Where are the newbies?

[FourthWorld]

I probably count as one of those newbies who has gone, so I thought I might chip in.

Thank you for taking the time.

When it comes to assessing opportunities for growth, the views of remaining customers are of limited value.

Far more numerous are those NOT using a product. And when they used to use it but stopped, learning why is critically important.

I appreciate you sharing your own journey here.

[stam]

I probably count as one of those newbies who has gone, so I thought I might chip in. As a hobbyist programmer, I gave up on LiveCode when the pricing came in.

I'm sure you're not alone on the pricing thing David. I think I worked it out as 100% more expensive than my old Indy licence, which IMHO was the price point to aim for. Making Indy the price point for everyone may have improved retention and new uptake (pure speculation - ultimately only LC knows their numbers). But for sure the Starter plan's 'your apps will expire' seems universally viewed as something best avoided which perhaps defeats the point of this (again, only lC knows for sure).

XOJO is cheaper, but personally I don't get on with it in spite using it since the era of REALbasic. Or more correctly, I loved REALbasic but since they switched to XOJO the IDE became nigh on unusable. I've not known many languages/IDEs that have sparked an online forum where devs could b*tch about it (https://ifnotnil.com), and it's telling that many steadfast and commercially active developers have in recent years completely abandoned the platform (you'll find many of them posting on INN )

There are many good free alternatives for cross-platform development - if sticking with BASIC I'd probably recommend B4X rather than XOJO - completely free except for iOS (and even then, the most expensive tier is $145 for a perpetual 'enterprise' licence) - the sticking point is that the IDE is Win only (you'd have to run it in Wine, VirtualBox or similar on Mac/Linux), but does create apps for all desktop and mobile platforms (you can even create a fully native iOS app without needing access to an actual Mac), seems to be loved by their users, is maintained by a dynamic and involved developer, and by all accounts it's very good.

As for LiveCode Create (the new, and think everyone would agree - better, moniker for Xavvi) - think of it as a different and in some ways much improved LC IDE. Web based with a lot of automation if you want (or just code the normal way). Being web based opens up the possibility of using any device (tablets etc) for LC, which in itself is exciting. I think Create will likely be a hit, but remains to be seen I guess...

[Emily-Elizabeth]

I'm a newbie and use the outdated Community edition. I looked at the pricing, and as David mentioned, *ouch* for someone who is just playing around. I bought a license to Xojo a year and a half ago and rarely used it, but it was a good deal for three platforms (macOS, Linux and Windows) can't say the same for LiveCode pricing.

[FourthWorld]

I'm a newbie and use the outdated Community edition. I looked at the pricing, and as David mentioned, *ouch* for someone who is just playing around.

For someone just playing around you get a lot done.

Note to company staff who may come across this: review Emily-Elizabeth''s contributions here and on GitHub, and consider her sentiments carefully. Every software community wants to see newbies as helpful and accomplished as her.

[richmond62]

Perpetual licences might not help LC much.

BUT perpetual licences for a particular release might work.

Imagine, if you will, €100 per platform for version 10 through point releases, and then a further €100 for version 11.

And, possibly, a return to a tiered system: 'Student', 'Enterprise', and 'Developer', or some such.

This is probably boring as it has been mentioned before.

But, I cannot help thinking that LC might be experiencing a slight problem with cash flow.

Lurching from fund-raiser to fund-raiser might be producing an element of motion sickness.

-------

AND, re 'newbies', a lack of new blood coming in, however patrician any long-time LC mages may feel about their queries, is vital to stop stagnation.

[stam]

Lurching from fund-raiser to fund-raiser might be producing an element of motion sickness.

Valid point. The fundraisers and price changes are effectively cannibalising the existing user base and can’t be sustainable long term.

I’d put good money on that at least 99% of those that subb’d the “standard plan” were already paying users. And that anyone with a vague interest in testing the “starter plan” was immediately put off with the “your apps will stop working” limitation. Although of course only LC knows for sure.

These don’t seem like good, sustainable, long term plans…

I still think a Panorama-style funding structure like I posted above would engender more trust with new users. But who is to say if that works for LC.ltd?

[dunbarx]

Emily-Elizabeth can hardly be called a newbie.

That LC has permitted the continued use of the community versions is a benefice. As I said, I could get by quite nicely with its most recent version, whatever Richmond is using. I am not sure if I will ever need the latest things in the latest build, LC Create notwithstanding.

I wonder what the effect would be if LC mentioned, if not promoted, the continuing availability of Community. What would the trade-off be between lost revenue and possible greatly increased trial and experimentation from, er, newbies?

Scotland never chimes in about these musings; I hope they at least consider them. But I am still cowering back in 1999 mode, once again marveling at the love and loyalty of our favorite software, again under stress. Does ANY other such thing engender this sort of conversation?

Craig

[richmond62]

For the record, I fulfill all my current needs with 8.1.10 and 9.6.3 community.

The only thing that may prove useful one day is the ability to make Mac ARM standalones.

[DavidF.]

I have to say, this conversation is making me want to fire up my old Community Version and just see what I can make with it...

- David F.

[richmond62]

One of the things I signally fail to understand is why, because LC 'dropped' providing new versions of the Community version, almost all of the community version's users vanished overnight: as if, because LC had stopped providing new versions of LiveCode existing versions suddenly stopped working.

I do any drawn-out word-processing with AppleWorks 6 (previously ClarisWorks) on a PPC Mac running a modded version of MacOS 10.4: I have yet to find a word-processor that suits me better.

I do my 3D modelling in Bryce 7 on an INTEL Mac running 10.6.8.

My "teacher's computer" [i.e. the machine that holds all the handouts and so forth] is an INTEL Mac running 10.7.5. A lot of development for my Linux boxes I use to deliver material to my pupils is 'made' on that machine with LC 8.1.10.

There should be some way to 'seduce' those users back to the fold, as it is from them that at least some of investors in a commercial version will come.

If LC 10 is "so much more" than LC 963 community, and the LC website actually demonstrates that, and the price is, perhaps, as I wrote above . . .

At the moment the LC website still looks 'the same, old tired stuff' as it has been for ages: with lots of claims, with no proper demonstrations backing up those claims: it even has "those girls" who I saw, in black-and-white on LC's website via the wayback machine more than 10 years ago: that's pathetic.

[stam]

If LC 10 is "so much more" than LC 963 community, and the LC website actually demonstrates that, and the price is, perhaps, as I wrote above . . .

9.6.3 was a fine version but did have some bugs that have been squashed in later versions. And you’d probably need a more up-to-date version to publish to the mobile app stores.
Plus I quite like the script widgets available in 10 DP5 onwards. The new widgets are nice too - they probably work with 9.6.3, but maybe not.

But the promises of a new IDE in v10, compiled scripts etc seem to have (understandably) taken second place to pushing Create, and as such the incremental benefit between versions is less striking right now…. Same old, same old, but a bit better I’d say. Of course if you have a “standard” licence you can also get access to the “pro” features that were sold at a much higher premium.

[dunbarx]

The computer controlled machines I use daily (three very different ones) run on a no longer supported hardware device and software framework that can only run under version 8 maximum. It will not run on v.9x.

Not a problem at all, since the code used to run them is exactly the same in v.6, 7, 8 or 9. I am in 9.6.9 for my daily work, but I would have no inkling that I am in v.8 when fiddling around with those machines.

This only means that I live in a rather limited LC world. But I could use the community edition just as well, and in fact did indeed use it several years ago to actually develop the program that controls one of those machines. I keep several old iMacs around with LC v.8 and the framework installed as backups, and actually needed one once.

My point is that new users need to be made aware of all the fancy gadgetry that newer LC offers, since who knows what their predilections are. Without a marketing push, the beauty of LC will not be apparent, that beauty only appearing once one is moderately proficient, not when researching a new development platform.

Craig

[richmond62]

No one, but no one is going to find any obvious beauty (or ugliness for that matter) in 10 days.

No one is going to work how to anything particularly useful in 10 days.

My Devawriter Pro (which, now, after 14 years of development, can do amazing things with 2 of the most bloody-minded writing systems there are), was nothing worth talking about for 4 years of development (admittedly in my spare time = possibly 6 months of non-stop 'crunching').

I did my programming for my Master' thesis after I had been using Runtime Revolution for about 2 years on an almost daily basis.

AND, at that time RR (now LC) had, perhaps, 20% of the capabilities LC has now.

Just by way of comparison, about 3 years ago, in the holidays, I started fooling around with Python, and reckoned to get up to a skill level where I could "do a Devawriter" would take me about 3-4 months full time.

As Python is free, were I so bonkers, I could have got there without panicking about expiring licences and so forth.

However as:

1. I had already 'done' my thing on LC,

and

2. Python compared with LC struck me as both 'pug ugly' [reminded me of an all-in wrestling match I had with PASCAL V in 1984], and too much hard-slog [almost always pleasurable with WYSIWYG LC],

Screw it!

But LC have made not a teaspoon of effort to demonstrate this sort of thing to the 'poor sods' who end up on their substandard website, beyond several fairly vacuous, unsubstantiated claims.

[richmond62]

The new widgets are nice too - they probably work with 9.6.3, but maybe not.

They don't, and this question has been raised before.

But any 'newbies' are probably interested, at first, at least, in learning the core of LiveCode, and the core is present in LC 9.6.3 Community.

[stam]

I’m not sure I’d agree - I understand where you’re coming from, but developers converting from other systems don’t have the same drive to first master the language fully and then move on to “fancy features”, like you would do if you were engaging out of academic interest or as a student. Most people, especially now it’s a paid environment, will want to know they can churn out stuff easily and quickly. In many cases that translates to learning the minimum necessary and copying code found online. Learning comes later for many….

Things like polyGrid and polyList would have made me convert a lot sooner.

Heck, if I had understood the power of the data grid I would have done - but that is also a slightly hidden gem with a non- trivial learning curve. But the fact that you visually lay out column and row templates as you do with any aspect of the interface is something XOJO users can only dream of for example (well, unless they massively improved their controls since I last used it). And PG/PL are both performant and look very swish with minimal effort.

These are things are are variably implemented in other languages and either very complex (much more than the DG) or simply not up to scratch - or at best very limited. LC does many of these very well sells and itself short by not advertising these features more widely.