SoCal LUG meeting: 2 February in Pasadena

[Richard Gaskin]

Andre Garzia wrote:

 > On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
 >
 >> Many thanks to all who attended last night's LiveCode User
 >> Group meeting in Pasadena.  It was a lot of fun, and even
 >> with all the talk of trains we managed to get some design
 >> work started on what will hopefully be a new library for
 >> the LiveCode community - more on that later.
 >
 > I am curious!!! what library???

A chunk of most of our meetings is devoted to kvetching about things 
we'd like to see improved in LC, and last night Todd Geist noted the 
many times newcomers use cards for data storage, make a standalone out 
of it, only to later realize as a standalone it's no longer writable so 
it has to be rearchitected.

We looked at this from a variety of angles, and considered the strengths 
and weaknesses of different ways to solve the problem, ranging from 
writing a new Standalone Builder to patching the IDE to even writing a 
new IDE.

But as we looked at the problem more carefully we began to realize that 
none of those would solve the core problem, which is to keep user data 
storage out the stack in the first place.

So the problem became defined as:

    How can we provide the benefits of using cards for data storage
    -- with First, Next, Previous, Last, New, Delete, and more --
    without actually using cards for data storage?

Anyone who's worked with LC for some time has solved this problem in 
various ways, and indeed there are a nearly infinite variety of ways to 
work with externally stored data.

The trick is to have one that's easy enough to use that newcomers will 
love it, but which handles enough of a variety of data store types to 
make it useful for experienced developers.

Factoring code, data, and presentation is old hat, something we've all 
had to learn at some point so we can update our apps efficiently.  It's 
that latter part -- supporting an unknowable variety of different data 
stores -- that was the solution that came out of the meeting last night.

More on that later. :)

Today I have a client deadline to meet, but next week I should be in a 
position to spend a couple hours fleshing out a prototype for discussion 
in the Rev Interoperability Group....

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv