LiveCode Forums.

Hi all,
The subject of this post sounds very harsh, but I promise, my opinion is quite the opposite when it comes to LiveCode. However, I often ask myself:

"Why do so many people bother to submit themselves to daily *figurative* root canals by using Object Oriented Programming (OOP) languages such as Java/C++ when so much can be done quite simply in LiveCode"?

I understand there are limitations to ultra-high level languages (like LiveCode) in regards to what low level access to various features the developers of said language have created for us to use. For example, if the LiveCode development team hadn't written the bridge between the OS specific indication of a "touch" event on a phone, we would be forced to do it ourselves through coding in these OOP languages. However, nearest I can tell, the LiveCode folks have covered all the major things you need to tie into as a developer. Also, provided they did a good job with this, there really shouldn't be a notable performance disadvantage in using LiveCode to do something like array manipulation versus using an OOP language.

Is there something I'm missing here? I am all about choosing the right tool for the right job, but the more I use LiveCode, the more I realize people are really missing out on being productive when choosing to do the majority of things in OOP languages. With all of that said, I do enjoy Objective-C and the Cocoa framework from a academic perspective, because of it's elegant, consistent structure (when compared to .NET). But, at the end of the day, LiveCode all the way, for me (until I reach some sort of limit, at which point, I will write a bridge between this lower level thing and LiveCode) so my productivity can continue.

Now if only someone can write a bridge between LiveCode and browsers to replace learning HTML, CSS, and javascript for front-end web development...

Let the conversation commence!
Cheers,
Tom

tjm167us wrote:Is there something I'm missing here? I am all about choosing the right tool for the right job, but the more I use LiveCode, the more I realize people are really missing out on being productive when choosing to do the majority of things in OOP languages.

There are hundreds of languages, for every temperament, taste, and task. I understand why someone would write device drivers in C, or even certain types of computationally-intensive productivity apps in C++, and Erlang is pretty much unmatched for certain real-time server apps, but things like Clojure completely mystified me with its rapid popularity when it premiered. So it goes. There are enough languages that everyone can have exactly what fits their needs.

With LiveCode, one of the biggest reasons it's historically not been more widely adopted is that it was a fully proprietary language, in a world in which all serious languages went open source long ago. Director and ToolBook have more or less died, even Flash is waning, but now that LiveCode has gone FOSS its audience is growing at an unprecedented rate.

Given the unique value LC brings to the family of languages with its deeply-integrated GUI elements as key parts of an uncomonly-readable language, I suspect it won't be long before it starts to take on a role similar to Python in scope.

LiveCode's only been FOSS since April, and the code base refactoring is still in progress. I think we can safely expect significant growth in adoption going forward, likely by orders of magnitude in the coming years.

It's not the best tool for everything, but for the things it's good at it's pretty much unbeatable.

Now if only someone can write a bridge between LiveCode and browsers to replace learning HTML, CSS, and javascript for front-end web development...

There are a few threads related to this here in the forums, a topic well worth furthering there, IMO, as there are a great many ways can be used to support Web development.

That said, I still believe that because the only language every browser supports natively is JavaScript, and given that JS isn't all that hard to learn to use competently, it benefits everyone doing Web work to learn at least the basics of JS, even if we had tools to help with some aspects of translation from LC. JS is fast, flexible, with tons of learning materials available, and as the only browser-embedded language we don't really need to spend much time thinking about whether or not to use it, because we don't really have a choice.

You can bet on Livecode becoming VERY well known and popular going forward, especially with 6.5 coming out. The size of the community and the poor learning materials are currently the major drawback, but these are going to change going forward.

The examples currently available do not do any justice, which is why I can't wait to release my app, because it might just be a very good example of what is possible both functionality wise, performance, and appearance.

I am confident that livecode will one day, sooner than later become a house-hold name. just needs some growth in the community, better learning materials, and some epic examples of what can be done.