What's wrong with me?

[richmond62]

No: Don't answer that one: it's a rhetorical question.

However, "our friends in the north" have just asked me for $99 to preview 'LiveCode Create', and that has got me 'all prickly'.

1. Who is going to pay $99 to preview something which is completely unknown?

Certainly NOT people who have not used LiveCode before, and NOT people on a tight budget who can download functional demos of lots of programming environments for nothing.

LiveCode Create Preview now available to the public!

. . . For $99 . . .

And the squib video: https://youtu.be/oHqc8uEgrYg

Is remarkable in that it tells one almost nothing (which is, presumably, the intention, so you fork out the 99 bucks).

Certainly I could not see anything that attracted me, and had I $99 I'd probably spend it on something else.

[richmond62]

For $99 you can get access to all preview + beta releases for LiveCode Create and you can redeem this $99 against your purchase of the final release (so it's essentially free!)

What a load of hogwash.

"it's essentially free": No it jolly well isn't: what happens if, on playing around with the preview you find you are not interested in the thing and will not be purchasing the final release?

I really wonder who they think they are addressing: presumably people who cannot tell a logical argument from a pile of horse droppings.

I suppose they will try and argue that by using the word 'essentially' they have a get out clause.

[richmond62]

Did you know NASA and the USGS used LiveCode to develop their satellite "Landsat 7"?

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063437934679

No they didn't, because it was then called 'Runtime Revolution' and that was in 1999.

So, using a 24 year old piece of software to advertise LC in 2023 . . . I wonder why . . .

Could it possibly be that no one worth mentioning has used RR/LC for anything to shout about since then?

Could it be that no one worth mentioning has used RR/LC for anything to shout about because LC have dug themselves into a hole by NOT paying any attention to marketing and educational outreach?

Could it be that people are actually so impressed by a company using an early version of some software 24 years ago that it is going to make them buy the current version?

[richmond62]

AND:

Get immediate access to alpha and beta versions

Invest just €99 now and get it back as a credit against your purchase of the full shipping version of LiveCode Create.

So: presumably this will be another extremely expensive item, and if so, presumably the alpha and beta versions will be time limited.

Things that are not said . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfxCiuec--k

Log-in to online account connected to LiveCode: so, YES, your alpha/beta thing will eventually go 'phut'.

[richmond62]

Wow: this looks like dumbing down to me.

Certainly I cannot see how it is better than the LC 963 IDE, or even 'more modern' [mind you that word 'modern' is about as hard to pin down as words like 'nice'] in any obvious sort of way.

The tools on the left look fewer and flat and hellishly boring.
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Let's do a compare and contrast exercise:
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[richmond62]

Interestingly enough Steve Crighton refers to ALL the controls he demonstrates as 'widgets'.

Whether this means that EVERYTHING is now a 'widget' [and whether 'widget' means something written in LC or in LCB] or not, is not clear.
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As the objects (whether widgets or not) do NOT all show onscreen all the time meaans that one is going to spend some time scrolling up and down until one finds what one wants.

It certainly DOES look as if everything is a 'widget':
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Whether that is a good thing or not it is hard to tell.

What is clear, though, is that adaptation to the new IDE from the LC 9 one will involve more work than from the LC 7 or the RR 2 one.

[richmond62]

So, more and more the way HyperStudio went: more and more decision trees and less and less scripting:
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[FourthWorld]

So, more and more the way HyperStudio went: more and more decision trees and less and less scripting.

This is very expensive for the developer, and very limited to the customer.

Highly specialized products can do well with point-and-click only, but anything with the power of LC will be an endless pursuit with diminishing returns.

And then there's round-tripping, an engineering sinkhole so deep it took the mighty Adobe years of expensive development to eventually get only close to their original promise with Dreamweaver.

[FourthWorld]

"it's essentially free": No it jolly well isn't

The marketing email I got included:

"What does it cost? In effect, nothing. You pay $99..."

The cringe made my face hurt.

They market like old people. I wish they could afford Zoe Scaman. But then again, I wish I could afford Zoe Scaman.

[richmond62]

That Action Editor reminds me of part of the interface of my 'KALA' from my MSc, which was, to all intents and purposes, a prototype for a no-code decision tree front end for what was then called RunRev so Primary school teachers could knock together programs for content delivery for children without knowing any code.

While my 'thing' got me an MSc (from a third-rate university), all it was was a dumbing down that would severely restrict the choices of any end-users.

The whole thing makes me wonder slightly if 'someone' is floundering around because they cannot decide which way to jump to recapture the market.

[tperry2x]

The title of this post: "What's wrong with me?"
There's nothing wrong with you if you didn't put any money into this... whatever this thing from LC is.
LC have had more than enough of everyone's money already as far as I'm concerned, (yes, I was foolish to throw some money their way once, and I didn't get anything in return to show for it). All they have provided is empty promises and abrupt abandonment of the open source community. Not a great way to show anyone you support them..

It looks like it's heading more and more into powerpoint territory. It's funny because it looks like a backwards step.
Never mind.

Their loss, our gain

Having said all that, I kind of feel a mixture of sadness and pity. Sadness for what the Livecode Community version could have become in an alternate universe if they'd kept it going with input from enthusiasts, (which is partly what this is), but without closing off improvements to the rest of the community.
Pity, not only for anyone who has already invested, but I feel pity towards their dev team. I know how much work it must be, and how many hours must have been spent on this already. The decisions upon how it looks and operates are probably being driven from people above the dev team. Imagine putting this much effort and work in when you feel the approach is the wrong direction.

But then, just turn the news on and that is where I rightly feel sadness and pity.

[tperry2x]

Anyway, back to my humble observations.
Why is there a search field in what was the tools palette?
Surely if you have to "search" for a particular tool, then it's bad layout?
The same way a real toolbox works: you don't have to go searching through the toolbox to find what you need. It's all laid out in front of you.

Did you see any evidence of their much hyped AI? Can't see anything that I would class as particularly requiring AI on those screenshots, or is that a separate product?

It reminds me of Google slides actually, with the animation builder popup on the right of the screen. In fact, it's spookily similar.

I had expected a lot more I guess, but it looks like nothing more than a reskinned UI and not much else. If I'd thrown money at it this time round, I might be feeling more than a little annoyed at this stage.

[richmond62]

I wish I could afford Zoe Scaman.

Obviously you have a thing about Ms Scaman as we can see your adulation all over LinkedIN.

And it may not be misplaced.

BUT what passes for marketing with LC does not even need someone like that: they just need a competent person to do their advertising.

I will say this again, at the risk of being boring:

The LiveCode team of programmers are, quite obviously (their product stands for itself), highly competent computer programmers.

But, just as when a 'certain person' opens their mouth and things always seem to come out wrongly . . .

Why do I have a feeling that things may be so near to the bare metal that they are trying to do their advertising themselves?

Highly competent programmers should get on with programming competently (it might also speed up the rate of development), and leave
things such as advertising, educational outreach, and so forth to people who are both qualified and experienced in those fields.

For starters I cannot be the only person on the planet who feels that the LC website obviously believes I am a naive sucker who is going to buy their product just on their say-so, or that it was used 20-odd years ago for some programming in areas which have probably disappeared or been replaced by more sophisticated stuff.

It is a very great pity if all of about 25 years of development of a very good product is going to go into a tailspin because of incompetent advertising and presentation.

[FourthWorld]

I wish I could afford Zoe Scaman.

Obviously you have a thing about Ms Scaman as we can see your adulation all over LinkedIN.

She's worth following. She has her ear to the ground and writes clearly. Her practice is as au current as Seth Godin but less smarmy, as inventive as her former employer Droga5 but broader in her integration of tech trends with social trends.

BUT what passes for marketing with LC does not even need someone like that: they just need a competent person to do their advertising.

Talent is expensive.

[richmond62]

All I can say is that, if I had a free $99 floating around, I would probably have spent it on something else: quite glad I missed this mail drop [comes to one of my 'other' email addresses] as I 'micht' have fallen for it.
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"What does it cost?

In effect, nothing."

OK, OK; I may not be top banana at Maths, but even I can work out that $99 is NOT 'nothing'.

"Ready to get your hands dirty?"

"we're inviting you to start working with it alongside our team. "

Aaaaah: now I understand: they want me to pay then $99 to become part of their focus group and do some of their 'dirty work' for them.

That is even 'richer' than expecting open source users to do their work: now we have to pay for the privilege.

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I sent some feedback to a chap who works for GIMP called, oddly enough, the same as that paralysed Formula 1 driver (Michael Schumacher - I would just suppose 'Schumacher' is as common as 'Souter' in the airts I come from: after all, means the same thing). We had a very friendly chat, batting the odd thing back and forth: and, at the end, the chap said "Thank You."

Fat Chance That . . . you know where.