Community Edition will no longer be supported. Open source being stepped away from after 8 years.
In the next week or so we will also be releasing 9.6.5 which will provide support for Android App Bundles and API30
API 3 ?
Android SDK version 30.
I like the separation between the different ways to license, which separates small shops from big cooperations.
Hmmm there’s something possible there
Hehehehe… does anyone know about a commercial app that was developed with LiveCode?
Edit: I just tried one of their showcases. Game over without any window:
What an ugly messagebox.
Any website that takes 2-3 seconds to render I’ll give their products a miss. At least their showcase is indexable by search engines, xojo’s showcase is nothing more than lip service.
I looked at the contributions to the github, it looks like things have been in decline since 2017, if more people were moving to this edition as they claim then you’d think that the graph would be different.
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I think that is the problem
People pull it or use the versions built from it but dont contribute
So they get a free version and LiveCodes revenue plummets
With so many free, it must be tough out there trying to make a living selling developer tools.
I’m not saying you are you wrong, but maybe I can share another perspective based on my experience of LC.
The graph suggests to me that LC (unlike Xojo) was feature complete across desktop and mobile 4-5 years ago (which feels about right).
LC release regularly, from memory I downloaded 9.6.3 in late July. There are plenty of feature updates, however many updates simply driven by updates to the Android and iOS SDKs, and it seems a manageable level of bug fixes.
The graph really reflects 2-3 intense periods of “well funded” activity. Expansion from desktop to mobile platforms, open source, then HTML5 (and of course regular but smaller maintenance cycles).
“In Reality” I released successful corporate mobile (iOS and Android) apps developed in LC back in 2015 and have updated them with ease several times since. It’s now late 2021 and I still can’t produce a “Hello World” app for Android in Xojo.
I’ve seen similar activity profiles on Github for other maturing software, but wholeheartedly agree activity is the first sign of life.
Kind regards, Andrew
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Christian, I agree.
I like LC’s new pricing model.
I’d like Xojo to adopt a similarly flexible model.
If I could - I’d choose Xojo Web Apps, Xojo Console Apps and Workers (Pro Only Feature) as my package of best fit.
If I could - I’d prefer to pay by the month as well.
In respect of LC, I purchased a “Lifetime Licence” a few years back.
Kind regards, Andrew
I tried out LiveCode and some others (like “Corona”, ha ha) before I decided to go with Xojo. Here one of my mails from that times:
Ladies and Genlemen,
now I am really a bit p**** !
- Registration did not work (paid “Indy”)
- Update did not work (downgrade from rc1 to dp11 ! → see ticket)
- Forum registration did not work (no contact mail for mitigation)
- MySql connection to a remote SSH with key-file does not work (impossible?)
- On one Mac the cursor gets an „offset“ so that it is not possible to select run/edit mode (!?)
So I am in doubt if LiveCode is really the right product for me.
Is there anyone at home? Are you testing what you are doing?
Do you want to sell a product? Or is it just spending money …. ?
Excuse my frustration - I just thought that I found the right and perfect
product for future development - but I got disappointed massively.
I still do not understand them. Glad that I did not decide to use it. I had a set of tests for my rating, and LiveCode was one of the worst. Xojo won - no regrets. This was 2018 - and I do not know if they really improved. This announcement is another nail …
Wow, I’ve had an active licence since LC was Runtime Revolution and never experienced any of the issues you seemed to have encountered all at once, which is a shame. That said, your experience is as valid as mine.
LC support for both the product and hosting have always been very efficient when I have lodged a ticket (especially considering I work/live outside of their timezone).
Corona was nice for developing mobile 2D games back in the day. I always loved Corona’s nightly builds for getting bugs fixed fast. Wow, can you imagine Xojo posting nightly builds for bug fixes (smiling).
There’s a lot to love, loath and lament about most dev platforms. Superficially they are hard to compare without reaching a certain level of proficiency with each tool. Their hidden flaws make them hard to objectively compare at a glance. The simple truth is developer tools break developer’s hearts.
Kind regards, Andrew
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Or harden them into cynical old codgers, like me.
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you do reach a stage where you expect to be disappointed despite all the fanfare and glowing press releases
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@dickey I have quite a solid log of service desk communication with them. I had a list of functionality to check. And I was really tight with that - in a given time frame. I still think that it might be a good tool … for me Xojo is OK even with the known tradeoffs. All tests passed, direct communication worked, feedback etc. also.
Corona does not support databases as well as I would like to have it. I also had Clarion, Visual Studio and WinDev in that contest. Xojo simply won.
Software is my profession for 45 years now - and I lost my fun in trying, using and debugging (other ones) code over the time. Then I got a contract to transfer the software of a boarding school from RealBasic to Xojos latest version. That was 2015 or so. It was two days work - and I had only few problems with it.
Now I like coding again. Because of Xojo. Funny, isn’t it?
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I hate (I mean I REALLY HATE) subscription services.
Runtime Revolution took a way different approach at cross platform. While RealBasic/Xojo tries to expose the OS (in most instances one-to one). LC went with abstracting the UI/platforms.
I always wonder why Xojo did not take a similar approach (or at least to a degree), I always saw Realbasic as the promise of write once run everywhere.
For Xojo everything went down hill with iOS, they made some poor choices in my opinion and binded the framework to the target, In doing that one-to-one mapping is that we get the XOJO namespace and all the javaisms came to the language, now API 2 is trying to rectify that.
Some times I also wonder why Xojo did not do abstraction in the IDE to save us from all of the internal changes, just add fake features, (syntax, functions, etc) and transpile behind the scenes. For example with string and text and all the other XOJO stuff, having the IDE fake homogeneity and the compiler actually spitting target specific code was for me a smart route, even now.
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+20
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I hate (I mean I REALLY HATE) subscription services.
I understand your point of view, but paid dev tools are largely subscription based these days. There are of course many great free tools as discussed elsewhere on this forum.
In essence Xojo (operates an annualised subscription model), and LiveCode (now operates both a monthly and annualised subscription model), a model with greater flexibly than Xojo’s.
In both instances you can sit on the sidelines for a while if you are unhappy with a release or 2-3, but ultimately you need to renew to stay current.
I’m lucky enough to have purchased a Lifetime Licence (whatever that means) for LC several years ago.
Kind regards, Andrew