Hi
This forum is really great, and help is always only a key press away. Many thanks to everyone who
gave up their free time to make this forum possible.
I see many people extolling the forum (Klaus etc are stars). I'll come back to that below.
It is mostly painful to have an idea or a broad outline of what you want to achieve with your app,
only to spend a lot of time finding the right solution.
But that is what application development is. Especially with a tool like Livecode. LC's Dictionary, in printed form, is over 1000 pages. It's one of the thickest books on my shelves. Just to compare: I pulled down one of the most comprehensive books on system administration and application development for one of IBM's database technologies. It's also just over 1000 pages long. So in terms of breadth of information on using LC the information available is as large as that for a complex multi-server, multi-user, multi-language database technology with millions of users and which cost $billions.
Some people here use LC with Sqlite; others with PostgreSQL; others with CouchDB. They may never do graphics manipulation. Others do graphics manipulation and never use databases or datagrids. Some are targeting iPhone and never build for Linux; some are using LC as a server-side html processor.
What is important to one app developer is not of interest to many others.
My take is that this forum holds the key to discoverability on Google. Many longtail keywords to enable
broader search results. The posts need to be reworked/written with the first 10 results in Google as the target.
It is doable.
What's the search query for which LC should be in the first 10 results? People who are looking for information regarding C# don't want information about Livecode. Any search engine that returns apparently useless information to the bulk of its users is a search engine that will fall into disuse. Even if Livecode was in the first 10 results for a whole bunch of searches, don't you think that the people advocating for the 100s of other programming languages wouldn't be looking to get their results ahead of Livecode?
If I search for "Livecode samples" then the first 10 results from Google are useful and relevant. Including a link to a Udemy course that I had no idea existed, taken by 643 students and rated 4.2 out of 5 by them.
https://www.udemy.com/course/livecodemobile/
Every app contains functionality that can be classified as universal. I think a way forward would be to
add a permanent link to this forum where the visitor can download a cut-down version of the Livecode IDE
with snippets of code categorized and searchable. One side shows the selected snippet, while the other side dynamically
executes the snippets. This interface enables the user to quickly isolate related snippets and scroll down the list, visually
searching for the best possible solution. As well as a link to the relevant forum post(s).
Is there any other programming language for which such a database of executable snippets exists? If not, then why should this be something that holds back Livecode's adoption if it doesn't hold back those other languages?
"a cut-down version of the Livecode IDE" sounds like a lot of work. What's the point? The LC IDE is itself a fraction of the complexity of other programming environments. It's even simpler than many of the big name programmer text-editors. If it's too complex for new users, maybe software development isn't for them.
IMO before a lot of work is undertaken on some new prospective solution a) the problem has to be properly identified, b) cheaper/faster solutions should be tried first.
Well, someone is going to ask "Who will do this?". My answer to this is, "Why isn't there an affiliate program for Livecode?"
Any product owner will tell you that the majority of sales are coming from the affiliates.
If Livecode had an affiliate program (generous), and I was given access to these posts to repurpose them for better Google results,
then it will big enough of an incentive to see where this effort will lead to.
Seeing that I also have a day job and limited time, this will be a long-term project. My project idea is in the lines of
getting better Google search results. I paid a lot of money (yearly license) for a software product that will make
the SEO doable. Support of this product is lacking. I think that building the tool in Livecode will result in a more flexible
solution.
I think you might mean "promotion of the product" rather than "support of the product" is lacking. But even if that's what you mean, I don't think we (the users) are in a position to judge whether or not LC Ltd are sufficiently active/effective in promoting the product. What data do we have on which to base this claim? I wouldn't be surprised if e.g. a Google Adword for "best software development tool" wouldn't cost $7 per click i.e. LC Ltd would have to convert 1 in 10 clicks to a paying customer just to make a few $ from that new customer.
I don't know what the ratio is between LC non-paying users and LC paying users. What if that's 19 to 1? If LC pay you 5% of a new license fee for each new user this system would not provide them with any value. If they paid 5% of the license fee for each new paying customer would you consider that "generous"?
My problem with this entire discussion is that it starts off with a mostly erroneous list of "successful" programming languages and a lot of (possibly ungrounded) assumptions by people. For example, the B4X forum lists a similar number of members as this forum, with a similar number online at any particular time. The Xojo forum doesn't provide those kinds of stats. But if one looks at the activity levels, it doesn't look much more active than this forum. Am I comparing LC to dissimilar products? Or do people have unrealistic expectations? In what way is LC Ltd failing to entice users if the levels of user activity are similar with similar products?
IMO the first thing LC Ltd should be doing is making some small changes to their website to bring in more of the people who reach the website. I suggest everyone reading this visit Livecode.com with the attitude "if I ended up on this website not knowing anything about this product":
- where is the readily available information on what this product is like to use
- what kind of person like me is using it and for what purposes
- how long has this product been around, how has it progressed
- where are the videos of people using the product
- what kind of beginner training is available
- what kind of advanced things are people doing with this technology
- is it easy to get help when I run into problems
I don't think most of the answers to those questions are very positive based on a couple of minutes spent on the website. Those are the kinds of questions I ask myself whenever I'm looking at a new technology.
So my guess is that a lot of the people who find the website leave within a few minutes because they can't find answers to those questions. For example, IMO some of the Beginner sessions from the LC conferences should be on the website in fairly prominent positions and available for free. A link to the forum (and forum stats) should be prominent. That the conferences have taken place and all the topics covered over the years are not even discoverable on the website (the 2020/2021 online conference is hidden 3 links deep). If there is now no money being made from, say, the 2017 conference, why not put it online for free? The forum is even hidden Below the Line on the Resources page of the website, when IMO it should be linked on the home page (other companies who are aiming ONLY at big corporate customers have a link to their Forum on the home page).
Somewhere I saw a tool that attempts to calculate the average time users spend on websites. It estimated the average person who lands on Livecode.com doesn't spend 2 minutes on the site. I can't know how accurate that tool is. But LC Ltd must have that data. It could be that LC Ltd manages to get 100s of views of its website before one visitor converts into a user. I wouldn't be surprised if many people don't go passed the text of "Start your 10 day trial". I would bet that 99% of those who might try LC don't need the features of the paid version (or at least don't need those features in the first 10 days). So why put them off with the idea they have to pay after 10 days?
I'd welcome the user base increasing 10x or 100x. I suspect the user base is 10x bigger than it was 20 years ago. But we don't have those stats, nor how much is spent on advertising or where (and to some extent that's not our business), nor how long someone spends on Livecode.com before bouncing away. So it's hard to say if there's a problem and what that problem is.