[OT}] Hypercard and an uneasy read.

Geoff Canyon Rev gcanyon+rev at gmail.com
Fri Dec 2 03:53:28 EST 2011


On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Bob Sneidar <bobs at twft.com> wrote:

> Let me propose that a solution cannot be simpler than the problem it is
> meant to solve.


Assuming that this is true, it is nevertheless possible for a solution to
be far, far more complex than the problem it is intended to solve. One
quote representing this concept is:

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use
regular expressions.”   Now they have two problems.

I'll go further than my original statement and say that *every* solution is
far more complex than the problem it is intended to solve. HyperCard was no
exception. If the "problem to be solved" is "build a rolodex" (and you're
not allowed to simply use the built-in one) consider how much work went
into the built-in rolodex. By comparison, my problem statement is nearly
complete; add a few semi-obvious statements about searching, printing,
etc., and you have a working product spec, but to implement that in
HyperCard would take significant effort. Anyone know how many lines of code
there are in the built-in rolodex stack?

Every language I've used has some feature that I wish every other language
I use has. As one example, in FileMaker, all references are abstracted, so
if you rename a table, or a column, or a layout, etc., all references to
that object in your code will automatically adjust. *That* is a feature I
would pay serious money for, but I don't know any other
language/environment that has it.

Not to be a grump (warning, I'm about to be grumpy) but there are several
aspects of LiveCode as it stands that are significantly more complex than
they should be. The one that has been tormenting me over the last few weeks
is the datagrid, and its lack of native syntax.

put row 3 to 8 of column "firstname",column "lastname"

or something like it should just work. Stepping away from the soap box
now...



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