Asking a Pointed Question

[richmond62]

Just revisiting my former self:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbDyqM_FAtg

And, whichever way that bloke tries to justify the phrase 'No-Code', there IS code beyond a certain limit.

[FourthWorld]

CourseBuilder and Authorware were point-and-click programming systems written in C.

xTalks offer a scripting language that requires no knowledge of machine choice, yet ultimately becomes executed as machine code instructions.

Water doesn't flow uphill until Archimedes turns the screw.

Pipes carry water but are not made of water.

Welcome to tools.

[richmond62]

That was a response that did not answer the question.

HyperStudio 5 is no-code; HyperStudio 4 is not as one can drag-and-drop, point-and-click, and then code.

At present LiveCode 10 is like HyperStudio 4, so it is not no-code, and using 'No Code', like several other things that have been used in the past, is disingenuous.

Whither LiveCode?

"HyperStudio 5 is a creative space where you can make fully interactive digital presentations to pass on knowledge,
express ideas and attitudes, engage and entertain,
all using the very latest technologies."

https://www.mackiev.com/hyperstudio/select.html

HyperStudio 'castrated' itself presumably to keep the money flowing.

Of course it lost a lot in doing that as well.

It will be interesting to see if LiveCode goes that far.

"If you're part of the generation that mixes and mashes, the generation that makes movies instead of just watching them, the generation that blogs and tweets instead of just reading or watching the news, the generation that makes podcasts instead of just listening to the radio, then you'll want to get to know HyperStudio for Mac OS X and Windows. HyperStudio is all about media fusion."

https://www.mackiev.com/hyperstudio/index.html

HyperStudio is about dumbing down.

HyperStudio is nothing to do with computer programming.

It would be a pity if LiveCode became just another multimedia toybox.

OXT should preserve what was best about LC 9.6.3 (which, thinking about things now, looks like a product very nearly at its peak before it is "mixed and mashed" into something quite different), and add extra affordances to continue in that way.

[FourthWorld]

That was a response that did not answer the question.

Your comment included no question.

HyperStudio 'castrated' itself presumably to keep the money flowing.

There aren't many proprietary scripting languages left. A lot's changed since the '90s.

HyperStudio is about dumbing down.

HyperStudio is nothing to do with computer programming.

Visual programming languages (VPLs/)/point-and-click programming/icon programming/#nocode have been around since the birth of GUIs.

Bill Appleton created CourseBuilder back in the day as a response to watching his WorldBuilder customers use that tool to make courseware. WB was the first scriptable multimedia authoring system for Macintosh, predating HC by more than a year. Designed for making games, the scripting language and object model were just expressive enough that it became used for all sorts of things.

CourseBuilder was fully point-and-click, and the result was what prompted him to later return to scripting. He felt the interaction connections were fine for simple things, but grew into an unmanageable spiderweb for anything more complex.

His return to making scripting tools was SuperCard.

By that time HC was bundled with every Mac, and was a de facto standard, worth building out from.

Over the years he's made other scripting tools, first for his game company and later his web services company.

But he's never made another nocode tool.

[richmond62]

Your comment included no question.

No need: it is there in the referenced video.

And the interlocutors were doing a sidestep like a country dance routine.

[FourthWorld]

...the interlocutors...

Who is the plural entity you're referring to? Did I miss some interesting comments on that YT page?

My ancient anecdote was merely to illustrate that you're in good company on your opinion of the value of point-and-click programming, by none other than the creator of the system Kevin cut his teeth on and my first contacting role with an xTalk vendor.

We see many scripting languages that have thrived for decades. Among point-and-click programming systems I've seen only Scratch live as long, and it's very limited, by design, given its mandate as an early-stage teaching tool.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Personally, I think no-code VPL's get a bad rap here.
I love xTalk script, but visual programming can be great for non-programmers to set up things that can be sifted through a flow-chart sort of construct, automated workflows in particular.

OK, sure they can get a little spider-web-ish if they're really complex (some systems like that will let you zoom in and out over parts of the graph as a way to manage). But that's why I think it would be great to have the VPL as an option and still be able to drop down into an underlying scripting language that's human-readable like xTalk or AppleScript ( exactly like Apple's Automator ).