Is learning LiveCode worth it from jobs perspective?

[konung]

Hello.
I'm currently a Ruby & JS ( jQuery) programmer (I've worked with PHP, Perl & C++ in the past) , looking to get into mobile development. I checked out all the usual suspects like Titanium, RubyMotion, Rhodes, etc. Not here to argue technical merits of Livecode ( thou I think it one of the better platforms in the pack - hence my interest).

I'm wondering from the potential employment usefulness standpoint if it's worth the time investment. I just did a search on a few major US job sites, like indeed & CareerBuilder and even a Google search and I found 0 ( zero) postings for LiveCode jobs ( well one posting for a freelance contract in France, but I was looking for Full Time positions in US or even UK and 0 is what I found) .

I mean it can be argued that I can use Livecode for my private software development, or for an internal app at my current company, but from the standpoint of getting a better job in a mobile development, wouldn't I be better off learning Titanium or PhoneGap ( even if it's a pain). I can also see learning LiveCode down the road as another language under my tool-belt, but is it worth it now. I know one of the main selling point of LiveCode is "easiness" to learn programming - which is not an issue for me - as I have 15+ years of programming experience

Am I missing something? Is there a LiveCode Jobs -specific site?

[FourthWorld]

If we were to pursue programming languages only on the basis of the number jobs available, there would be only one language, the most popular one, which would only get more popular since everyone would be choosing it for the same reason.

Yet we see that the number of programming languages is very large, and grows every year. And moreover, if we watch the TIOBE Top 100 list we see it changes every time the list is updated, with the relative popularity of all languages always in flux.

Erlang is a good example. It's nearly 30 years old, and spent most of its life in relative obscurity. But with the recent interest in Big Data, its almost-unique hot-swapping features make it a very good choice for many real-time systems, and its growth has accellerated in the last few years beyond anything it had seen in the previous decades.

Clojure is a similar story, though from a different angle. It's only 8 years old, and when Rich Hickey first rolled it out many asked, "Why bother?" But today it's proven itself a useful addition to many programmer toolkits, with dozens of books written about it - yet it's not on the TIOBE list at all.

LiveCode has appeared in the TIOBE list several times, and I believe it'll move into the top 50 ranking there within a few years. While it's been around for a long time, it's only been open source less than two years, and in the 21st century a language needs to be open source to be taken seriously by today's programmer community.

I feel somewhat confident in this projection because of the unique attributes LiveCode contributes to the world of programming languages. Most languages treat GUIs as an afterthought, while GUI elements like buttons, fields, and windows are inherently part of the language. Coupled with a much lower learning curve than most languages, and offering some of the best benefits all great scripting languages like Python and PHP bring to the table with zero-compile-time, dynamic typing, and more, now that LiveCode is open source I feel it has a solid future among the other great languages of our time.

But it'll take some time. So in the here-and-now it never hurts to learn multiple languages. JavaScript is a great choice because it's the only language directly supported in the largest platform in the world, the Web. And bash has been very useful for me given the central role it plays in server management in our increasingly-connected world. Familiarity with C is useful because it allows us to tap into OS APIs to extend the capabilities of tools like LiveCode when needed.

As far as current LiveCode jobs, I see them now and then in the usual places for programming work, like guru.com and the rest.

Most of the professionals I know who specialize in LiveCode have had clients find them through work they've produced.

So have fun making apps you publish yourself, and consider them having a collateral benefit of acting as your calling card for those who may need similar work.

[konung]

Thank you Richard.

I agree with the first 7 paragraphs completely and don't dispute what you are saying at all. I've started with Ruby back in 2006 when it was still a fairly obscure language, because we needed to support and old program written in ruby 1.6. Two years later Ruby on Rails started gaining MAJOR momentum. So I know exactly what you are talking about.

However my current situation is different - as I have very limited time available to dedicate learning a new platform / tool / language, and I need to invest into something that will be able to help me in the next few years. With ruby it was sort of " I have no choice I need to learn it in 4 weeks ( thankfully since I knew python from my college days and I've been working with perl at the time it was fairly easy) , or the production system will go down . Right now I have a luxury of choice, and job placement is very important on the list of considerations. No need to take my word - just look at what's happening in higher education - job placement is the top criteria now for college applicants.

The bottom line my question was more about specific resource one can go to find positions. I mean Ruby is my bread and butter right now, but if I make the leap into mobile development, is livecode a way to go.

Anyways thank you for a great response, I just want to see some more replies.

P.S.:

A thought! Maybe LiveCode staff needs to run a section on the site called Careers - similar to how Stackoverflow Careers is setup? People already come here for all LiveCode related info - training & news, so why not this? You can make these listings free as part of the membership / licence or charge a small listing fee like Stackoverflow Careers does. ( I think this is a great idea - I expect my royalties check in the mail )

[FourthWorld]

I like your idea.

in the meantime we could encourage folks to post in the Jobs section of the LiveCode Developers Group on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=50811

[kray]

I strongly echo what Richard said, but I understand completely where you're coming from. LiveCode has been around for a long time (and under other names - Revolution, and earlier, MetaCard), and like Richard, I've been using this code base since the mid-1990's.

LiveCode jobs (at least for me) tend to come from referrals from other LiveCode programmers who already have a full plate, or from cold contacts from small-to-medium-sized businesses looking for a solution to their problem and not caring what tool is used to get it done.

IMHO, LiveCode tends to be more of a comfortable and fast solution to issue(s) that a client company wants to resolve. It's kind of like going to a family member with a problem instead of seeking out a solution provider from a Google search.

The public, advertised job space for LiveCode is certainly not there (yet) like more popular languages, and I have found in my experience that it tends to be the tool that doesn't open the door, but instead keeps the door open. For example, one might get a job because of a knowledge of C++ or Java or even Javascript, but once there, LiveCode becomes an indispensable tool for app development and ends up proving itself on the job such that you end up doing less of what got you in the door and more with LiveCode.

As to mobile development, we're still pretty early in the industry, and much of the focus in the development community is on Javascript-based app deployment like Titanium or PhoneGap so other non-Javascript tools like LiveCode are currently in the shadows. I expect this will change over the next few years, but at the moment, here's where we are.

[konung]

Interesting perspective Kray.

As far as popularity for mobile development - the main selling point of Titanium & PhoneGap is that any "web developer" ( and I'm air quoting when I write this) can develop an app using nothing else but JS, CSS, & HTML. Not many people will do an in depth research of a tool like me, and it took me sometime to come by all the information I was looking for - specifically a feature comparison of Rhodes vs Titatnium vs LiveCode vs Xamarin vs PhoneGap vs RubyMotion vs (Delphi XE7 or Lazarus Project) - these are the top 7 platforms right now I think. I'm still not clear on certain topics and I'm hoping to to discover answers during the current Webinar Course I signed up for. LiveCode ease of deployment to multiple platforms was a selling point over pretty much all other platforms, and LiveCode's familar syntax ( coming from Ruby it's fairly readable to me as it is) . But all of these points need to be better emphasized and easier to find. "The greatest weapon known to humanity - Charts" ( Leslie Knope, Parks & Recreation) need to be used

One of the easiest ways to improve awareness is to update a Wikipedia page. It's rather limited compared to for instance PhoneGap or Ruby entries. I mean RunRev entry is not referring to anything after 2009, and LiveCode page is still talking about version 6. I'm not suggesting to doctor wiki entry for self-promotion, but considering that LiveCode is an open source project now - it needs to have a proper entry - just look at Python's or Ruby for comparison. Anyways just a 2 cent small rant

[FourthWorld]

One of the easiest ways to improve awareness is to update a Wikipedia page. It's rather limited compared to for instance PhoneGap or Ruby entries. I mean RunRev entry is not referring to anything after 2009, and LiveCode page is still talking about version 6. I'm not suggesting to doctor wiki entry for self-promotion, but considering that LiveCode is an open source project now - it needs to have a proper entry - just look at Python's or Ruby for comparison. Anyways just a 2 cent small rant

Good catch - I just dropped a reminder to the team to update the relevant pages there.

Thanks for noting that.