Replace LiveCode Script with JavaScript, forever

[richmond62]

Some languages are more logical than others ....
(as Richmond might probably know ...! )

Sri

Indeed.

But the fact that a computer language may be more logical than some other computer languages does
not necessarily guarantee that it will be easier for humans to learn.

It might be that a computer language that is not as logical as some other programming languages, but if it
is closer to natural language it may be easier for humans to learn.

[sritcp]

.......
But the fact that a computer language may be more logical than some other computer languages does
not necessarily guarantee that it will be easier for humans to learn.

It might be that a computer language that is not as logical as some other programming languages, but
is closer to natural language is easier for humans to learn.

Evidently, I did not explain myself very clearly! (which fact itself reinforces my main point!!!)

We are often imprecise and sloppy in our communication with other human beings.
We cannot afford to be so when communicating with a computer (as in programming). So, we make an effort to be more precise and rigorous.
This skill generally does not carry over to other aspects of our life, such as our verbal communication.
If the programming language is English-like, the rigor we employ while using it is more likely to transfer to our day-to-day communications where we use natural language.

Sri

[sritcp]

English is weirder than pretty much every other language!

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/engl ... ket-newtab

[mwieder]

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis:

https://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/sapir.cfm

[sritcp]

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis:
.......

Benjamin Whorf has been widely discredited, but the idea of "linguistic relativity" carries on ...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... you-think/

[mwieder]

The "strong" Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is no longer regarded very seriously (although Ted Chiang made brilliant use of it in his short story "The Story of Your Life"), but the weaker hypothesis still has credibility as far as influencing patterns of thought.

[richmond62]

Whorf--Speed.

[capellan]

If the Original Poster needs Javascript in his own LiveCode Applications
then he could ask for an estimated price of building this external.

I am sure that LiveCode LTD, Thierry Douez, Monte Goulding
and many others could create this Javascript external.

Maybe he could make a gofundme page searching for sponsors
of this javascript external.

For example, the original price for the AltBrowser dll
was 30 dollars. (I just found a copy of the check).
By the way, the original AltBrowser allowed to choose
between Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Al

[Lagi Pittas]

Hi I would put to a crowd fund - even a monthly payment for Thierry to do as he has done with Perl and Lua.

Even if it took a year because of other commitments we know it would be done.



While Thierry is at it I bet he could EASILY crowdfund a Python or Javascript "external" - I believe it's seamless - on Kickstarter showing how powerful the IDE of Livecode is and they can use their favourite language with a descent IDE rather than work with non drag and drop "GUI" builder excuses in Python (or Javascript).

I'm sure a crowdfund on kickstarter WOULD be a killer.

My 3 pence worth (inflation doncha know!)

How about it Thierry?



Regards Lagi

I know that I'd donate as much if not even more than I did for the original LC opensource initiative.

BTW Thierry, was SunnYPerl done without even access to the LC sourcecode - should be easier now (easy for a genius )


Update
@Capellan

I didn't read past your first 2 lines before I sent off my reply - which had been in drafts since the original posting .. I still think a crowdfund on kickstarter would be best - bigger market.

[Thierry]

Hi I would put to a crowd fund - even a monthly payment for Thierry
to do as he has done with Perl and Lua.

Even if it took a year because of other commitments we know it would be done.

While Thierry is at it I bet he could EASILY crowdfund a Python or Javascript "external" - I believe it's seamless - on Kickstarter showing how powerful the IDE of Livecode is and they can use their favourite language with a descent IDE rather than work with non drag and drop "GUI" builder excuses in Python (or Javascript).

I'm sure a crowdfund on kickstarter WOULD be a killer.

How about it Thierry?
I know that I'd donate as much if not even more than I did for the original LC opensource initiative.

Thanks Lagi for your trust and kind words,

In theory, this is doable and I would like to do this kind of job.

In practice, I'm not so sure

I've passed this road a couple of times, spending lot of times in Perl and Lua conferences to show and
explain those solutions, and except few developers very much enthustiastic about this, not much happened.
So these tools became de facto my own tools for different projects:
- BioArchimed, driving a medical robot (Perl and Metacard, Revolution)
- sunnYmage (Lua and LiveCode)
- .... wherever customers don't care about the technical details.

About kickstarter, someone else than me has to drive the project; I'm not very skillfull with this stuff,
and being a non-english native speaker doesn't help.

Otherwise, I have a wild question:
What developers will do with such an external they can't do with the widget browser
where you can call some javascript ?
I'm thinking of Hermann's fantastic work on this...
Of course, this will be faster plus a tiny sized and self-contained (no dependencies) external;
but who care these days; especially in LC world ?

BTW Thierry, was SunnYPerl done without even access to the LC sourcecode - should be easier now

The hardest part of sunnYperl was to build a Perl extension and to mallash (not sure of this word) silently
the basic data structures in both ways keeping it fast. At this time, I had some fantastic support from Dr Raney for
very specific and low-level technical questions; unfortunately this time has gone too.

Lua external was a piece of cake compared to; first Lua *is* for being embedded easily in different environments
and they have done an excellent job.

And no, no need of LC sources for doing this kind of job; it surely helps for some details, but basically
the external API LiveCode provides is almost enough.

My 42 pennies,

Regards,

Thierry

[capellan]

Hi Thierry,

Many Thanks for answering the request in this thread.
At some moment, Did you announced a python external too?
Or Did someone else announced it?

https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?t=17989

Al

[Thierry]

Many Thanks for answering the request in this thread.
At some moment, Did you announced a python external too?
Or Did someone else announced it?

https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?t=17989

Hi Hal,

Same problem with python; technically it's doable but it needs time to do it
and need some specific knowledge too.
Interesting comments in this old thread from 2014,
but one more time, nothing happened after that....

and my only one post in this thread was to show how Perl coders could build a
complete LC UI only with Perl.

Kind regards,

Thierry

[PaulDaMacMan]

I always think these sort of statements about missing some crap like "parameter context matching" or "lambda functions" come from nerd-elitists. Many of the rest of the OP makes me think the OP isn't as familiar with LC has they clam, as well as the history (the creation JavaScript was inspired by Hypertalk as I understand it). I don't think the selling point is the easy to use GUI construction, at least not alone. It's also the easy to use and understand English-like language, it's the "programming for the rest of us" which some may think is "HyperCard Nostalgia", but personally I think JavaScript is UGLY, as are Perl, LUA (not too ugly IMO), even BASIC, and particularly lower lever languages since as C/ObjC,C++, Pascal (not as much), etc.

If you want JavaScript, you can use the BrowserWidget mix in some of that. I've done it before and I was able to obscure the ugliness of the underlying JavaScript Library I was using. The only problem I had with that was local file access. I guess if you need more than is possible with the widget you could write a plugin/LCB Library or pay someone to do it. But if you love JS that much then I don't understand why you wouldn't just use an environment like Node?

[FourthWorld]

The OP left the room after his first post here, two months ago.

[mwieder]

...and I don't for a second believe the OP's claim that

I've used LiveCode for >5 years, on hundreds of projects