Comparison with Xojo . . .

[richmond62]

Xojo just sent me an e-mail:
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Now, don't get me wrong, after about 20 years investment in LiveCode
I am not about to say 'b*gger you' and jump ship to Xojo.

Although, in spite of staying "here" I might still say something fairly coarse.

Things I noticed:

1. Xojo IDE now native on Apple Silicon Macs.

2. XojoScript now supported on Apple Silicon Macs.

Admittedly that is very cheap indeed as an IDE that is native on ASM wouldn't be much good
if the scripting language wasn't supported.

This is like saying my hair is unwashed and greasy: reduplication.

3. 175 bug fixes.

4. PDFGraphics improvements . . . this one made me feel a bit odd.
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Roadmap . . . They have one that is up-to-date.

And popping over there:

5. No, they cannot deliver Android standalones yet.

AND, NO Open Source version!

However . . .

What is the point I am making? [That's rhetorical, answers not expected.]

1. Well I'm just wondering if 9.6.2 RC 3 isn't a load of old bugs and problems and a spot of retrenchment
with some tightly defined short-term goals might not be a bad idea.

2. The competition is 'there'.

[Mikey]

It is entirely possible that what Xojo is doing and what LC is doing are completely different.
LC basically ported the engine to ios and android, and your scripts are running inside of the engine.
Did Xojo do the same thing, or do they generate Swift?
One thing that Kevin had talked about previously was how LC's revenue took a big hit when they converted to OSS. Obviously if you can generate more sales you can invest more in the product. I have a feeling that at least some of the painfully slow development that we have seen is that the investment is going into trying to develop new potential revenue streams (FMPro), but I have no basis for that opinion.

[gperlman]

Hi. I’m here just to answer your question and clear up any confusion.

From you description of how LiveCode works, yes, Xojo is different. Xojo compiles your code to machine language for all platforms. The underlying Xojo framework is a combination of different languages depending upon what is needed including a fair amount written in Xojo itself and nearly all compiled to native machine code. The client side of our web framework is JavaScript of course. Xojo has no interpreter nor has it ever had one.

Side note: XojoScript is NOT the code in your app. It is a way to compile Xojo code at runtime. This would allow you as a developer to add a scripting language to YOUR app. Of course the syntax is Xojo. It could also be used if you needed to create math calculations or have your user enter them at runtime. The Xojo code you send to XojoScript is compiled at runtime. This is not the same as the code you wrote as part of your app. That’s compiled by the Xojo compiler when you build.

Side Note 2: Behind the scenes, Xojo uses LLVM, the same optimizing compiler that Apple uses with XCode. We just use it to compile for all platforms rather than just MacOS/iOS.

The one platform we don’t compile all the way down to machine code ourselves is Android. We are writing that framework in Kotlin because that’s the recommended language to use for Android. The code you write in Xojo for Android is also converted to Kotlin (for the same reason) and then compiled into byte code. It is that byte code that is then delivered to the device where Android then compiles it to machine code optimized for the device. That machine code is cached so it doesn’t have to do this every time.

Your Xojo source code is never part of the compiled app you deliver because we compile to machine code or in the case of Android, intermediate byte code.

Our goal with Xojo is for it to be as native as possible on all platforms. That means native machine code, native controls, etc. We do this to provide the best overall user experience possible via the speed of native code and the use of native controls. This is a lot more work of course but we feel it creates the best end result.

I hope this helps. I’m happy to answer any other questions.

[richmond62]

Hi. I’m here just to answer your question and clear up any confusion.

Well, I'm very sorry but that did nothing of the sort as my question (such as it is) is aimed at
LiveCode rather than Xojo per se.

[bogs]

I think it was pretty nice of Geoff to stop by, create an account, and take the time to give a fair (basic) description of how RB / Xojo works in comparison to LC.

Really Richmond, if your going to use such broad titles for your topics, you should expect them to wander all over, and I suspect he may have actually been answering Mikey, not you

[Mikey]

What up, GP? Long time no chat.

[richmond62]

Really Richmond

Quite.

I think it was pretty nice of Geoff to stop by, create an account, and take the time to give
a fair (basic) description of how RB / Xojo works in comparison to LC.

It was, although to have picked up on my post means that he must have been trawling the net . . .

[gperlman]

Actually it was pointed out to me by someone on the Xojo team.

[gperlman]

FWIW, I was a huge fan of HyperCard back in the day and I was a SuperCard beta tester. Back then each release came on a handful of disks so to get the next beta you had to report at least one bug against the current beta because of course there was a lot of expense associated with getting betas to testers.

[SparkOut]

@chikega how did your experience compare with LiveCode? You know Revolution evolved into LiveCode, right? Did you try the Revolution examples from the book?

[bogs]

FWIW, I was a huge fan of HyperCard back in the day...

Well, not for nothing, but FWIW, I am still a huge fan of RB 5.5 and still use it quite often

[garmeister]

@chikega how did your experience compare with LiveCode? You know Revolution evolved into LiveCode, right? Did you try the Revolution examples from the book?

Yes, Sparkout, I'm aware. - see attached pic. I worked through all the exercises in the book - C++, Liberty Basic, Revolution(Live Code) and Real Basic (Xojo). I liked each of the programs for different reasons. Liberty Basic is not a RAD tool and it does not have the ability to create cross-platform applications, so it's not a consideration for my needs. But it's interesting that the creator of Liberty Basic used SmallTalk to create his application/compiler.

I like many aspects of Live Code. Their version of an array is probably the most flexible I've ever seen, since it identifies array items by a key which can be a number or string. And there is no need to declare an array name, size or type of data ahead of time. Sometimes I find the LiveCode language to be a bit verbose at times. I would forget whether I should write "into" or "in" a field. So that may take some getting used to vs a more terse language. And while studying both Xojo and LiveCode, sometimes I would get confused between similar wordings between Xojo and LiveCode such as "DownTo" and "down to" when using the decrement For loop. (Xojo: dim i as integer, for i = 4 DownTo -2). But they are different enough, so it doesn't happen very often. I'm also evaluating several other RAD tools including B4X (which uses a Basic-like language)... as well as possibly developing a web app using something like NSB App Studio. I'm still up in the air and exploring all my options and have only just started exploring LiveCode. I've signed up for the year-long Global conference. It should be an interesting journey.

A little bit about myself, I'm a practicing dentist and was a former multimedia specialist and medical illustrator/animator before turning to the 'dark side' I'm also an adjunct professor for the dental college at Augusta University and I'm evaluating various programs to create educational materials for dental students much in the spirit of Dr. Stephen Goldberg, who authored the book "Livecode Lite - computer programming made ridiculously simple", and who inspired me to take a look at LiveCode in the first place.

Cheers,

Gary E Chike DMD

[sphere]

Also interesting is Google's Flutter wit Dart as the main language. Claims also the be using native code on mobiles, translated in Javascript for web, and is now also supporting Windows and MacOs executables. And all for the price of...nothing. You'll need to learn Dart, Java like language.

Next to this there is also B4J and B4A, now also open source and free. They claim to have support for more platforms than any other, including Raspberry and Arduino. Looks a bit reversed of LC, you add a button, then you need to create a legend or something like that and a piece of code referring to that object is added to the main script.

Getting nuts about what to choose, can't do all at the same time and invest also a lot of time getting to know the languages.
And I love LC, no doubt about that. But as most used languages are free to use, why would I invest my money, I need to invest time and perhaps a steeper learning curve. So it will take more time to learn, but with multiple resources it will be doable. For now I focus on Flutter.

[SteveFI]

@chikega how did your experience compare with LiveCode? You know Revolution evolved into LiveCode, right? Did you try the Revolution examples from the book?

Yes, Sparkout, I'm aware. - see attached pic. I worked through all the exercises in the book - C++, Liberty Basic, Revolution(Live Code) and Real Basic (Xojo). I liked each of the programs for different reasons. Liberty Basic is not a RAD tool and it does not have the ability to create cross-platform applications, so it's not a consideration for my needs. But it's interesting that the creator of Liberty Basic used SmallTalk to create his application/compiler.

I like many aspects of Live Code. Their version of an array is probably the most flexible I've ever seen, since it identifies array items by a key which can be a number or string. And there is no need to declare an array name, size or type of data ahead of time. Sometimes I find the LiveCode language to be a bit verbose at times. I would forget whether I should write "into" or "in" a field. So that may take some getting used to vs a more terse language. And while studying both Xojo and LiveCode, sometimes I would get confused between similar wordings between Xojo and LiveCode such as "DownTo" and "down to" when using the decrement For loop. (Xojo: dim i as integer, for i = 4 DownTo -2). But they are different enough, so it doesn't happen very often. I'm also evaluating several other RAD tools including B4X (which uses a Basic-like language)... as well as possibly developing a web app using something like NSB App Studio. I'm still up in the air and exploring all my options and have only just started exploring LiveCode. I've signed up for the year-long Global conference. It should be an interesting journey.

A little bit about myself, I'm a practicing dentist and was a former multimedia specialist and medical illustrator/animator before turning to the 'dark side' I'm also an adjunct professor for the dental college at Augusta University and I'm evaluating various programs to create educational materials for dental students much in the spirit of Dr. Stephen Goldberg, who authored the book "Livecode Lite - computer programming made ridiculously simple", and who inspired me to take a look at LiveCode in the first place.

Cheers,

Gary E Chike DMD

It's funny you mention getting confused between languages. Whilst I'm working on an app for work (can't believe I've had reason to return to LC after 10 years!), I've also been writing a computer game for the ZX Spectrum using Boriel's ZX Basic Compiler. I find I get my on/sub and local/dim mixed up!

[Mikey]

I just noticed in Geoff's email that he mentioned Xojo for Android.
As of today...there is no Xojo for Android. It is on the "roadmap", but it has been on the roadmap for some time. They keep talking about it, but it is not ready to use, yet.
Also, Xojo for iOS is going to be hit-or-miss vs. LC. LC's notification handling is incomplete, but Xojo does not support ios push, yet, AFAIK. There are rumors that it will be here "any day now", but I don't know how complete it will be.
Please don't take any of this as calling BS, etc. I am not an Xojo expert.