Supercard 4.8 public beta

[David V Glasgow]

Richard,

I take issue that the specific metaphor doesn’t matter.  Stacks and cards are great metaphors for that period of time when a potential programmer is trying to build a mental model of what exactly it is they are trying  to do on screen, and relating that to the available tools and vocabulary.  mTropolis was fun, but I often just couldn’t remember how to do stuff, because I had no mental model that I could apply to the on screen abstractions. Despite a background in ‘proper' languages, that kept tripping me up.

Of course, you are right. The magic sauce and sheer power is the script, but the metaphor there is English (at least to start with).  Most other languages are precisely that, other languages.  LiveCode (the script) approximates how the English speaking world make things happen in their day to day lives.  There was a recent post asking why Livecode ”Hello World” didn't look more English than any of the others.  I didn’t have time to respond, but it is relevant here.  The importance of the linguistic metaphor is obscured  by “Hello World”.  “Sort lines of tbiglist ascending by third word of each”  is better, but also reveals the gotcha in the English metaphor.  Should it be “Sort the lines”?  “the third word”? Does it matter?  That snag arises because Hypertext languages adopt the English metaphor so well, the user can just take it too far.

Your ‘problem' Richard is that whereas I still delight in little piles of cards, I think you have transcended metaphor:  Do not try to bend the card. That's impossible. Instead only try to realise the truth  ;-)

David G

> On 5 Oct 2016, at 6:22 pm, Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote:
> 
> David V Glasgow wrote:
> 
> >  I PAID in advance for the Windows version, and then switched to
> > mTropolis.  IIRC it trumpeted that it did not rely on a metaphor.
> >
> > Boy was I glad to get back to stacks & cards
> 
> For me it's not even the "card metaphor" - we could call it a "form" like VB does or a "page" like Toolbook and I'd be just as happy.  I rarely use more than one card in a window anyway.
> 
> For me the big benefit is a fully featured scripting language, and unlike so many others ours has GUI elements as an inherent part of the language. With this the code we write can reflect the user experience, making the process from ideation of the UX to implementation of the UI a breeze.
> 
> I used to think about building mTropolis or iShell in LiveCode, doable were it not for one thing:  I don't believe it's worth the time.
> 
> No matter how simple a development UI might _seem_, no point-and-click system can deliver the flexibility and expressiveness of scripted code.
> 
> Like Bill Appleton told me shortly after he left his point-and-click authoring tool CourseBuilder behind to make SuperCard, there's a limit on the complexity of systems that can be expressed clearly in any point-and-click UI, and ultimately code becomes the more readable option for any but the most trivial of programs.
> 
> After all, how many point-and-click tools used their point-and-click tool to build their IDE? :)
> 
> Today most of the point-and-click are gone, even the industry-leading Authorware, while scripting language have taken over much of the world to dominate applications development.
> 
> -- 
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World Systems
> Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
> ____________________________________________________________________
> Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> use-livecode mailing list
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode