Wait...WHAT?!?

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richmond62
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Re: Wait...WHAT?!?

Post by richmond62 » Fri Jul 02, 2021 9:14 am

If on the other hand your aim is to facilitate RAD, ease of use of building apps, and make it easier for non LC users to join the fold, then that is a weaker argument…
Indeed, you are right.

ALTHOUGH :twisted: which 'fold' would that be that non-LC users would be joining?

The fold where they become involved in using LC as a "Powerpoint on steroids" fold, or one
where they slowly become integrated into a fold where they start to understand what is going on underneath the pretty pictures.

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Re: Wait...WHAT?!?

Post by FourthWorld » Fri Jul 02, 2021 1:35 pm

With all tools there's a boundary, the edge of what it can do for you.

LiveCode Script cannot access OS APIs, but Builder and the externals API can.

Similarly, any no-code tool is limited to the fixed tasks it was designed to support.

But the advantage of making one in LiveCode is that when you inevitably hit the boundary, LiveCode Script is sitting there the whole time waiting to take you deeper.
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Re: Wait...WHAT?!?

Post by jiml » Fri Jul 02, 2021 6:34 pm

Stam wrote:
Instead, the analogy i have in my head is more akin to Automator on mac ... which puts a graphical interface on AppleScript, but appleScript still remains unchanged and works as it did before:
The LC IDE is a graphical interface on LCscript.
Sounds like you'd like that graphical interface (the IDE) to be more like Automator.
Hence the relevance of HC's user levels.

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Re: Wait...WHAT?!?

Post by stam » Fri Jul 02, 2021 9:29 pm

jiml wrote:
Fri Jul 02, 2021 6:34 pm
The LC IDE is a graphical interface on LCscript.
Sounds like you'd like that graphical interface (the IDE) to be more like Automator.
Hence the relevance of HC's user levels.
Hmmmmm... the point i made about HC's user levels is that there is nothing inherently different in the HC IDE (from memory at least) depending on which level your at, only what you can access.

I take the point that you can do the layout in code etc, but as neither HC or LC were ever built to be used that way it's reasonable to make a distinction between graphical layout editor and the script editor.

A 'no-code' tool comes it is probably straddling 1 or both of these functions but I imagine a implementation in LC would be mostly to build scripts in a graphical interface, as in Automator. The point of this would be to speed up simple tasks and to make it more approachable to newcomers to LC, who may be experienced in other languages but may find LCScript just a bit too different (i know i did and had several abortive attempts at it over 5 years, but glad i finally got into it...)

I've written (and re-written!) a few apps in LC and find myself repeating several coding structures which can be tedious/time-consuming (typically unexciting things like master-detail layouts, from loading a data grid 'master' to wiring that up to fields in the 'detail' section, managing updates etc). There are so many tasks in apps that can be abstracted to a modifiable object template (code or layout objects), this would be a way to speed things up.

For this to help helpful you'd need a large number of pre-built elements and an intuitive way to wire things up quickly and with flexibility - so much easier said than done. And implementing something like this would probably need major investment as it would need a fairly tremendous amount of work to do well.

The real bonus is that such as system would and should always allow full access to the IDE if needed, and I guess this could be similar the HC levels - but whereas HC levels limit what you can do, a no-code IDE would add new ways of doing things.

And with full access to to the 'normal' IDE, this would stand truly head and shoulders above all other no-code environments...

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Re: Wait...WHAT?!?

Post by mwieder » Sat Jul 03, 2021 4:43 am

I'm guessing Richmond's posting of the HC levels was an attempt at satire.
I did implement the equivalent of HC's click-to-link paradigm in PowerTools, but you have to enable it via the preferences and I've never heard of anyone doing that. No doubt because of a disconnect between the level of user who would benefit from a point-and-click mechanism for installing a "go to card" mouseUp handler and the level of developer who finds PowerTools of value.
And while I've dreamed of creating some general-purpose data-aware controls to help implement the software erector set paradigm, I haven't gone down that path.

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Re: Wait...WHAT?!?

Post by richmond62 » Sat Jul 03, 2021 1:31 pm

I'm guessing Richmond's posting of the HC levels was an attempt at satire.
Not really.

BUT, what does have to happen is that when end-users open the LiveCode iDE they have to have a screen
that allows them to choose between "Powerpoint on steroids", the IDE we "know and love", and any intermediate
offerings.

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Re: Wait...WHAT?!?

Post by Newbie4 » Sat Jul 03, 2021 2:27 pm

I have always thought the IDE was too complicated for beginners. It is overwhelming. Too many choices. Maybe it needs a beginner version, or at least have a simplified one with many of the tools down in submenus/sub palettes.

The same goes for the coding part. It is simple to start something but gets harder - faster. When you get to the next step, it gets frustratingly harder. Seemingly simple things like reading a file, adding moving targets, zooming in on photos (pinch/spread your fingers), etc require much coding, sometimes tedious and a learning code.

Go away from LiveCode for a year or two, then come back. You spend a lot of time searching for chunks of code that do something. You want to avoid a lot of research and retracing your previous learning curve. It is not as easy doing something useful in LiveCode as we say.

Some people do not want to learn a programming language or become programmers. They just want to create something that they thought of or have a need for. So what if they do not want to learn coding. The more people use LiveCode, the more widespread and known it will become. That is to its benefit. HC sold computer and helped get it into mainstream education.

We need it back again. LiveCode has matured but in doing so, got more complicated. It needs to be made simple again. And more useful. To everyone, not just advanced coders.

A Scratch-like interface would be beneficial to getting LC out there and adopted everywhere. But make it easy for actual, tasks that people have a need for. The appeal of spreadsheets was that it could be used for anything. Once you started using it, you then graduated to formulas, etc. But it had the basics (math, moving around rows/columns/cells, etc).

Make LC useful for anything, without coding. Once they have a functioning program, they will graduate to coding, etc. Just get them to a functioning program with the most commonly needed functions (calculations, saving data, reading data, etc)

A Scratch-like interface and commonly used tasks made easy would certainly help in LiveCode's attractiveness and adoption. Right now, the code looks easy but everything else does not.
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Re: Wait...WHAT?!?

Post by richmond62 » Sat Jul 03, 2021 7:44 pm

I have always thought the IDE was too complicated for beginners.
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SShot 2021-07-03 at 21.42.35.png
SShot 2021-07-03 at 21.42.35.png (17.62 KiB) Viewed 4852 times
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Having "pruned" things (which the ToolBar stack lets you do with a few mouseclicks) my current class of mixed "monsters"
aged between 8 and 16 don't find things complicated at all.

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Re: Wait...WHAT?!?

Post by stam » Sat Jul 03, 2021 8:14 pm

It's complicated for new users coming from elsewhere, because it's different. It's a safe bet this doesn't apply to children.

With respect to children though, the real test isn't how complicated the little 'monsters' find this. The real test would be a comparison of how quickly they could become proficient at mastering a Scratch-like interface to coding compared to existing IDE (also pointing out that your image vastly underplays the complexity, which is the code rather than the layout tools you show here).

But lets face it - while education is important, the biggest paying segment of users will be people wanting to construct software for themselves, including programmers coming from other environments.
For them, even the pic you show can be confusing. It's weird to have an option menu, pulldown menu, popup menu. It's weird that a slider is really a scroller. The tab control is weird. It's even weirder how you code these. LiveCode script is a rich and very convenient language, but has grown organically and there are few shortcuts to learning all the aspects of it.

It's not hard -- just very different from most other things out there. Once you 'get it', things are a lot easier, but there is a time-investment required to get over the curve and many just won't commit to this. A Scratch- or Automator-like interface to coding will be a game changer for making coding in liveCode script more accessible.

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Re: Wait...WHAT?!?

Post by richmond62 » Wed Feb 02, 2022 11:47 am

but at the end of the day, HyperCard was not described as a programming language, it was described as a software erector kit
But that was not entirely true, because while being "a software erector kit" it also contained a programming language.

LiveCode is very much the same, just as in the 1980s when LEGO-Technik came along as a sort of super-set of LEGO.

And I do feel that if LC were to mention "software erector kit" (although I might opt for a slightly different phrase) on their web-pages
(and point out that, unlike many 'software erector kits' [ c.f. the way ToolBook has gone], it IS extensible through its in-built programming language),
instead of 'only' mentioning LC as a programming-only thing, it might attract more people.

I believe there is an excluded population of people who feel that a 'software erector set' that only consists of unmodifiable
drag-n-drop objects is far, far too restricting, but Python, Java, C# and so on involve too much initial input and effort.

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Re: Wait...WHAT?!?

Post by richmond62 » Wed Feb 02, 2022 11:56 am

It's complicated for new users coming from elsewhere, because it's different.
That is at least one reason why targetting people who don't come from anywhere might be a good thing.

I know for a fact that there are thousands upon thousands of educators world-wide who would benefit
from being able to "knock together something of an evening" using something that offers more than
@#$%^& PowerPoint [Come On! Let's at least give the kids some interactivity and an opportunity to
engage in what Ruth Colvin Clarke terms 'rehearsal'] but does not involve going to night school
for 6 months to learn (Python, Java, C# and so on: which middle-aged minds who have had little or
no previous programming experience are going to balk at) . . .

Educators who start with that sort of software package are going to:

1. Mention it to the kids they teach.

2. Mention it to other educators.

3. 1. and 1. and 1. again, again, again.

4. 2. and 2. and 2. again, again, again.

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