Livecode Future

[Jeff Reynolds]

I posted about my more odd ball situation with live code. Kevin answered with some solutions for seats for exhibit machines which could be a solution, but unfortunately I doubt the royalty solution for educational content software would not fly with the  clients. As I stated it’s all ok since I’m sort of sliding into retirement and this is just sort of a door closer of a door already swinging shut.

But having worked with MetaCard/Livecode for 30+ years as my business and chatting with a few off list, I could not help stop thinking thru the issues and looking for solutions as well as just standing back and looking at the bigger picture some.

Live code has been changing slowly for a long time from a do everything super HyperTalk to more of a main stream rapid application builder. This is following the trends in the industry and there’s and app for that culture in general. The evolution to the Create system and the new licensing structure just cement all that in place. I get it it’s the way LC must go to survive as a business. I’m sure the new systems would have the potential to keep doing my work, but I’m sure multimedia aspects that are central to my projects will not be super high priority for newer versions of Create. AI stuff I see as mainly getting in the way for me, but hopefully it can be turned off or pushed aside when needed to. New licensing and Create direction would definitely not be a revenue generator for me just a lot more costs and hassles and I would most likely end up heading out to a new platform which wouldn’t be a large investment with no increase in revenue.

But it made me step back and look at my clients some more and think. One issue I had not thought about in all this kurfuffle is how would my clients react to the new LC outside of the licensing costs and the hit by the bus questions pop up. Being a one hand clapping with all the programming on our projects I always have to be ready for these questions from clients and have potential solutions ready. The smart client always ask these questions and I try to only work with smart clients if I can.

One, they would ask ok with this is a subscription model now, what happens if LC jacks the price way up here next year or worse goes out of business. A rapid price rise would be tough as these projects once done or released are sort of set, no new budgets or funding to pay for a higher subscription is there with my clients. I could see Kevin and team coming up with a solution for those of us stuck in transition to get some lock ins, exceptions, and such. It also sounds like as long as things are kept local things would keep running in LC’s demise and it would then require the use of a different coding system for the next project, but as long as the current projects are up and running that’s ok as they usually just keep running on with little or no fixes needed. Ok, that hit by the bus question answered.

The other big hit by the bus question that then came to mind was the one most often asked, what if I get hit by the bus. My solution to this has always been to have cultivated a few friends and colleagues who I know could easily do my work if paid for it decently and give that list to my clients. Dangerous some would say, but I’m careful with who I work with and trust my clients. I’m usually cheaper to the client due to the fact I do 3 or 4 roles on the projects and for them to hire someone just for coding and the others to do the rest it would get expensive and more management and potential issues and my education clients are in slim budgets, so I doubt they would try to use the list other than if I were hit by the bus (AFAIK none ever did anything with the lists). But now I’m realizing with the large turn in LC direction cemented in place there probably won’t be any odd balls out there in the future with the new business app world that I can use for this list in the future (they will most likely migrated elsewhere). This, I realized was a more important gotcha if I were continuing in my business. If the licensing issues could get solved this one would be a hard one to get around and end up forcing me off into a new system anyway.

Just some knoodling I’ve been doing and thought I would throw it out for others odd balls to naw on or just ignore it.

Also just wanted to thank this list for the many years of great information sharing and help with problems. I only had a few issues ever that I brought here or had solutions for others, but I learned tons from the information shared here, many times not stuff I needed at the moment, but later useful when I did! Folks here also kept this a great list to keep looking at over many, many years. Thanks. And a big thanks to Kevin and all the LC team, it’s been grand to keep on using HyperTalk to do more and more things that folks would say “you can’t do that with HyperTalk!”, but then you could show them you could… best wishes in the new course charted.

So long ant thanks for all the fish!

Jeff