LiveCode

For the past couple of years, LiveCode conferences have been virtual events, but this year there was an in-person option along with a streaming option for those who could not travel. It was a great time! The LiveCode team is truly a great bunch of people, and the community is equally lovely. It was good to connect with a number of people I've met before as well as make some new friends. Here are some highlights...

In the middle of prepping one of my talks for the upcoming LiveCode conference in San Jose, I ran into an article by Turing award winner Fred Brooks titled No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering. Written in 1986, I found so many of his observations prescient of issues I faced while building the Scenario Designer app that the paper completely changed the direction of my talk.

The LiveCode team has released the video of my talk about the app I developed for the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences @ UMD. The presentation was for the LiveCode Global conference, but is now available for viewing by anyone. Check it out!

The LiveCode DataGrid is at once powerful and confounding. Everything is stored in arrays which is fine, but it is fundamentally different than the LiveCode way of doing things in every other way. Make sure you read the documentation for the DataGrid API ...WAY... before you start writing code. Everything your want stored in a DataGrid must be "put" there using DataGrid methods (such as set the dgData of...), otherwise you'll never get it out.

LiveCode 9 is shaping up to be a real advancement for the platform. Soooo many new features. It's really been a pleasure to work with the developer previews. There's a great blog post at livecode.com that goes into great detail of the process. 

I had a great time today with Kevin Miller and Chris Coleman talking about all things LiveCode. Kevin is the CEO of LiveCode Ltd., and Chris holds the tile of Marketing Executive. LiveCode is about to launch a new marketing campaign with the slogan "Develop Yourself", and they interviewed myself along with a number of other LiveCode users in the US.

I've been using xTalk languages since the days of HyperCard. That means I'm very comfortable in LiveCode. If HyperCard was a Model T, LiveCode is a modern sports car. There's so much power in LiveCode Script (LCS) that I've not come close to plumbing the depths of the possibilities.