How alive is LiveCode?

[Richmond]

On 02/09/2012 04:54 AM, Michael Chean wrote:
> When I'm considering a tool I look at the community resources to see
> whether they are
> being kept up.  For instance the RunRev forum,  why is it that the last
> announcement
> of a new release was 4.6?  Do the RunRev staff answer questions?  Why are
> there so many queries
> that languish?   Why do many of the tools including YogaSQL seem to have
> had their last release
> a year or more ago?  Not trying to troll here, but just wondering what your
> impression are.
> Has RunRev been growing?  The language is so elegant I keep thinking that
> there is something
> I'm missing as to why it's not more popular.
>
> Mike
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My impression is that the Livecode Use-list (i.e. this list) is alive and
hopping.

As far as I understand the RunRev staff tend only to answer questions to
Enterprise customers.

"missing as to why it's not more popular"

that, I think, comes down to snobbery and the desire to keep one's mystique:

I know several C++ developers here in Bulgaria; when I tell them my history:

MiniFortran, Fortran, BASIC, PASCAL, ZYLOG, Hypercard, Toolbook, 
RunRev/Livecode

they start looking at me very oddly indeed right after ZYLOG, as they 
regard object-based
stuff as kiddy-toys. On being shown Livecode they also start curling 
their lips as it is,
at least superficially, extremely easy to get something up-and-running 
licketty split;
they always say the same thing; "that isn't REAL computer programming" - 
which is,
of course, nonsense. Oddly enough there are lots and lots of people who 
believe in
all sorts of nonsense, and as long as it doesn't interfere with their 
normal day-to-day
interaction with the world, it doesn't cause them any problems.

Part of the problem maybe the Hypercard legacy; in that it was packaged 
as a sort of
Lego-kit programming toy, and its successrs such as Supercard, Metacard 
and Livecode
carry that 'stain', and Toolbook is still marketed as a sort of 
hopped-up Powerpoint for
teachers (far from it, I had a hell of a job getting my head around it 
when I used it in
1998-2000).

Livecode CAN be used as a Lego-kit programming toy; but anybody but the 
most basic users
are going to want to go a bit further than that pretty rapidly. One can 
go incredibly far if
one so wishes.

I am writing this using Thunderbird e-mail client on a computer running a
Debian-derivative distro of Linux: I am quite unable to see why people 
continue to use
Microsoft Windows (and pay for it); the vast majority of people think I 
am daft.

The attitudes towards Livecode and Linux are very similar.

Richmond Mathewson.