[YO EDINBURGH!] Microsoft Open-Sources It's Toolkit For Making iOS Apps Run On Win 10

[Richard Gaskin]

Monte Goulding wrote:

>> On 10 Aug 2015, at 9:59 am, Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote:
>>
>> Monte Goulding wrote:
>>
>> > ...probably a bit worrying for LiveCode as it leaves its main USP
>> > to be a verbose language…
>>
>> Verbose?
>
> Verbose for a programming language at least

Yeah, I used to hear that from C and Assembler programmers back in the 
'90s who hadn't used an xTalk but tried to size it up by looking at a 
few single statements.

And indeed, single statements are often longer in LiveCode.

But when we step back to look at a more complete measure of verbosity -- 
how much typing to get the same functionality -- LiveCode often 
outshines many other great languages.

For example, here's a Java snippet I dug up that adds two numbers from a 
text file:

    import java.util.Scanner;
    import java.io.*;
    public class MyClass {
       public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
           Scanner s = new Scanner(new File("sample.txt"));
           int tmp1 = s.nextInt();
           int tmp2 = s.nextInt();
           System.out.println(tmp1 + tmp2);
       }
    }


And of course in LiveCode:

    get url ("file:sample.txt")
    put word 1 of it + word 2 of it


The brevity we enjoy with a LiveCode engine that lets us do so much with 
so few lines becomes even more pronounced once we need to handle GUI 
events, coerce types, manage memory allocations, and many other modern 
app tasks.

There are many great languages, and for all their respective strengths 
none of them are best at everything.  Not even LiveCode.  But where 
LiveCode shines it shines brightly.


PS: Should I find myself spending the rest of my years never having to 
ever again type things like this I can't say I expect to miss it on my 
deathbed:

    public static void main(String args[])

That sort of common Java declaration is stuff LiveCode already does for 
us by default, no typing required at all.

Verbose?

;)

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for Desktop, Mobile, and Web
  ____________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com        http://www.FourthWorld.com