Where are the newbies?

[FourthWorld]

All.

Bill Atkinson believed mightily in HyperCard, but never thought that HyperTalk would ever be popular. He said that most users would take the "Rolodex" paradigm and make lots of cute address books. He was surprised when, right away in 1987/88, 100,000 users clamored for every minute detail of the language.

Thank heaven for Dan Winkler.

And Bill Appleton with his World Builder app, the first multimedia scripting tool for Mac.

[FourthWorld]

While you make good points about the value of LC Richard, the reality is that when it comes to pricing...

Pricing is indeed a challenge, which is why I'd not addressed it before. "It can only be painful", a German friend reminds me.

High prices are best left to market leaders. When coming in from behind, the conversation will be difficult to even begin if it stumbles at the start over price.

Price increases are also not a sure win, but a lever that works in both directions at once: they increase revenue per sale while lowering sales volume.

So if pricing is a gamble, what options offer more confident growth?

Big markets may seem attractive, but in most cases we're not the only ones to see an opportunity. A market like generalized web app development is vastly noisy with big players backed by multi-million-dollar Series A rounds. Even a remarkably great product would not be able to out-market such a machine, burning through all available resources trying.

Any self-funded business will find its greatest thriving in vertical markets.

From my 25 years with this product, the greatest unquestionable strength is delivering native apps for all three desktop platforms.

On mobile, LC is good for some things and less so for others, but where it blows the pants off eveything else is that the others have no desktop option, so LC can deliver all the benefits of native deployment EVERYWHERE.

Some might be tempted to say, "But the desktop is dead! Isn't it?"

Not by a long shot.

The earlier mobile frenzy has settled down, with recent years showing a solid place for both desktop and mobile in people's daily lives (esp B2B, where the money is):

LC is uniquely capable of delivering on what IDG analysts call The Third Platform. First was mainframes, then personal computing, and today isn't really just mobile but mobile plus desktop tied together with the cloud. Ubiquity is the Third Platform. And ubiquity is what LC can deliver with native ease.

Multi-platform desktop deployment may be viewed as niche by some, but it's a very big niche, with very few companies focused on it, and I can't think of any who also provide mobile options for total native platform coverage.

Aside from a relatively small list of things we'd consider paper cuts, the one big challenge with native app deployment is packaging.

But with the ease of building good GUIs, a facile shell() function, and existing tooling to help things along, LC can easily outshine everything else in a way that makes jaws drop, as I outlined last month here:
http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-l ... 71367.html

If LC plays into the strengths that brought all of us here, it can do well.

[richmond62]

Spam-a-lam-a-ding-dong.

[Klaus]

And it's gone-along-a-ding-dong!

[richmond62]

Thanks, Klaus.

[dunbarx]

What do you know, we have a couple of newbies right now.

Craig

[NoN']

Two years ago, as part of a small project designed to test a few things (execution time, etc.), I chose the content of the Livecode forum: "Getting Started with LiveCode - Complete Beginners" as my data source.

This was the forum with the highest number of topics and posts (8669 at the time of my test).

It seems to me that the result of the compilation carried out during this work is interesting to share today. It shows a clear decline in the number of topics posted on the forum dedicated to beginners from 2013 to the present day (with a slight upturn in 2020, a very likely consequence of the pandemic).

This a compilation of the results :

Forum Complete Beginners, 2006-2022

The question now is how to interpret this data?

The first hypothesis is that there are still just as many beginners, but that they no longer wish to write in this forum, either out of fear, ignorance of the possibility offered or because they have found other, more "modern" channels for expressing their difficulties.

Second hypothesis: all the problems have already been dealt with, and all that's left is to tap into this formidable knowledge base. This is a possibility.

The third hypothesis, however, seems to me more credible: the number of beginners - and therefore of new users - would be in constant decline since 2013. Even if we accept the idea that novice users are now experienced, this would still mean that there is no renewal among neophytes.

I confess that intuitively, I thought I'd see an increase in the number of topics covered when the "Community" version of LiveCode went online. But the exact opposite happened.
Looking at the graphs above, it's easy to understand the team's decision not to continue down this path, which doesn't seem to have had the desired effect...

But I'm not convinced that the current path will change the direction of the curve. I hope I'm very wrong!

Renaud


To complete this topic, I'm posting the modalities that led to the results.

The most tedious part was to extract, manually, all the topics posted on this forum by copying and pasting from the html pages to a file in text-only format. The raw result is as follows:

Android SDK & Java SDK
by FxTradeX6 » Fri Dec 26, 2014 6:25 am
2
Replies
1628
Views
Last post
by FxTradeX6
Sat Dec 27, 2014 4:54 am

New to Coding. Stuck now.. Need help
by prajeesh K » Wed Dec 24, 2014 5:16 pm
6
Replies
1502
Views
Last post
by prajeesh K
Thu Dec 25, 2014 2:09 pm


Then, in Livecode, I wrote a little script to clean up the lines and retain only the information I was interested in (script available on request for novice livecoders).

Result:

Android SDK & Java SDK FxTradeX6 Fri Dec 26, 2014 6:25 am 2 1628

Becomes

Android SDK & Java SDK FxTradeX6 14 2 1628


This extracts the year (14, in this example) which will become the new sort key from which to create the pivot table.
To do this, I used a tool I created a long time ago, which can be found here (http://rg75.free.fr/hyperespace.T_AlK.fr.htm).

[richmond62]

After a while most LiveCode users might stop considering themselves 'Complete Beginners': this does NOT mean they stopped using the Forums, just that they stopped asking questions in the 'Complete Beginners' section.

It might also be that a lot of those 'Complete Beginners' became passive observers rather than active participants.

Passive observers might read postings and learn from them, but not contribute to them.

The third hypothesis, however, seems to me more credible: the number of beginners - and therefore of new users - would be in constant decline since 2013. Even if we accept the idea that novice users are now experienced, this would still mean that there is no renewal among neophytes.

I believe that this is reasoning based on slightly faulty methodology, as your estimation of the numbers of new users is based on contributions to threads.

Another thing that needs to be considered is - when does a complete beginner and/or new user stop being a complete beginner and/or new user: after all a person who spends 60 minutes once a week 'tinkering' around with LiveCode is not really the same as a person who devotes 3 days a week: and whether a new user has prior experience with computer languages and computer programming may also affect how long they remain a complete beginner and/or new user.

There seem to be a lot of variables here that are not being taken into account.

[dunbarx]

To me, and like others here I lived through the decline of HC around the turn of the century, it seems that if one measures LC popularity by raw activity on the forum (and the use-list, no other platform matters) there has been a decline in activity. Does that mean there is a decline in the number of users, new or otherwise? Does that mean that LC is struggling? Only Scotland knows, they are not saying, and to be fair, no company does, unless it is to tout stellar growth.

I started this thread, just like I did long ago with HC.

I am worried, always have been. I am even more worried that I have been thinking for years that if LC turned off tomorrow, I could live just fine until the sun burns out with any version that supports the multi-character itemDelimiter. That is a very small world view from a very small world viewer.

I don't know how to help. I subscribe and support wherever I can, always to versions that I will never need.

Craig

[NoN']

After a while most LiveCode users might stop considering themselves 'Complete Beginners': this does NOT mean they stopped using the Forums, just that they stopped asking questions in the 'Complete Beginners' section.

Of course, but in the event of exponential growth in the number of beginners, we would expect the number of contributions to continue to grow too (unless hypothesis 2, for example).

It might also be that a lot of those 'Complete Beginners' became passive observers rather than active participants.

Passive observers might read postings and learn from them, but not contribute to them.

Yes, but in that case the curve of views would probably have moved in a different direction to the curve of topics, which is not the case here.

The third hypothesis, however, seems to me more credible: the number of beginners - and therefore of new users - would be in constant decline since 2013. Even if we accept the idea that novice users are now experienced, this would still mean that there is no renewal among neophytes.

I believe that this is reasoning based on slightly faulty methodology, as your estimation of the numbers of new users is based on contributions to threads.

No, not just on the number of topics, but on the "result of the compilation ", which also include replies and number of views. My hypotheses about the number of new users are rather based on the similar evolution of the three curves I've presented (on purpose), which can clearly be seen to show the same trends. The question in this thread is " Where are the newbies? " and one of the most likely answers is indeed that there are fewer and fewer "newbies " since 2013.

Another thing that needs to be considered is - when does a complete beginner and/or new user stop being a complete beginner and/or new user: after all a person who spends 60 minutes once a week 'tinkering' around with LiveCode is not really the same as a person who devotes 3 days a week: and whether a new user has prior experience with computer languages and computer programming may also affect how long they remain a complete beginner and/or new user.

There seem to be a lot of variables here that are not being taken into account.

I'll give you that: you could multiply the number of variables ad infinitum. just remember, this was a programming test, not academic research! For the record, I'm not an employee of Livecode, It's more like I give them a few pennies...
But even under these conditions, the results seem interesting.
Is the beginner of 2012 fundamentally different from the beginner of today? Has there been an explosion of Livecode training from other media (Tik Tok, Youtube, etc.)?
What we should be looking for instead is what explains the surge in beginner numbers between 2006 and 2013.

[richmond62]

What we should be looking for instead is what explains the surge in beginner numbers between 2006 and 2013.

Well, I have a feeling that fiddling around with statistics will not really explain anything of any use: the human factors are probably what accounts for most of this.

[jacque]

What we should be looking for instead is what explains the surge in beginner numbers between 2006 and 2013.

I wonder if it has something to do with Supercard's limitations. Also, devoted HC users were starting to realize their Macs would no longer support their HC stacks. I had a lot of conversion requests around that time.

[NoN']

I wonder if it has something to do with Supercard's limitations. Also, devoted HC users were starting to realize their Macs would no longer support their HC stacks. I had a lot of conversion requests around that time.

Thanks a lot Jacque, it's true that the computing environment evolved quite a lot during this period before stabilizing with Intel processors.
Will the switch to ARM processors have the same impact on Livecode's evolution?
Perhaps the switch from Macs to ARM processors will have an impact on Livecode's evolution?
I certainly hope so.

[NoN']

Well, I have a feeling that fiddling around with statistics will not really explain anything of any use: the human factors are probably what accounts for most of this.

Your rich sentiment explains Livecode's decision to drop the community version of the software much better than my poor statistics!

[stam]

Two years ago, as part of a small project designed to test a few things (execution time, etc.), I chose the content of the Livecode forum: "Getting Started with LiveCode - Complete Beginners" as my data source.

This was the forum with the highest number of topics and posts (8669 at the time of my test).

It seems to me that the result of the compilation carried out during this work is interesting to share today. It shows a clear decline in the number of topics posted on the forum dedicated to beginners from 2013 to the present day (with a slight upturn in 2020, a very likely consequence of the pandemic).

Very interesting, thank you for sharing NoN.

I wonder how this correlates to similar platforms, like XOJO and B4X?

If it does correlate, the decline is probably multifactorial:

1. End of the HC/SC refugee rush (RunRev/LiveCode specific).
2. Being a bit morbid: natural attrition of HC/SC users (RunRev/LiveCode specific)
3. Higher level education/computer science classes focusing on 'standard' languages like C/C++/Swift/C#/Python/JavaScript etc means that fewer new users will be interested in LC, not in the least because the aforementioned languages and IDEs are free.
   Sadly LC has never been established as a 'standard' language other than being the best example of an xTalk language. And is far from free...
4. Rise of OS-supported languages like Swift and C#. Both are great languages that offer much more OS integration and higher performance.
5. Drop in interest in non-web-based cross-platform solutions: with so many only services/APIs there is diminished interest in building OS-specific apps.
6. Maturation of search engines - I never post without having searched thoroughly online and more often that not, search engines point back to his forum more effectively than the built in search. So many are probably doing just this and are passive/non-posters.

What your statistics suggest nicely is that the decline in forum activity started much earlier than dropping FOSS can account for. Assuming this also means fewer developers and keeping in mind a large number of licences were free/opensource, the decline in numbers suggest a bigger financial hit than what is graphs imply, so it was probably on the cards that FOSS would go away. But of course, only LC Ltd. knows for sure what numbers of paying users is.

As to whether this represents decline in users (and by how much), the actual reasons and what to do about it, we can only speculate.

Many things are easier said than done... but here's a recent example:
I have recently been inundated by Facebook posts for XOJO showing up on my feed, which are professionally attractive and enticing. Great advertising that almost had be heading to their download area. When the last time this happened to me with LC? Well... never.