Ideas for LiveCode workshops - help needed

[Kay C Lan]

Dave,

the first question is what is your aim? Is it to show people how to
program in LC or is it to hilight how LC can help them?

If it is the former, then most of the suggestions given will fit the
bill perfectly; they are just examples of something already done, but
you show them how to do it in LC.

If it is the later, then you need to know your audience and ask them
the question, what is it that you want your computer to do that it
doesn't do for you now. What frustrates you about your computer, or
some program that you know should be smart enough to do it itself but
it just doesn't do it. People say the LC, just like HC before it, is a
strange beast to describe, and whilst that may be true for what LC
'is', it's not the case for what LC does or can do. I'm sure everyone
here, if someone asked "can you do X, Y and/or Z with LC", would be
able to respond with how to build a solution with LC.

If I attended a workshop that showed me how to build a database, to do
list, or e-reader, I wouldn't be engaged because I'd be spending the
whole time wondering why I just didn't use the one already on my
computer - (assuming I'm not there specifically to learn how to do
this in LC language). On the other hand, if the instructions relates
to a real life problem, even if it's not my problem, and I can't find
the answer on the App Store, then I'm engaged and interested in how
the problem is solved.

When you ask people what they'd really like their computer to do,
everyone can think of something and it will usually fall within 3
categories:
1) An app or utility that doesn't exist
2) The automation of a manual process, and closely related
3) The communication between disparate systems

If you are dealing with the younger generation then it will likely
centre around games or social media. Back when my boys were young and
I was still using HC, Warhammers were the big thing. Like Dungeon's
and Dragons, the rules are vast and complex. and every army had it's
own book of rules. Those books were expensive, constantly in use,
being abused and occasionally lost. I was surprised there was no
electronic rule book, so I helped my boys build one, which not only
sped up game play but removed 'accidental' misreading of lines about
whose man was stronger.

For adults it may be hobby or past time related;  I enjoy cycling. My
Garmin GPS bicycle computer records a massive amount of data,
including speed, cadence and elevation. What it doesn't tell me is
what gear I'm in *. But given the gear ratios, and working with speed
and cadence it's possible to figure it out. So I built a utility that
would extract the data, compare it to the gear ratios, and therefore
extrapolate which gear I was in; thereby help performance analysis.

* with the new electronic bike shifters, and latest generation Bike
Computers, this information is now recorded - I was ahead of the times
in recognising the need to know 'which gear' in determining optimum
performance;-)

At work the problem is likely to be 'automated' related. I'm
constantly fed pdf reports which are great for reading but useless for
extracting information and comparing with previous reports. I have a
script which contacts our work server, gets the latest batch of
reports, which I feed to an AppleScript to turn them into text, which
I then parse into data fields that are fed into a DB. My stack
automatically looks for data points which are outliers as well as
points that I personally set as triggers.

As for communicating with disparate systems I recall someone on the
List recently wanting to extract electoral result information off the
net. Each year I'm involved a team of about 60 people who take 4 karts
to a 24hr Human Powered Vehicle competition. The karts are fitted with
transponders and the events timing is done by TSL Timing Solutions
Limited, which mainly does motor vehicle racing. TSL transmits the
data to the web. For years we'd been doing manually timing, so we
could analyse every pedalers performance. Understandably a manual stop
watch is not as accurate as an electronic transponder and mistakes
were common. This is a job for LC; a webpage scraper, parse out each
of our Team karts data, and all our timers have to do is manually
enter the pedalers name at each pit stop. Easy.

I'm sure everyone here can think of dozens of example of little dirty
apps they've built because you 'just can' with LC.

If you are trying to promote LC, not just programming, then I'd
recommend, if it's at all possible beforehand, to glean from your
audience a particular problem to solve, and then show them how LC is
the perfect choice in solving the 'individual's problem'.

What is LC... it's the answer, you just need to determine the problem.

My 2 shekels worth