Ideas for my book.

Mark Wieder ahsoftware at sonic.net
Tue Sep 17 18:04:10 EDT 2019


On 9/17/19 12:40 PM, Patrick Roza via use-livecode wrote:
> First, let me say many of you gave some great input. So let me follow with
> this.
> 
> I see an interest in:
> 
> Raspberry PI
> LiveCode server
> 
> Did not see anything on widgets or plugins?
> 
> So here is are some questions for the group.
> 
> 1. When you were learning LiveCode what was the hardest to learn and why?

For LC scripting proper, it's been too long now, so I'm mostly going to 
stay out of that one. With regard to LCB, the documentation is sparse, 
hard to find (as in spread out in too many places), and incomplete. The 
lack of parity with LCS scripting features (e.g. why is there no switch 
statement?), the rudimentary debugging ability, the ffi awkwardness, are 
all impediments.

> 2. What do you think is the main advantage of LiveCode over other
> programming languages?

See below. Also I'm four or five times more productive coding in LC than 
in other languages/platforms. By the time I've thought something through 
to a prototyping stage I pretty much have a working application.

> 3. Do you think LiveCode is better than Python and why?

I don't. I think each has its place. If I'm going to be mostly working 
with text manipulation then LC has an edge over *everything* else. Even 
if I have to plug in some regex. Python, on the other hand, has an 
awesome set of scientfic and math libraries and is quite fast. In a 
previous position we moved some code from a MathLab backend to Python 
for speed, ease of maintenance, and better fit into our Agile workflow.

I do quite a bit of Ruby coding. I do things in Ruby that are impossible 
in LiveCode. I also do things in Ruby that would be difficult in 
LiveCode because of the vast array of gems available to extend the 
capabilities of the basic system. And I also do things in LiveCode that 
would be a real pain in Ruby.

My general approach is "can I do this in LiveCode? If not, look at 
alternatives".

-- 
  Mark Wieder
  ahsoftware at gmail.com




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