Replace LiveCode Script with JavaScript, forever

[richmond62]

Has he found a compiler that will let you mix all those languages in source files, and produce a single executable?

Now there's the first really sensible question I seen for a long, long time.

I'll ask him.

[Bernard]

Whilst looking for something else in the forum I stumbled across this thread, and had to comment.

The LCS forums are littered with people struggling through problems that simply don't exist in good languages.

That's not true at all.

The LCS forums are full of messages asking for help because LiveCode, unlike a lot of other languages,
can be learnt largely by oneself (no textbooks, no nothing), but a little help does tend to accelerate things.

Elsewhere I have been in discussions with someone who has spent the past two years learning (full-time) to be a web developer. After all that time he still stumbles over basic problems in Javascript and CSS (I see him report on the HOURS he has spent trying to find out where he's going wrong). In 20 years I've never seen someone use LC for 6 months and struggle over the basics.

[mrcoollion]

I explicitly choose LC because of ease of learning and the ability to write complex applications for Windows, Mac, Android and Linux, and even Raspberry PI as well as the cost-friendly nature of the licenses.
And even though the language basics of LC are easy to learn there is no development language that makes you a star programmer overnight. Even with LC you need to learn what is possible and how which takes time and perseverance in any language.

My 10 cents.

Regards,

Paul

[FourthWorld]

Even with LC you need to learn what is possible and how which takes time and perseverance in any language.

I have a friend who wants to learn to become good at playing basketball.

He's read a couple books on it, but he doesn't practice.

He's certain there should be a book that will explain how to do it well, that if it's written well enough he could read it and then step out onto the court and play like a pro, no practice needed.

And so he blames the documentation.

[Bernard]

Elsewhere I have been in discussions with someone who has spent the past two years learning (full-time) to be a web developer. After all that time he still stumbles over basic problems in Javascript and CSS (I see him report on the HOURS he has spent trying to find out where he's going wrong). In 20 years I've never seen someone use LC for 6 months and struggle over the basics.

Let me add to this. The man I'm talking about has written a training course on how to learn Javascript. But after two years he still hasn't learned how to use a debugger. Why? My guess is that there is already so much complexity with differentBrowsers + html + js + css + node packages + someFramework that it was just too much cognitive load to learn something else. With LC so much of the complexity is hidden that the incredibly important skill of debugging is right there in the IDE - it's literally one of the words at the top of the Script Editor. I had to Google just to find out if Safari had any debugger and if so how to enable it. For those who don't understand the benefits of a debugger, they wouldn't look for it.

Imagine dealing with the layers of complexity in differentBrowsers + html + js + css + node packages + someFramework and not having learned how to use a debugger to help manage this complexity. When one has reached the limits of what LC can do then it's time to take on the complexity of using open socket, open process, shell, load URL, Do As x in language Y, or building externals. But web development (even just client side) is complexity from the off. And yet this complexity is almost all that's being offered to novices.

In the UK we have companies springing up charging novices a year of full-time university tuition for a 6 month part-time course in web development. Or to put that another way - these novices are paying for 15 years of a LC indy license for a part-time course. If Javascript is so easy, why would people pay that much money to learn it?

[sphere]

In the UK we have companies springing up charging novices a year of full-time university tuition for a 6 month part-time course in web development. Or to put that another way - these novices are paying for 15 years of a LC indy license for a part-time course. If Javascript is so easy, why would people pay that much money to learn it?

Because there are a lot of jobs for it. Compare that to the number of jobs where they ask LC.

[PaulDaMacMan]

the host-OS-provided options returned with the alternateLanguages function

-
Well, yeah:
-
Screen Shot 2020-08-11 at 7.17.11 pm.png
-

Seems like there should be at least one more on that list. JavaScript for Automation (JXA) is supposed to be a full fledged OSA scripting language on macOS since 10.10 Yosemite. Also I would think any 3rd party OSA installed should show up, if there still were any others (I beleive Frontier UserTalk is long dead).

[juliadavid]

I want to learn ReactJS JavaScript front-end framework. Which platform is good to learn this? React also have a tutorial section on its official website. So is it okay to learn from there or if you suggest any good practical platform? Please guide me about this!

[FourthWorld]

I want to learn ReactJS JavaScript front-end framework. Which platform is good to learn this? React also have a tutorial section on its official website. So is it okay to learn from there or if you suggest any good practical platform? Please guide me about this!

What are you building with LiveCode?

[xAction]

It's not entirely a bad proposal. I see all manner of things "just work" in a web browser with Javascript.
I can compile and run over 30 programming languages online through javascript.
I build something with HTML5 from Livecode, it's megabytes of files and it doesn't do anything.
Scratch? Google Code Blocks? Javascript.
A shame there was no vision for this during the open source period.

I loathe looking at Javascript though. Bleh. Livecode should be the easy mode beauty layer for all ugly languages.

[richmond62]

A shame there was no vision

But the eyes are normally at the head of the organism (well, unless you are an oyster: clammed shut).

[Bernard]

It's not entirely a bad proposal. I see all manner of things "just work" in a web browser with Javascript.

Really? I just happened to have been on my bank's website at the moment I was reading this. They're one of the biggest banks in the world. I told them two years ago their banking application doesn't work on Safari on OSX. Two years later and it still doesn't work. And I'm on a different version of OSX with a different version of Safari, so that's multiple versions where it doesn't work.

Obviously that huge international bank made the decision that Safari/OSX isn't worth the engineering effort.

Meanwhile a team of a dozen people in Scotland are expected to write something that would work on half a dozen Windows browsers, 3 different OSX browsers, and probably as many Linux browsers, plus probably browsers on iPhone and on Android - but an international bank with all their financial and computing resources can't do a fraction of that. Oh yeah, and LC would be expected to run as a normal app on OSX, Windows, Linux. And LC transpiled into Javascript would be expected to work as well as LC works when compiled to C++.

A small team in Scotland should be able to do vastly more than a major international bank. I used to work for a medium sized firm of accountants of whom no-one has ever heard, and our team of programmers had more programmers than work for LC Ltd (and they only worked on internal applications being deployed to two platforms). So imagine how many programmers work for a major international bank. I can't believe how unrealistic people are.

Hopefully the next version of LC will become more feasible when running within a browser.

[richmond62]

Hopefully the next version of LC will become more feasible

I deliberately left off the end of your sentence.

[Bernard]

If LC doesn't work for you, there are dozens of free alternatives for you to use. Perhaps try Pascal or Elixir or Tcl.

[richmond62]

LC works perfectly for me: I have been using it for 20 odd years.

I use it constantly for making ESL standalones for content delivery and reinforcement in my language school,
and it now looks as if I may have a contract to set up a similar sort of operation in another city inwith Bulgaria
with a very strong team of teachers.

I have been using LC for a "daft hobby" sort of thing for digitising dead Indic languages for the last 12 years.

I have been using it to teach computer programming to children in the Summer holidays for the last 8-9 years.

My only gripe, and it is an important gripe, is that, with the lack of availability of a SUPPORTED version of
the Open Source version or some sort of crippled free version, parents are now asking what value classes in
LiveCode can have. The FACT that LiveCode is a superb tool for getting children into programming on a relatively
benign learning curve has no effect on parents who only know so much as to ask, "How do your school computers
work without Windows?"

And, re 'Feasibility': until all those bugs that have been hanging around for yonks are sorted out, and we don't have to
live in a sort of "La La Land" of innumerable work-arounds, there seems no point whatsoever in pushing "ever onwards, ever
upwards" to what will be (unless those bugs are sorted out) a shambolic house built on sand.