the scope of available materials and navigate their way through them to the relevant parts they need easily.

Ben Beaumont, LiveCode's product manager, has said that this is a goal for the company, and that they've begun efforts to provide this sort of thing. With the new Open Source initiative no doubt they have critical priorities for the code base management that are currently taking precedence, but I believe they'll be in a position to return to this learning initiative reasonably soon.

In the meantime, your feedback is very valuable in providing exactly the sort of view none of us who've been using the product for many years can have at this point any more.

I've sent a link to this thread to Ben, and would encourage you to continue to post any observations you have about challenges in your learning process as you go. The moment you're in right now is important to capture in real-time, since not long from now you'll know your way around LiveCode well enough that you'll also "know the product too well", and then we'll have to rely on the eyes of other newcomers to achieve this sort of refinement.

I was in the same boat as you not that long ago...been using LC for a little over a year now and prior to that had no coding experience. Personally, I found that LC went above and beyond the scope for providing information for the beginner to get up and running. I have been pleased with the documents available as far as the dictionary ,IOS and Android release notes, LC lessons and other websites associated with LC and most importantly this forum. I am hooked on reading the posts and seeing what the guru members come up with answers for newbies like me and others. The resources available here on the forum are priceless! It always amazes me when I post a question and I am stuck, how quickly my question gets answered. The people on this forum are truly incredible. I can't speak to the academy but do plan on purchasing the videos, which I should have done in the very beginning. Give LC a chance and I am sure you wont be disappointed. Best money I have spent in a very long time!

Been using Rev since 1.0 and some of the internal help has been pared down.. The online docs are out of date from what the current engine is capable of.. There is not much support from Rev for third party developers, unless you go in their market..

I emphasize with you. It is hard getting started in LiveCode as a beginner. There is so much to learn. It is overwhelming. There is also no one way or even an easy way to learn it. There are a lot of lessons and tutorials out there but again, so many. And not a lot for raw beginners.

It is tedious, time consuming and takes a lot of video/typing/screen captures to make up tutorials for beginners. RunRev does a fantastic job with their tutorials - Better than any other language I know. They try to cover beginners as well as experienced coders and they do a wonderful job. Their documentation is excellent, the forums are fantastic and the other users are very helpful. But they are pegged more so to programmers who have converted from pther languages. That has been their main customers up to now.

You also have to understand, they do not make their living from making videos. Their bread and butter is from add new features, fixing bugs and supporting paying users. Again, what they have produced in terms of tutorials and academies is exceptional for companies their size. They are still growing and I have complete faith that with open source, more and more tutorials and videos will appear for people new to programming.

Be patient. Also, the best way to learn is to experiment yourself. Start small by doing little programming tasks. Use the documentation, the forums and just play around until it works. Doing is the best way to learn. Then go back to the tutorials. Each time you read them, you will get something more from them. Granted, it is a slow process but definitely worthwhile.

I also find it useful to look at user samples of code. Then take those samples of code and modify them to do something more or something else. You will then begin to understand the language and be more comfortable with it.

You learn best by making mistakes and experimenting. In doing so, you find out how the commands work and what all you can do with them. You discover their flaws, their limits as well as new uses for them. You learn by using them.

As in life, the most valuable traits to have are knowledge/experience, problem solving abilities and creativity. This is what you need in learning LiveCode.

Here are the links that I have found most useful - https://sites.google.com/a/pgcps.org/li ... n-livecode and more here https://sites.google.com/a/pgcps.org/livecode/home

If the links above do not work, then try "tinyurl.com/erhs-lc" . Look on the links on that page and also go to the page - "1.2 Where to get help" to see the same.

Good luck and "hang in there". You will not regret the time and effort that you spend in learning it. Soon you will be having fun and getting excited over all the things that you can do with LiveCode.

Hi,

very interesting. I for one found out about LC a few weeks before it was going for open source looking for a language to do cross platform development. Here are a few observations:

The information is indeed not easy to find. You have a very good forum but that is not the only place as there is also a list-server. Lately more users are going to Stack Overflow.
So a lot in very different places. A new LiveCode Super Site has been announced that will have links to them all.
The tutorials in the form of academy videos are also very good but they really should be free. I got them together with my pledge but still, I suggestion: make them free.

The store was very complex and in the beginning I could not understand it. I gather it will change soon and that is good. Keep it simple.

Hypercard is mentioned a lot that is also very confusing for a beginner.

I feel that a few 3th party extensions are being promoted a lot. MobGUI, ExtMerg, ... It seems they should be in the core. I hope it will not stop LC from adding that functionality.

Reading the forums I also get the impression LC ( and 3th parties) is mainly geared to iOS and not Android. I hope this will not be a problem.

I would also suggest a sub forum to discuss how one builds multi platform apps and the problems it has.

Nevertheless I am still very exited.

Great day to all.

Marc

Hi Archer2009BUSknbj,

Thanks very much for taking the time to post. Your comments are really valid. The beginner experience of LiveCode is something we'll be spending time working on in the coming months.

We're currently doing a lot of work on the website and in particular, looking at the information architecture and the user journeys. I'll be bringing your comments to this discussion.

In regards to the academies I think you make some important points:
1) The 2 videos a day academy was used to help engage new users over a 30 day period, which had very good results in terms of trial users going on to use to product long term. All this changes however with LiveCode going open source and all 60 videos from the academy will be made available at once allowing the viewer to learn at whatever pace they choose.
2) The academy content is currently paid for content. I think you are right that enabling new users is vital to the future of the technology and I'm certain we'll make some of the academies available for free in time. However, it will form a revenue stream that the company needs in order to continue to develop the product, so I would imagine much of the new academy content will remain a paid for addition.

Thanks again for your comments,

Warm regards,

Ben

Hi Archer2009BUSknbj,

I'm a programmer since the late 80's. Roughly a year ago I started with LC and also found it very confusing. Not because it was difficult but because it was different. And I to found what appeared to be a lack of documentation and examples, however, I perceived and slowly I began to understand it. In the growth period the documents I did find such as those here

http://www.runrev.com/developers/lesso ... neric.php

where and are most useful, and best of all there's even an up to date book on LC called "LiveCode Mobil Development - Beginner's Guide" by Colin Holgate which I can highly recommend.

Just these three recommendation I can assure you will get you going in no time. If I may so bold to say maybe start with this one http://livecode.byu.edu/indexgeneric.php

Seek and you shall find. go on, give it a try...

Regards
Nigel

So I've been developing for 15-odd years now with a multitude of languages (most of them C-like I'll admit, Java, C++, etc.). Just spent half a day trying to figure out how bl**dy LiveCode works. Ok, so no custom types/classes? uhm fine, Perl4 didn't have any back in the 90s, I'll live. Back to the roots! But then, wait, where's the method specification for, say, a DataGrid object? No clue. The Dictionary? Confusing to put it mildly.

Then the scripting language... really cute... "please would so be so kind as to set the value of text field to the following string". That's the part that bothers me most: one of the big advantages of the tons of languages that use some kind of reverse notation (where you first write the object you want to modify, and then the operation you want to execute), is that in all probability you know the object you're dealing with, but not necessarily what you can do with it, especially as a beginner, which seems to be the target audience of LiveCode. Modern IDEs therefore have code completion features: type objectname and maybe the dot, if you're in Java, and the method list that is currently available appears, with nice hovering documentation, bells and whistles. THAT is what helps most programmers learn their stuff quickly, and not a syntax that resembles one of the hundreds of spoken languages existing on the planet today. And trust me, I've been teaching development to students, I've seen it.

As far as I'm concerned, the promise of rapid multi-platform results sounded great, but I'm uninstalling the thing, because I don't believe in the core language of the product. Anyone who has developed more than a hello-world program knows that the UI is one of the last things to worry about, so great about the whole clicky stuff, but that's not going to save the day.

These are, of course, my very personal 2c, which I am sure many people here will disagree with.

Good luck!

OK, well here are some first day thoughts of LiveCode 6.0

My goal was to try and create an Android APK File which I could install on my phone (Samsung Galaxy Note running Android 4.0.4)
All my project had was a single label and a button.

Anyways it took me around 2 hours to create an Android APK file.
My biggest issue was simply trying to get the Android SDK set up on my Windows 7 PC.

What didn't help was the RunRev installation instructions are useful but out of date with how everything looks on the latest version of Android SDK.
I'd really like to see updated instructions with new screenshots that reflect the latest way LiveCode and the Android SDK Look - I've attached a screenshot which shows on the left the instructions from the RunRev website versus the new dialog box on the right - the paths are totally different and for quite a while I was stuck looking all over program files directory looking for the SDK files.

I think the instructions need to be redone from how things stand right now with the new Google SDK Download Page link as the starting point. Also a HD Quality YouTube Video on how to install everything would be nice.
Videos are great learning tools. And if you don't understand things the first time you can replay as many times as needed.

In the past I'd created several Android Apps using the MIT App Inventor and the great thing with that was you didn't need the large and tricky to configure Android SDK on the PC, everything was done in the cloud and when you were finished you simply downloaded an APK file which always worked.

Unfortunately the APK File produced by LiveCode 6.0 won't install on my phone- perhaps because I've not set any icon for it? I don't know but if this is the case then I think LiveCode should just create a default icon.

I think it's great that lots of new features will be added to LiveCode but you're going to have so many newbies coming to LiveCode now it's gone Open Source that struggle to get off the ground.
High End features like gaming engines, etc are nice to have but us newbies need features at the low end that help us to get off the ground.

In fact several months ago I attended an event at the Mozilla Headquarters in London where representatives from the developers of Titanium Appcelerator held a session to help people install Appcelerator and there was about 20 people in the class- after 3 hours not one single person had managed to get their PC to install the SDK. And that was with professional developers sitting in the room to offer their assistance. One of the big problems that day was that the Android SDK required so many downloads and it was all going so slow no one person managed to install anything that worked. One guy even started extra early and given himself 6 hours to install the Android SDK and couldn't get it up and running.

So can you imagine that if 20 people can't get Android SDK running with a professional to assist them how hard it can be for a lone person sitting at home.

The whole Android SDK / Eclipse Environment is Horrible to setup and horrid to use which is why people like myself have stayed away from it for so long and was one of the main reasons I liked using the MIT Inventor system so much because I could create something that worked without all the hassle. The only downside was it required me to always be connected to the internet.

I think the vast majority of people that are going to be attracted to to LiveCode from today are those that want to get into Mobile Phone Apps... Android, iOS and Windows Phone (and maybe Blackberry).
But a lot might give up at the very beginning if they get stuck on the initial setup.

It would be nice if someone also put together a downloadable development environment - perhaps a fully setup Linux Virtual Machine that has LiveCode already installed along with Android SDK fully setup and configured to run perfectly.

Ideally what I'd like to see on LiveCode are Wizards - Wizards are so useful in helping people get started with something. I used to use a Wizard in Microsoft Word 10+ years ago to help me create a CV and once it was created tweak it.
I think LiveCode Wizards for mobile phone Apps would be amazing, just follow some steps to create a variety of Apps such as RSS Readers and just tell LiveCode Wizard which Feeds to include, etc
Trying to create software totally from scratch is extremely difficult for a Newbie, but if you have a sample App where you can see how it works and use that as a base it makes learning so much easier - and if that app was created using a Wizard then it is even better because it's already customised to some extent.

LiveCode going OpenSource is going attract waves of newbies to programming - It reminds me of the days when the BBC Micro was in schools and computers helped you see the world in a whole new way.
I can easily see this as being the programming language of choice in every single school in the UK. And when those students go into the work place they'll take that experience into their new companies to solve everyday business tasks.

But all of that relies on helping those newbies get off the ground .. something I think RunRev has to put serious thought into and perhaps enlist the help of people who know nothing about LiveCode and see it from their eyes.

Hi archer2009BUSknbj,
You've put a lot of work into your post, thanks.

Since you've just gone through the process recently why don't you write it up with screecaps and instructions while it's fresh in your mind? I think it would help many new people, while it isn't a wizard it will help them get started until someone makes a wizard.

Sure, it's not your job to do this but as the software is now open source it's now a community effort which you are now part of. Asking for stuff doesn't make it become a reality, making stuff does.

Simon

I agree with every word of your post. I'm trying to get this to work on a PC environment then on a Mac. I really don't know if its a version conflict or outdated instructions or both. I you find it in your schedule to do a setup instruction document i would be more than willing to test it / proof it with you.
Thanks!