Why is LiveCode not recognized more as an app developer language?

[DR White]

Top 25 Programming Languages for Mobile Application Development:
Python
Swift
JavaScript
Rust
Scala
Ruby
GoLang/Go
Java
R
C++
PHP
SQL
C#
Objective-C
Kotlin
HTML5
jQuery
Lua
Corona
ObjectPascal
Perl
QML
Scheme
ActionScript
Scratch

I have been using LiveCode for more than 5 years and I have 9 mobile app published on both Apple and Android platforms. I am a novice programmer, but with LiveCode I was able to create some high quality app. There is NO OTHER APP LANGUAGE that can develop a quality app with such a small amount of programming. Two of my apps have over 50,000 downloads (my apps are free) and approaching 100,000. I could not have accomplished this feat without liveCode and this forum and God. LiveCode is a truly AWESOME programming language. Then when you add the UNBELIEVABLE support group of this forum, nothing else comes close.

Several of the names in the list of "Top 25 Programming Languages for Mobile Application Development" are a joke.

Why has LiveCode not made a more reparable name for their self?

[jmburnod]

Hi,
For me Livecode is the best langage for newbies programmers and for what I need to create (app for classroom with text to speech and good accessibility).
I don't know why LiveCode is not among first ten.
I guess that LiveCode is maybe discredited because it is often describe as a hypercard successor. I remember hypercard was not considered as a serious langage by programmers.
Here is an other top 50 sound like a joke too.
https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
Best regards
Jean-Marc

[stam]

I guess there are limitations with not being a compiled language - speed would be the main issue. You can't really compete with the speed of a C++ or Swift app. Having said that you can do many apps very well, and importantly much quicker that in many traditional environments.

I suspect there is a great deal of elitism when it comes to the people making these judgements, coupled with an ignorance of the platform (when your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail and so on).

The reality is that it's probably more lack of awareness than anything else.
I really think the mothership's website should include an extensive portfolio of all real apps created with LC, even it's it's just a paragraph - akin to https://www.qt.io/home, coupled with a social media onslaught (eg leveraging ads on social media so that when a customer searches for something like XOJO or even Flutter, they get a ton of adverts for LiveCode etc.)

Of course all of this costs $$$$ which i suspect is the sticking point...

[richmond62]

The sooner people stop mentioning HyperCard the better.

HyperCard was good in its time: rather like black and white cathode-ray televisions.

'HyperCard' has all sorts of semantic baggage attached to it that LiveCode does not need any more.

Mind you, that that list has Scratch at the bottom (my pet hate) as a developer language it is
clear that that is a list of little to no value. Unfortunately the ignorant masses don't know that.

[richmond62]

I really think the mothership's website

has been sitting there looking the way it does for about 3-4 years which does NOT
make LiveCode look dynamic in the slightest: just boring.

[Bernard]

The sooner people stop mentioning HyperCard the better.

I disagree. There's something worse that explains LC's absence.

I've noted every few years that some computer science graduate stumbles upon the history of Hypercard and posts a story to news.ycombinator.com.

Cue lots of fond memories, lots of praise. Then someone mentions Livecode and nothing but hostility follows. Nothing to do with them knowing anything about LC.

There's something else going on. They like Hypercard as something that disappeared decades ago. They hate that a much superior successor to it exists.

[Bernard]

Top 25 Programming Languages for Mobile Application Development:

The list looks dubious to me. I don't think this lot can have produced many mobile apps.

R
PHP
SQL
jQuery
Corona
ObjectPascal
Perl
QML
Scheme
ActionScript
Scratch

There are 1000s of programming languages. Many are extraordinary but disappear from common usage. Long-term experts in the language Tcl went on to produce Redis and Sqlite. Those two thought leaders are still huge fans of Tcl, but I would guess 9999 out of 10000 programmers have never used Tcl.

Rather than worry about why LC is not successful (in the terms of that 25 languages metric), just be glad you are one of the cognoscenti who found out about LC and went on to succeed with it. Their loss. Success is the best revenge

[dunbarx]

Bernard.

Rather than worry about why LC is not successful, just be glad you are one of the cognoscenti who found out about LC and went on to succeed with it. Their loss. Success is the best revenge

This may go back to the turn of the century, when it was clear that Hypercard (sorry, Richmond) was on the ropes. And that had a much larger initial splash than LC ever did. The same issues applied there; HC was just not a serious platform, marginalized, dismissible.

I hope that steady progress is being made with LC, which is MUCH more powerful, much better, much, er, everything. But the spectre looms.

Craig

[richmond62]

They hate that a much superior successor to it exists.

That presupposes that those who hate it are actually aware that LiveCode exists.

[Bernard]

They hate that a much superior successor to it exists.

That presupposes that those who hate it are actually aware that LiveCode exists.

Erm, they know because
a) they are gung-ho for Hypercard
b) but when they are told a free, cross-platform successor exists, they bitch about Livecode and even downvote the person telling them, which greys-out the comment.

I can only conclude that their enthusiasm for Hypercard is just fake. I'm not sure that in 20 years I've ever seen a positive discussion there about Livecode. Even when all of their objections are shown to not apply, still no positive discussion takes place.

[stam]

I can only conclude that their enthusiasm for Hypercard is just fake. I'm not sure that in 20 years I've ever seen a positive discussion there about Livecode. Even when all of their objections are shown to not apply, still no positive discussion takes place.

Thats why it needs a social media onslaught.
any time someone from any language googles 'datagrid', liveCode should be popping up
anyone searching for 'array' (and especially 'multi-dimensional array') should see links for liveCode arrays
Blazing examples of cool RL apps should be easy to find (and really not entry level stacks showing how 'easy' it is to code LC)

but that takes $$$

[Bernard]

Thats why it needs a social media onslaught.

I see that LC has some marketing manager. I don't know what his job entails. I don't think that it's that easy to reach the millions who don't code. And as for those who do, as my years of watching how Hypercard/LC get discussed on places like the YC forum, their responses are irrational, bordering on schizophrenic. I don't see how one persuades irrational/bigoted people to change their ways.

any time someone from any language googles 'datagrid', liveCode should be popping up
anyone searching for 'array' (and especially 'multi-dimensional array') should see links for liveCode arrays

But that's exactly what I see when I Google the phrase: livecode datagrid, or: livecode array. The top results are exactly pointers to where one would want to be. As I've argued, the documentation internal to the IDE is about 2000 pages. Then there's a whole load more on the LC website. I have far less trouble finding specific information about something in LC than I do, e.g., in looking for information about how to do something in Sqlite (by one calculation there are over 1 trillion Sqlite databases in use).

Blazing examples of cool RL apps should be easy to find (and really not entry level stacks showing how 'easy' it is to code LC).

I just chose one of the languages from that list of 25 and Googled for sample applications. The top result was to a Reddit discussion that provided not one example (not even a basic app). Instead the advocates of Rust said "it's a meaningless request". FWIW I've used 11 of the languages in that list of 25. And I prefer LC to any of them.

One of the things that makes LC stand out from the rest (and this has been true for 25 years, back to the Metacard days) is that the IDE is itself an example of what can be done. You can pretty much guarantee that with most of those "top 25 languages for mobile" their IDE/Repl is NOT built in the language itself. The exception would be the C versions and Java.

Perhaps this should be a point that is made clearer to those who don't know LC. I've used IDEs which had been around for the past 20 years. Trying to customize the IDE was really hard. One literally had to learn a new and obscure language just to make the IDE work a bit more to one's tastes. Doing that in LC might not be something a novice would feel capable of tackling, but it's really not hard.

LC is vastly under-rated by the thousands of programmers because they think that something with a low barrier to learning must be very limited. Very hard to get arrogant and ignorant people to stop being arrogant and stop being ignorant. I remember 20 years ago when I was tasked with learning Javascript for my team. They dismissed it as a toy language with no future. These days no-one uses the language in which they were such arrogant and ignorant experts.

but that takes $$$

As someone who's had a paid license for about 20 years, I'd rather that money was spent on improving things for me than in winning over a few hundred people to use the free version. I've worked with programming environments that were decades ahead of the competition, but they were destroyed by an incompetent $multi-billion company with deep pockets.

If people want LC to be better known, they should be asking themselves "what am I doing to promote it". Hundreds of LC users could be using social media to talk about LC. I'm not sure it's a good use of the company's resources. They have to make the financial decisions that seem best to them - working with Filemaker, Kognition, etc.

[jmk_phd]

In defense of HyperCard, this was how I learned the basic principles of programming back around 1980. Not having had a background in computer science, I might never have attempted to create a computer program otherwise.

During the mid-1990s I adopted the ill-fated Prograph visual IDE for macOS. It was wonderful, but once it got bought out and killed off I gave up developing apps for well over a decade, devoting myself instead to developing distance-learning courses for my university.

It was the HyperCard association that attracted me to LiveCode around 2015. It was immediately familiar. My (so far) four freeware apps would not exist but for LiveCode. Yes, it's interpreted rather than compiled, but still I never cease to be amazed at its speed.

Having been burned by the demise of Prograph, I do worry everyday about the possibility that LiveCode Ltd will fail and leave me abandoned as did Prograph. It's unlikely that at my age I will outlive my Indy license that runs through 2025, but I hope that LiveCode does not perish first.

jeff k

[FourthWorld]

It was the HyperCard association that attracted me to LiveCode around 2015. It was immediately familiar. My (so far) four freeware apps would not exist but for LiveCode. Yes, it's interpreted rather than compiled, but still I never cease to be amazed at its speed.

At least half of the languages on the list in the OP here are also scripting languages.

Scripting drives so much application development today, the old stigma against dynamic compilation from the '90s has faded long ago.

[stam]

I see that LC has some marketing manager. I don't know what his job entails.

Well, quite. No one would guess they actually did have a marketing manager...
I haven't seen any promotional activity in the last year or so since i joined LC properly. There was a drive last year with pricing promotions and lockdown learning. And to be honest, it was the pricing promotion that enticed me to try out LC properly with an indy package with lockdown learning as a sweetener, and now i subscribe to this fully. So +1 paying customer. But i've not seen anything similar since. Actually not a single blog post (or if there has been, it's not been pushed into my awareness). Very weak marketing, which is a massive fail.

I don't think that it's that easy to reach the millions who don't code. And as for those who do, as my years of watching how Hypercard/LC get discussed on places like the YC forum

I would argue non-coders should not be the focus of the marketing; they are extremely unlikely to invest. Agreed with the irrational elitism on other forums but this is not something you can't overcome at least in some places. For example i posted positive posts on https://ifnotnil.com (predominately independent XOJO forum but many people working with and advocating many other environments) and i did stimulate quite a bit of discussion.
Part of the problem is the complete lack of awareness of LiveCode. Experienced coders will google stuff but a quick google search does not really show off LC in the better light it deserves.I would again argue this needs websites, social media saturation, fun things like Andre's live coding session.

But that's exactly what I see when I Google the phrase: livecode datagrid, or: livecode array.

You completely misunderstand me. Of course you can search for liveCode stuff - i'd be dead the water if i couldn't do that!
I mean get liveCode rankings higher in google search, so that when some searches 'datagrid' (NOT livecode datagrid), livecode shows up. 'Datagrid' is a common enough term, as are 'arrays' that people using other coding languages may search for them without specifying a language - things like these are missed opportunities.

I just chose one of the languages from that list of 25 and Googled for sample applications. The top result was to a Reddit discussion that provided not one example (not even a basic app). Instead the advocates of Rust said "it's a meaningless request". FWIW I've used 11 of the languages in that list of 25. And I prefer LC to any of them.

I'm sure you're not suggesting no one can point to quality apps with flutter, kotlin, swift, c++. I have no experience with Rust (my impression is that this is for backend/frameworks and not for app building but i may be wrong). And FWIW i've used about 8 languages in that list (some more than others) and like you prefer LC as it provides so many conveniences. But that's mainly because coding is not my day job and my coding time is extremely limited. A selling point no one outside of LC community is remotely aware of (bad marketing).

the IDE is itself an example of what can be done.

While i know what you mean, i've always found this to be a nonsensical argument.
Use the right tool for the job! If the IDE benefits from being built in C++, build it in C++ and make everyone's life better when coding LC.

Coders from from other languages will be familiar with IDEs like Android studio, Xcode, Visual studio etc - where things like low frame rate scrolling just don't happen. While the IDE in LC is functional, it lags behind mainstream IDEs in several areas... Even with lesser languages like XOJO: if you have a method that calls a method that calls another that crashes, not only can you can you see the variables for the current method, but you can switch to any of the calling methods and assess the variables in play there as well as access the values of all controls etc from within the variable window. Can't really do any of that with LC. If you have a handler that calls another that crashes, you can see the crashing handler's variables but (as far as i know) you can't change to the calling handler to assess the variables there. Not exemplary...

LC is vastly under-rated by the thousands of programmers because they think that something with a low barrier to learning must be very limited. Very hard to get arrogant and ignorant people to stop being arrogant and stop being ignorant. I remember 20 years ago when I was tasked with learning Javascript for my team. They dismissed it as a toy language with no future. These days no-one uses the language in which they were such arrogant and ignorant experts.

Well yes, elitism is rampant - but also people have invested time and money in infrastructures that they want to propagate for their own benefit. But to take your example on javascript - just because people are elitist, it doesn't mean a language can't succeed...

If people want LC to be better known, they should be asking themselves "what am I doing to promote it". Hundreds of LC users could be using social media to talk about LC. I'm not sure it's a good use of the company's resources.

I respectfully and strongly disagree. I'm not saying users should not try to evangelise the platform - i certainly do when the opportunity arises (and for liveCloud as well) but I am not referring to the free product, i'm referring to indy or pro versions. This is a paid product; i therefore except a minimum effort from the company to promote this.

Why? because what happens to my time and money invested when the company go under because they weren't able to expand to a level they could be sustainable?
I don't think it's appropriate to have discussions about a company's financials in public forums like this, but details of the financials of the company were put to me in a different forum as an argument against investing in LiveCode and it was backed up with public documents - i was frankly shocked after accessing these publicly available reports.

Just because I pay a licence does not mean i'm suddenly culpable for not helping promote the product and to suggest that's not the corporate responsibility but rather the end-user's responsibility does not make sense.

Yes, everyone wants bug fixes and new features. But it's the company's responsibility to ensure it survives, to be blunt...