Lately I have been following a competitive dev tool called LiveCode. Just like Xojo it is cross platform and much much more.
I know many here do not have positive reviews of it but still it exists for more than 2 decades and it an European company and it is thriving and it keeps evolving and innovating.
Just recently they launched a new low-code feature. After studying it…
I feel it is high time Xojo takes some ques from its competitors and starts innovating it.
If you build internal apps, every developer and every person who uses the app must have a license at $440/year. If you sell commercial apps, than every developer must have a license plus you pay 5% of your app revenue. There are more parts to it but that’s the general idea.
i have heard that that there is a lot of dissent in the xojo community. noted.
however, all of us, who are lc-nerds, are not looking at xojo because things in lc-ville are wonderful.
let’s start with the lc-create tool that you are excited about
it’s in alpha/beta. livecode has a spotty record with hyping and pre-selling products at this stage. sales are easy, and lc’s ceo is a salesman. do you know any dev tool ceo’s that are salesmen? delivery is hard. be skeptical of anyone who is trying to separate you from your treasure.
lc-create is a low-code tool. have you ever tried to use a low-code/no-code tool? can you name one that changed your life, that you’re still using, today? i can name several that changed mine, because of all the money i made. i have rewritten app after app that started in the low/no code space, because eventually, the person who started the project finds themselves in a place from which there is just one solution: me. rewriting.
previous posters have discussed the cost of lc-create. what they did not explain, i don’t think, was that the $440 fee is per app, per device.
the two examples i talk about all the time: we have an app, that we use, in one of my companies. it runs on 15 ipads. lc wants $440 x 15, per year.
i have another app, that is used by a fortune 500 company. they have it running on 35 ipads. in that case, we might consider paying 5% of the consulting fee that we charge that firm…or, we might spend that to rewrite their app.
[edit]let me be clear, lc could decide to change their mind on the pricing. that would be great. we have written GREAT mobile apps with lc. however, i think that they are making a mistake with lc-create.
I looked at LiveCode years ago and it just didn’t seem any better than Xojo. In some cases it looked worse. And it sounds like the licensing scheme is more onerous than ever. No thanks.
First to be clear.
Xojo IS NOT “cross platform”… it is “multi-platform”. The difference is a “cross platform” tool would be one project file, write the code once and be done. “Multi platform” requires multiple project files and some level of code duplication
can you name some real multi platform tools then ?
given the screen sizes, different event loops, I find it very difficult to have one project file for many different platforms like mobile desktop and web …
And while this is the only example I can cite, because I personally do not deal with mac AND windows AND ios.
Swift is a decent example (as well as ObjC). There you can write ONE project file that can compile for the iPhone, the iPad, the Mac and the AppleTV… One language, one Xcode project file, and FOUR families of devices.
But that isn/t my point. my point is that Xojo continues to adverstise falsely… It is NOT CROSS PLATFORM
This is spot on, and I can add more trash to that dumpster fire.
LiveCode had a nerfed opensource license for years after barely fulfilling kickstarter promises.
LiveCode/RunRev was at one point an actually good product, but as time passed they focused on adding features instead of fixing bugs.
Bugs that sometimes show up only when compiling.
Surprise branding that sometimes shows up in a finished product
Going from dot-versions causes huge changes in how some code runs, and a lot of time can be spent on continuous maintenance if you don’t stick to the standard vision of creating an application.
kickstarter dependent
Moving in an AI direction, so I expect the HyperCard-like main product will languish further.
Slow moving against faster targets like macOS / iOS means times you stare helplessly at rejections, unable to do anything until LiveCode eventually fixes something. While paying, holy shit it’s $440 per running device now? That’s insane. Shit like this is why everything is electron now.
I also just ported an app from LiveCode. Unfortunately I picked Xojo.
I can, however, name some low code tools I still use today, and it’s still HyperCard.
There are a few IDE’s I’ve used that make this possible
You can do this in Android Studio with a kotlin multiplatform project
One project file that you can generate an app for desktop, web, iOS and android from that one project
And you can share code between these targets without the gyrations you need to do in xojo (either external items, copy paste, or some thing else that each have issues)
I’ve got projects in C# (Visual Studio for Mac & Windows and in Rider) that are similar and generate applications for iOS, Android, and I think I can get them to target other deployments as well (I’ve not tried)
Xojo doesnt have that sort of capability
Imagine being able to open ONE project file and from that check the targets check boxes for “Mac Desktop, Windows Desktop, Linux Desktop, Linux Web, iOS, & Android” and BUILD all of those from that one project
Non-UI code could be shared between them all easily
UI would need to be different between iOS, Android Web and Desktop
But IF THE IDE permitted it you could have iOS layouts, android layouts, web layouts, and desktop layouts all in that same project
But the IDE doesnt - Xojo doesnt have that sort of capability and is moving AWAY from being able to do that with how the IDE works now
Java
Javafx gluon mobile and desktop writing iOS, android, Linux, Unix, MacOS, Windows applications running on arm and x86 and running on a hero server as web application.
i never considered HC/SC to be low code. hc is more like a traditional RAD tool - a very, very early RAD tool, obviously. the earliest low-code platform that i saved clients from was Omnis. Even 4D First was more of a crippled RAD tool (or a lite version of 4D) than a low-code tool.
