The end of XTalk / LiveCode for me
Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2025 8:42 pm
After nearly 40 years, I'm done with XTalk. In the beginning I loved the ability to quickly make real apps with HyperCard, but today I can make web-based apps with Javascript + SQL, which is easy, cheap, and gives way better performance.
When HyperCard came out in 1987 I was blown away. I actually took a trip to Dallas to hear Bill Atkinson (its creator) speak about it.
Circa 1995 I made a note-taking app with it that I called ScatterBrains. I used an interface that I saw in another obscure app: a list on the left hand side, which pulled in content into the main pane on the right. Prior to this, all apps required the user to open a new document/window to get new data. If you had 20 documents/notes, then you had 20 windows, ugh. Nowadays that kind of list+content pane interface is ubiquitous, but I saw its value early on and adopted it years before it became commonplace.
Some years later I ported ScatterBrains to SuperCard, probably because HyperCard probably wouldn't run on a newer MacOS (or maybe because I wanted color), then later, to Revolution, which became LiveCode.
I just upgraded my computer from a 2013-era iMac to a 2022 Mac Studio, and LiveCode 9 won't run on my new Mac. Upgrading LiveCode costs $440 a year, which is not worth it for me to run some homegrown apps. That pushed me to port ScatterBrains to the web with Javascript + SQL, which I just finished. It's a much better result than I could have achieved with LiveCode, if for no other reason that the LiveCode engine payload is a whopping 8-16 Mb. In 2019, a simple Hello World script required a staggering 28 Mb.
Incidentally, I know there are a gazillion other note-taking apps I could use, but none has the features I want (especially hanging indents), so I rolled my own. It was also fairly easy for me to export my LC data to my new web-based app, while a third-party app would usually require copy-and-pasting a thousand notes.
I also wrote a double-entry accounting app in LiveCode a few years ago after the commercial app I paid for mangled my data and I didn't trust it any more, but I was never happy with my LC-based app. The DataGrid syntax was so insane it really killed the whole idea of XTalk being easy to program, and the performance (e.g., scrolling a table) was just glacial. I'll be porting the accounting app to the web too, using a Javascript + SQL solution, and expect to get way better performance than I got with LC/Data Grid.
LiveCode's advantage is the ability to make apps easily. Is there any other these days? Since I'm content to go web-based for my projects instead of making apps, for myself, I no longer need XTalk/LiveCode.
When HyperCard came out in 1987 I was blown away. I actually took a trip to Dallas to hear Bill Atkinson (its creator) speak about it.
Circa 1995 I made a note-taking app with it that I called ScatterBrains. I used an interface that I saw in another obscure app: a list on the left hand side, which pulled in content into the main pane on the right. Prior to this, all apps required the user to open a new document/window to get new data. If you had 20 documents/notes, then you had 20 windows, ugh. Nowadays that kind of list+content pane interface is ubiquitous, but I saw its value early on and adopted it years before it became commonplace.
Some years later I ported ScatterBrains to SuperCard, probably because HyperCard probably wouldn't run on a newer MacOS (or maybe because I wanted color), then later, to Revolution, which became LiveCode.
I just upgraded my computer from a 2013-era iMac to a 2022 Mac Studio, and LiveCode 9 won't run on my new Mac. Upgrading LiveCode costs $440 a year, which is not worth it for me to run some homegrown apps. That pushed me to port ScatterBrains to the web with Javascript + SQL, which I just finished. It's a much better result than I could have achieved with LiveCode, if for no other reason that the LiveCode engine payload is a whopping 8-16 Mb. In 2019, a simple Hello World script required a staggering 28 Mb.
Incidentally, I know there are a gazillion other note-taking apps I could use, but none has the features I want (especially hanging indents), so I rolled my own. It was also fairly easy for me to export my LC data to my new web-based app, while a third-party app would usually require copy-and-pasting a thousand notes.
I also wrote a double-entry accounting app in LiveCode a few years ago after the commercial app I paid for mangled my data and I didn't trust it any more, but I was never happy with my LC-based app. The DataGrid syntax was so insane it really killed the whole idea of XTalk being easy to program, and the performance (e.g., scrolling a table) was just glacial. I'll be porting the accounting app to the web too, using a Javascript + SQL solution, and expect to get way better performance than I got with LC/Data Grid.
LiveCode's advantage is the ability to make apps easily. Is there any other these days? Since I'm content to go web-based for my projects instead of making apps, for myself, I no longer need XTalk/LiveCode.