Another way of assessing LiveCode

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richmond62
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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by richmond62 » Fri Aug 10, 2018 6:07 pm

In Richmond's case
A fairly serious case, well, at least according to my psychiatrist. 8)

I don't know if it were thee, Mark, or someone else who implemented 'proper' Unicode
via the transition from numToChar to numToCodePoint, but, despite all my initial cursing,
thanks to the very good offices of SEARCH-AND-REPLACE everything fairly rapidly began
to behave itself again, and I have nothing but admiration for that transition.

The results are worth a million more than the "agony" of the transition.

No, I won't kiss you; either literally or virtually, because, on the internet,
one never knows who is taking note, BUT . . . :D

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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by LCMark » Fri Aug 10, 2018 6:43 pm

@richmond62: At the very least, I'd strongly suggest not *literally* kissing me at the moment because I seem to have come down with a somewhat unpleasant cold!

In terms of the transition to Unicode, and 'agony' - then it was communal effort comprised of me and four of my engineers, and encompassed a great deal more than just Unicode.

Beyond a certain point, Kevin and I stopped counting the man-years being poured into it I think because there really was no turning back so essentially it didn't matter (Kevin was counting in the back of his head I'm sure - however, vocalising had, largely, become pointless!).

I think any 'wounds' from the 7 'refactor' endeavour have pretty much all cleared up now, and the scars faded - although I do occasionally see Kevin's hackles raise slightly (sometimes!) when he hears mention of the word 'refactor'...

Which is why the dev-team generally use the term 'moomin' instead of 'refactor' (moomins being thoroughly inoffensive creatures, that would never do anything to intentionally harm anyone!).

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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by richmond62 » Fri Aug 10, 2018 7:21 pm

Well, if you all want o consider yourselves as Moomins up in Edinburgh you will have to
think of me as the ultimate Hemulen.
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hemulen.jpg
hemulen.jpg (9.08 KiB) Viewed 8142 times
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AND the thing you MOST have to fear is when I appear in the streets of Embro once more,
back from my self-imposed exile.

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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by LCMark » Sat Aug 11, 2018 2:39 am

@richmond62: I'm not sure we consider ourselves moomins - as I think we occasionally show some rather sharp teeth (although always regret doing so after the event).

The use of moomin as a local dialectual synonym of 'refactor' was mainly to allow us to keep using the notion in the office without causing Kevin a heart attack. 😉

Btw, I think The Hemulan is probably definitely your moominland alter-ego! 😀

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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by richmond62 » Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:37 am

Screen Shot 2018-08-11 at 11.31.16 am.png
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Silly Picture #923
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Obviously Python 3 is a better language than BBC BASIC (1981) because it WON'T DO THAT!
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meso.jpg
meso.jpg (6.69 KiB) Viewed 8099 times

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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by richmond62 » Wed Sep 04, 2019 8:59 am

Oh, Wow: another reason why one should abandon LiveCode . . .
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Screenshot 2019-09-04 at 10.52.10.png
Logtalk
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Logtalk (which is FREE) can be downloaded here: https://logtalk.org/

I mean, how cool can you get?

No more IDE, no more WYSIWYG, lots of lovely syntax 'traps'.

Obviously people realise what cr*p LiveCode is because they keep pumping out
lovely programming environments . . . err . . . whoops . . . only st*pid things like
LiveCode sink to the level of an 'environment' . . . lovely programming languages like
Logtalk.

Mind you, my favourite is Logrolling: search the internet for it. 8)
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GUI.jpg
GUI.jpg (5.74 KiB) Viewed 7347 times
GUI

richmond62
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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by richmond62 » Wed Sep 04, 2019 3:16 pm

Of course LiveCode are being sensible and making sure people don't realise how awful their GUI
and programming language is compared with the "sheer simplicity" of real programming languages such as

C++
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create-cpp-file.png
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Python
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pyth.jpg
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Java
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Java12.png
Java12.png (7.03 KiB) Viewed 7324 times
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After all those easy methods

Code: Select all

put "Hello World"
is just too much bother. 8)

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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by mwieder » Fri Sep 06, 2019 12:33 am

LOL. I'm easily amused today and delighted that I can save a keystroke or two in LC by typing

Code: Select all

put "hello"
instead of ruby's

Code: Select all

puts "hello"
or

Code: Select all

print "hello"
or python's

Code: Select all

print "hello"

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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by FourthWorld » Fri Sep 06, 2019 3:11 am

A simple console print is one thing, and even there LC is modestly slimmer than others.

But most work these days is in GUIs, where we'll want to display the text in a field.

By the time you instantiate a window, create a field, and put text into it, I'd be surprised if there are many languages that can do that in as few as twice as many lines as would be needed in LC.
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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by bogs » Fri Sep 06, 2019 12:27 pm

You mean aside from any other high level language with a visual designer, right? Such as the many VB clones, free pascal + Lazarus (or similar, last time I counted there were at least 3), the light fast toolkit, glade, qt creator, visual C++, swing, etc...
Image

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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by FourthWorld » Fri Sep 06, 2019 4:19 pm

Even with those. For a fair comparison, use manual layout and focus on just the code to display the text, or dynamically create the objects.

Given the lower-level nature of most other languages, I doubt we'll find many that can get this result with just:

Code: Select all

put "hello" into fld 1
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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by bogs » Fri Sep 06, 2019 4:49 pm

I must be missing something, I'm not sure how that differs from say,

Code: Select all

Memo1.caption:='hello';
or

Code: Select all

text1.text="hello"
other than by variable assignment.
Image

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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by FourthWorld » Fri Sep 06, 2019 7:03 pm

Most languages would require at least a couple other lines, to declare the variables and assign one of them as the pointer to the control.

Beyond that, in length there's little difference, but one of them reads more like natural language.
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Re: Another way of assessing LiveCode

Post by richmond62 » Sun Sep 08, 2019 9:44 pm

one of them reads more like natural language
One of them can get kids who do not have English as their
native language up-and-running in about 3 days.

Whatever else I may say about LiveCode, a child who has been studying EFL
for 2 years (English as a Foreign Language) can be empowered with LiveCode
so rapidly as to leave all the "leaders of the pack" far, far behind: and that rocks.

And surely, the "main idea" is NOT to burden kids with loads and loads of metalanguage
and turn them off with obscure syntax, but to get them coping with the underlying concepts
in all types of computer programming?

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