What with all it's features and platforms I sometimes forget

[Richmond]

On 12/27/2010 10:06 AM, Geoff Canyon Rev wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 12:41 AM, Richmond<richmondmathewson at gmail.com>wrote:
>> Well; good, effective programming is rarely either EASY or FUN; and more
>> often
>> than not involves a lot of prolonged effort, thought, and hard work.
>>
> Programming is like playing tennis. I'm sure there are professional tennis
> players who don't enjoy playing the game. They've either grown tired of it,
> or they simply discovered they had the knack, or fell into it somehow and
> now they're stuck. But in general, good players like the game, or even love
> it.

I love working with Livecode, and have done ever since day #1. But the 
word 'fun'
has be come burdened with the semantics of effortless enjoyment. Programming
can and should be pleasurable with Livecode, but effortless it is not.

To my mind, at least, half the pleasure of working with Livecode is putting
a bit of effort into something and seeing the wonderful results of the
combined efforts of the 'heavy chaps' in Edinburgh (without whom we
would be lost) and our own work. If I could achieve the sort of results I do
without any effort at all they would be virtually valueless as anybody
could belt off whatever, whenever, and both Thee and Me would be out
of a job!

>   It's just so much easier to be good at something you enjoy doing, and it
> is absolutely possible to find programming fun, even when it's hard.
>
> To tell would-be end-users that they can create wonderful things without a
>> fairly serious
>> investment of time and effort is simply disingenuous.
>>
>> I disagree. Granted I have more than a few years invested, but most of the
>> things I've created over the years have been quick and simple. LC's
>> advantage over other languages/environments starts near infinity, and drops
>> to zero or even negative as the size of the project grows.

I agree with you about what you say about Livecode; when I compare it with
other languages/environments it really does beat them into a cocked hat.

However, to maximise Livecode's full potential (and, WOW! what a potential)
does take quite a bit of effort.

While it may take more effort to achieve the same sort of things in other
languages/environments it does not mean that doing something in Livecode
is exactly "Easy-Peasy-Lemon-Squeezy" either.

>> At the one
>> extreme is the fact that I can create a workable program and compile it for
>> several platforms in five minutes or less.
I think the word 'workable' is the one we need to focus on here. Most of us,
even those of us fresh to Livecode, can produce something 'workable' very
quickly indeed.

However, 'workable' is not quite the same as 'resource efficient' and so on.
>> In the middle, I have many times
>> prototyped something in less than an hour or two that dropped jaws.

Of course.

>> At the
>> other extreme there are the times I would kill or die for real handler-level
>> integrated source control. Or macros -- what I'd give for macros.
>>
The ability to produce something 'workable' very quickly, and its use for
rapid prototyping are strengths that the folks at RunRev should be 
shouting from the rooftops.

I believe that words such as 'easy' and 'fun', however, make Livecode 
sound a bit too
simplistic and could detract from Livecode's rich complexity which 
allows its
leverage for extremely complex stuff.