Decker 1.0

[jtangen]

Decker is fun and surprisingly powerful!

Decker builds on the legacy of HyperCard and the visual aesthetic of classic MacOS. It retains the simplicity and ease of learning that HyperCard provided, while adding many subtle and overt quality-of-life improvements, like deep undo history, support for scroll wheels and touchscreens, more modern keyboard navigation, and bulk editing operations.

https://beyondloom.com/decker

[richmond62]

1. Does NOT use a dialect of xTalk:

"For more complex projects, Decker features a novel scripting language named Lil which is strongly influenced by both Lua, , an imperative language popular for embedding in tools and game engines, and Q, a functional language in the APL family used with time-series databases."

2. Crashed on MacOS 10.7, even though it shows up as executable on 10.7 (currently at work: will try on MacOS 13 at home).

3. "Anyone can use Decker to create E-Zines, organize their notes, give presentations, build adventure games, or even just doodle some 1-bit pixel art."
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ORIGINAL

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IMPORTED

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Well, this may be very clever in terms of how it is put together, but who the Flying Fudge is interested in giving presentations
with a standard of graphics from 1990?

4.

Code: Select all

on click do

does Nix for me.

Even only if I am used to being able to send both mouseDown and mouseUp commands.

[richmond62]

Well, it works on MacOS 13 . . . mind you, I'd as soon as dig out my iMac G5
(currently dual boot between MacOS 104 & Classic, and MacOS Sorbet Leopard)

https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Sorbet_Leopard

and faff around with real Hypercard (at least I won't have to learn
a new programming language to make 1-bit cruddy whatsits).
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Which flaming century do we live in?

[FourthWorld]

Which flaming century do we live in?

If you want nostalgia, Decker delivers.

[richmond62]

If you want nostalgia

Yes, but nostalgia at a price: having to learn new programming language that will not be of any obvious use elsewhere.

AND, if nostaligia is what Decker is peddling, this sort of statement:

"Anyone can use Decker to create E-Zines, organize their notes, give presentations,
build adventure games, or even just doodle some 1-bit pixel art."

is quite misleading.

[FourthWorld]

If you want nostalgia

Yes, but nostalgia at a price: having to learn new programming language that will not be of any obvious use elsewhere.

It's based on Lua, #24 on the TIOBE Index. And there's nothing on that page suggesting the developer expects this dialect to take over the world.

I'm not sure LC fans are in much of a position to assert privilege from language popularity. There are many uniquely useful things about LiveCode, of course. But no xTalk dialect is on the TIOBE Index at all right now. We choose LiveCode for reasons other than popularity.

"Anyone can use Decker to create E-Zines, organize their notes, give presentations,
build adventure games, or even just doodle some 1-bit pixel art."

is quite misleading.

The presentation seems to set expectations reasonably well. It clearly shows a monochrome UI circa the late '80s. I don't think the page is intended to be taken as a serious development tool. Looks like it's just a fun project put together in spare time. It'll be interesting to hear the developer's response if you bring that up with them.

[stam]

Lua is hard linked with gaming - many AAA games use this, not in the least in constructing plugins for games like World of Warcraft (the games aren’t built with this, but will often use Lua as a scripting language). I suspect that’s what the claim above alludes to.

This is one of the reasons I some time ago suggested LiveCode building a game studio type app. Not because you can build the nitty gritty with it that’s not possible currently as the frame rates and 3D aren’t there. But I can easily see it being used as a scripting language in this context…

[dunbarx]

jtangen.

Just curious. Are you working at all with LiveCode? Since you are in this forum I assume yes, at least to some extent.

What attracted you to Decker?

Craig

[jtangen]

Hi Craig,

I'm a Professor in cognitive science and all of my experiments are in LiveCode. I've been using it since the HyperCard/MetaCard days, and it's fantastic. I was just trying out Decker for fun, but I do miss the simplicity of this sort of environment. I run all of my experiments as stacks rather than standalones. I'm certainly looking forward to trying out the cloud IDE in LiveCode 10.

Cheers,
Jason

[richmond62]

I do miss the simplicity of this sort of environment.

There is no obvious reason why you cannot strap a front-end like Decker onto one of
the open source variants of LiveCode.

[dunbarx]

Jason.

I wa once a die-hard Hypercard guy, through about 2009, and resisted changing to LC. This in spite of all my old HC buddies exhorting me to wise up.

I was dumb.

Just like a program such as Excel, I use only about 10% of LC's capabilities. No web, JSON, Mergxxx, databases, etc. My point is that LC is not more complicated than the "simple" good old HC, it is just larger. In fact, LC is far simpler and more accessible than HC, just from its modernity.

I still manage a dozen old OS9 Macs running a client/server based set of stacks for my business. Now and then I want to modify the scripts in those stacks.

Painful, relative to LC, and not because I have not kept current with my HC skills (mindset?), though that matters a little, but because they are antiquated.

Craig