LiveCode for the rest of us

[Mark Wieder]

Roland-

A few thoughts without in any way trying to detract or distract from 
your wonderful post:

FileMaker and LiveCode are different products aimed at different 
audiences. FileMaker is essentially a one-trick pony: it does an 
excellent job at providing an easy-to-use front end for database design 
and use, and probably does a better job at this than any other tool I've 
seen on the market. Ever. Its scripting language gives you the ability 
to string together predefined macros, and while these are mostly 
adequate for any database job you are constructing, you can't modify 
them or add new ones, so you sometimes end up with rather awkward 
constructions and tables that may not always be linked up in intuitive ways.

LiveCode, on the other hand, is designed to be a construction kit that 
provides an extensible toolbox for general-purpose applications. Some of 
the database functions require more work because LC isn't designed 
primarily as a database tool. It's also not designed to be a graphics 
tool, although it's possible to do some amazing graphics work in LC if 
you happen to be Scott Rossi. It's not a network tool, although for many 
tasks all the networking features are there. And on and on.

Yes, I'd love to have FileMaker-like database-aware controls in 
LiveCode. I'd love to have a lot of other things as well. Some of these 
are in progress, some can be added through third-party extensions, some 
need to wait for LiveCode Builder in LC8, some you may have to create 
yourself or wait for someone else to do it for you.

That said, I absolutely agree that LiveCode needs that out-of-the-box 
magic that hooked us all in the first place. Knowing that all that power 
is in there somewhere isn't enough. That initial Aha! spark is an 
empowering Maker moment and people need to experience it in their first 
brush with the environment.

-- 
  Mark Wieder
  ahsoftware at gmail.com