Continue to use Livecode ?

[Simon Knight]

Hi,
I don't mean to sound emotive but once a year I ask myself if I should renew my Indy Licence. I use to be a small business and used Livecode applications to support various projects I was involved in. These ranged from data processing such as analysing messages received from personal beacons via satellite, interfacing with SQL database, interfacing with an Arduino to produce a system for a historic rally car to aid maintaining an average speed plus other useful but short term applications. However, for various reasons I am now in effect retired and while at the moment I can afford the license this may not always be the case.

I treat programming much in the same way that other people do crosswords and sometimes I end up with a useful utility. The recent thread "Where are the newbies?", https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=38607 mentions some other languages/toolsets that I had never heard of, so I wonder what else is out there that I should possibly consider ?

My reasons for staying with livecode are :
Familiarity (started using it in 2009 where it replaced RealBasic for me).
Clear easy to read language syntax.
Great user forum.
Powerful enough for the tasks I use it for.

Negatives:
Despite having a good deal on my indy license it is still a moderately high outgoing.
IDE - mostly works.
A new pricing structure that seems to be designed to put new users off the language.
Fear that Livecode will go fully bankrupt in the future.

I should add that I am a mac user and have recently moved to Mac Silicon so reverting to the community version of Livecode is not a long term solution, although it is while my 2013 MacBookPro keeps working.

I've looked at Python and suspect that it could do many of the tasks that I presently use Livecode for but it does not seem so great at developing user interfaces.

Your thoughts welcome

[richmond62]

Your paragraph 4 says it "like it is" for a lot of people.

I hope that the people at LC central are taking this to heart.

If they are then it is high time they showed us they are.

[stam]

My reasons for staying with livecode are :
Familiarity (started using it in 2009 where it replaced RealBasic for me).
Clear easy to read language syntax.
Great user forum.
Powerful enough for the tasks I use it for.

Negatives:
Despite having a good deal on my indy license it is still a moderately high outgoing.
IDE - mostly works.
A new pricing structure that seems to be designed to put new users off the language.
Fear that Livecode will go fully bankrupt in the future.

Familiarity is important because it makes you more productive.
What's unclear is if you have a requirement for cross-platform development (while one would assume this because you're a livecode user, that's not necessarily true).

If x-plat development is a requirement and you have a background in realBasic, have a look at the free B4X. Syntax is similar to realBasic and there are tons of educational materials on the website and a helpful forum.Many ex-XOJO/RealBASIC devs swear by it.

Alternatively, although will require a a lot of learning, languages like Flutter may fit the bill if a basic-variant isn't required. Modern, Multiplatform, free and supported by Google.

Of course if you want to stick with x-talk, there is no direct competitor to LiveCode, but as you say cost is becoming prohibitive.

Only LC knows what the future holds financially. Having said that there is a lot of data publicly available (will dm you a link). My impression is that perhaps there is more security now and possibly less likely bankruptcy will occur, but no-one outside of LC can or should really say.

Being an optimist, I'm sticking with LC mainly because I have very little spare time for development and LC fits the bill. The only platform that was better in terms of efficiency/time to create a finished 'app' was FileMaker Pro - but that's become prohibitively expensive and they removed the ability to create standalone apps, so that's a no-go... but really nothing beats FMP in creating database-centric apps quickly.

Switching to a different platform would require a lot of re-learning and development would be slower by the nature of these other platforms. I guess if LC went away I would probably opt for B4X mainly rather than say Swift (which I really like), because I have a need for simultaneous Mac/PC development. I had a go and installed it via CrossOver on my Mac and it works fine. But it's not x-talk

[Simon Knight]

What's unclear is if you have a requirement for cross-platform development (while one would assume this because you're a livecode user, that's not necessarily true).

I did in the past as I created applications for Windows and Android as well as Apple. These days I can live with just Mac OS.

I shall have to take a look at B4X, Flutter and Swift.

but really nothing beats FMP in creating database-centric apps quickly.

Many years ago I tried FilemakerPro and if I remember correctly what made it unsuitable was an inability to separate the front end app from the data. Far nicer to work with than the dreaded MSAccess though.

[dunbarx]

Simon.

As one who wrung my hands at the turn of the century wondering if my beloved Hypercard was going to survive, I consoled myself with "at least I have it now and always will". This was HC v.2.3. I and others still use it for a legacy application every day.

I have done that sort of thing recently as well, updating my thoughts to always having LC v. 9.6.

My situation is different from most people on this forum in that I only develop for myself and my company. I have the ability to develop on Mac and publish one particular standalone to Windows. I will be heartbroken if LC dies, but will have the tools I will always need until I myself die.

I do not think any of what I just said helps you.

Craig

[Simon Knight]

I have done that sort of thing recently as well, updating my thoughts to always having LC v. 9.6.

Why that version ? Is it the last community version ? If so it could work for me as long as my older hardware works or that Apple maintains Rossetta2.

I will see if I can find an old old copy of RunRev just for the hell of it.

[stam]

Many years ago I tried FilemakerPro and if I remember correctly what made it unsuitable was an inability to separate the front end app from the data. Far nicer to work with than the dreaded MSAccess though.

You are correct inasmuch as the databinding is strong and the default is to not separate interface from data - this is also what makes it so powerful.

It’s academic now I suppose, but you most certainly can separate data from interface in FMP. I still have a stand-alone FMP app deployed at my hospital amongst several different teams, built specifically with this data separation in mind (a file with user accounts, a file with the actual data and a file for the interface) so that could easily update the app without have to export and re-import the data.
I’ve been toying with the idea of porting it to an LC app, but it works so well (not to mention it took about a year to write in FMP, so it’s gonna be a lot of work in LC…)

Every now and again I still use FMP when i need to quickly throw together a bespoke database app - it can take just literally minutes to set up the DB, throw a front end on it and include quite complex scripts (but then I have been using FMP since v2). I last did this about a month ago and built a quick app in FMP in about 60 min but in LC would have taken me a week or maybe two.

But then again would take much much longer in a lower level language…

[dunbarx]

Why that version ? Is it the last community version ?

I have a license, and that is the one I use. I assume it would simply be set adrift should the very worst happen.

Craig

[richmond62]

Well, it's all about money and funny financial calculations.

Personally I expect to make no money whatsoever directly out of programming in the next 20 years (by which time I will either be gaga [and not 'Lady'] or buried beneath the sod.

Unless you have a desperate urge to make programs for MacOS 15 (which I suspect is when Apple will stop ARM machines being able to cope with INTEL code), and have no problem with making programs for macOS 14 that do NOT have anything in the Mac menubar (easily circumvented). The last Community version will suffice.

3 days ago a company in Spain I signed a non-exclusive contract about an abstract boardgame I developed suddenly crawled out of the woodwork after about 3 years on 'nix' and said they were tooling up to make the boards and the game pieces . . . marvellous.

So, the BIG Q is why Richmond did not buy himself a lathe or a 3d printer to start churning these things out himself . . .

A quick-n-dirty calculation on the back of an envelope convinced me that IFF the blasted thing sold (and that means in quantity, not just a few copies for a few friends) the financial input would work out as about 50 times any profit: so, quite obviously a load of old cobblers.

Now, I was luckily enough to attend 8 years ago, with my father, in, oddly enough, Wincanton, in Somerset, in England, in the local library, a demonstration of 3d printing; even to the extent that the bloke demonstrating the thing let me hook up my Xubuntu laptop to the machine and play 'silly buggers' for half an hour. Similarly, at school in the 1970s, I spent hours in the woodwork classroom with the lathe [snobby boys in a snobby school laughed at me because woodwork was supposedly "low class"].

Certainly, getting anywhere with a lathe took me about 6 weeks (great place to go to avoid the barbarities of Rugby), and my 30 minutes with the 3d printer only produced something a bit like that thing that fell out of the cooker at the end of 'The Fly 2'.

So, I would expect an "LC virgin" (I do NOT mean a person who has already got 4-5 programming languages under their belt) would require considerably more playtime than a 10 day trial . . . how that will happen is a serious question . . . especially when LC is up against so many FREE offerings.

So: you are probably right that a 4-card-only version would develop a life of its own and not result in uptake of the full-blown thing.

But exactly how LC central are going to keep the lights on (and the cooker running) in the foreseeable future if they cannot attract new users and new, paying clients, is very difficult to see.

[dunbarx]

As Richard pointed out, a ten-line limit for a free-forever trial seems like a good choice.

Only someone like Richmond would have wrangled (strangled?) that setup the way he did, to emulate chatGPT by calling many, many handlers like mad.

Anyone who gets to the point where they either need more lines, or are proficient enough to be able to circumvent that` limit, will likely buy into a license. If they never get near to that, they are not candidates anyway.

What are the downsides? I forget.

Craig

[stam]

What are the downsides? I forget.

Craig

Since you ask, how is this for a downside: LiveCode Ltd. has to make money to not only stay afloat but also pay staff to maintain the IDE, fix bugs and add new features.

New users won't be able to do much with a 10-line limit and it will seem farsical and they won't really bite.

I know this is a cynical statement but there is a steady and inexorable attrition in the number LC users that grew up with HyperCard for biological reasons and SuperCard/MetaCard users were never as numerous. This means LC will need to gradually start targeting users that traditionally would not give an x-talk language a second glance because they've never heard of such things - and giving a crappy experience as a free trial will not do much for hobbyists and developers already using what they probably consider 'serious' languages (for free).

Old users like our friend Richmond will bend the system to bypass the restrictions. No need to add code to fields and have the iDE execute those - instead, just create an infinite number of substacks that call each other and add a single 10-line handler to each. Voila, a thousand line code app at your feet, even if very annoying to build.

Net effect is that this seems extremely unlikely to increase paying customers - if you're happy with a 10-line limit (bypassing it or not), what would be your motivation to pay anything? If you're a developer looking at LiveCode, 10 lines isn't enough to do anything serious - so why would you leave your tooling, which is likely free and generally of high quality, and pay for the steeply priced standard licence?

Since LiveCode Ltd. has to make money to not only stay afloat but also pay staff to maintain the IDE, fix bugs and add new features, trying to figure out how to wangle a free version is going to fall on deaf ears.

So if you are going to have a free trial intended to draw in new paying customers it needs to be time-limited, because the endpoint is to convert them to paying customers. There should be no silly restrictions and it needs to be generous - even something as simple as providing the same number of days but non-consecutively so that people with actual lives and jobs, who probably can't just dedicate 14 days to learning LiveCode full time, can evaluate properly.

There is no mileage in a free version that is severely restricted unless what they can provide will be irresistible to new users (as hopefully LiveCode Create will be), but which the present IDE and language is not, especially given how foreign x-talk is to pretty much every other langue class out there. Keeping new users on as paying customers will need a change in pay structure, as the current model will not retain many long term but I won't go on about that yet again. My views on that are above.

[richmond62]

RevMedia

(The RR/LC IDE that could not build standalones)

rocked.

[Simon Knight]

I don't see that Livecode will ever go back to being free because they tried it with community and it did not work. However the present pricing structure makes little sense to me: Livecode's selling points are that it uses an English like syntax and that it can build cross platform applications that have a look and feel of the native OS, yet the modern options and pricing seem to dissuade users from developing cross platform. £31.98 + 20% VAT per month to in effect experiment with two OS types is a lot to ask "Beginners and Hobbyists" especially as what ever is written dies when the subscription lapses. As for the £1843.20 + 20% VAT for what use to be called Indy - what can I say ? Well my mother always said that a housing crisis started when first time buyers were priced out of the market.

What is Livecode offering first time buyers? Yes its cross platform at a price, yes it uses an English like syntax. However, the concepts of Stacks, Cards, Groups and Behaviors is alien. Its not like you can buy a good book or subscribe to a magazine to see what Livecode is about. The company webpage is about the only resource available and it is all over the place with different pages using different styles and a number of links returning 403 forbidden errors. Yesterday I managed to view the "made with Livecode page"; the first page displayed apps submitted in 2009 and switching to other pages took minutes but felt like hours. No one under the age of forty is going to wait that long.

If I were a keen fourteen year old looking to start programming would I give Livecode a try or would I move by to the likes of Python, Ruby, Swift, Flutter etc etc? All of which can be used for free and have multiple Youtubers extolling their virtues and for the old fashioned among us, multiple wood pulp based data storage devices published for reading while in the bath.

I wonder how many, non-corporate, users are paying the prices being asked. I will be very surprised if there are many. If that is the case then Livecode is betting on keeping its corporate users happy and not needing a large user base of "Beginners and Hobbyists" like myself.

The future is bleak........

[richmond62]

I wonder if the same old faces who crop up on the LiveCode website are going to keep pumping money into LC?

The 'push' to innovate must be fairly slack at the moment, as, surely, the main push to innovate is because one is fussed by competitors pinching your customers.

All one has to do is pop over to the SuperCard website for a quick peep into a crystal ball, as to what will happen if the creative well dries up.

Oh, and I wonder how many times the fact that the website is not up to scratch has to be mentioned before something is done about it.

HyperStudio is a 'plastic bathtoy' (a very shiny one), and I do not see how anyone could use it to teach programming concepts: but even its humble website tells you a bit more about the product than LC's website actually does.

How is my teenage nephew who lives in London going to work out from this:

"Build apps using our visual development environment and our easy
to understand programming language that has no limits to what you can create."

What the actual language looks like so he can compare it with, say, Python?

[stam]

The future is bleak........

Have a look at the Panorama database website (https://www.provue.com/). That gives a really good idea what you can build with it and when you reach the pricing section don’t tell me you wouldn’t be a bit tempted.

Because the pricing is clever. You can buy a small number of months to test, and those don’t have to be consecutive months, they can span any length of time, so you can take your time before committing. And if you do then commit to a larger number of non-consecutive months you get a substantial discount.

It’s tempting because it comes across as as a fair pricing. This is in my mind the best way to tackle the pay structure.

Compare that to the bonkers pay structure for the starter plan where it’s actually 30% cheaper to get two 1-platform subscriptions than a single 2-platform sub (the opposite should be true!). And they are blatantly locking you in with the threat of binaries not working when sub expires. That comes across as exploitative, and not a fair pay structure.

It’s one thing valuing your product so others will value it as well. It’s another thing entirely taking the mickey and cannibalising your existing user base.

Free ain’t never going to happen because there is no incentive to convert free users to paying customers.

The current pay structure will disincentivise many new potential paying customers.

One can only hope they will revise this and/or LiveCode Create breathes new life into how subs are managed….