I forgot to mention LiveCode. It is highly verbos and it is in pure English so it is easy to understand.
For those who are lived and thrived on Mac it is a blessing to use and be productive almost immediately.
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Yes sometimes LiveCode can be a bit too verbose, but I do like it nonetheless. It has some interesting tricks up its sleeves. A quick way to get a feel for it is to go to Rosetta Code to see how it handles different situations. I recently reviewed the section “Date Format” which required two different date formats. LiveCode has a short one-liner statement for the first date format:
put the date into tDate -- returns: 2022-04-09
but required more verbose code for the second date format:
convert tDate to dateItems
put item 1 of tDate & "-" & item 2 of tDate & "-" & item 3 of tDate & return into tMyFormattedDate -- returns: Saturday 09, 2022
The second requires one to look up an index-value chart for various formats. 
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LiveCode looks to be $100 more than Xojo for basically the same level…
and from the above date example… it looks like it is more like COBOL than “BASIC”
not saying that is a good thing or a bad thing… but not enough incentive to make it worth my while to investiage farther… your opinion may vary
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My experience with LiveCode v.s. Xojo is that they are two different beasts. If you ever used Hypercard, that’s LiveCode.
The biggest difference is that Xojo compiles apps, which should get better performance on a target machine, while LiveCode doesn’t. It can work as an advantage for LiveCode as they can simply port their runtime engines to a new platform in a short period of time, and bingo LiveCode apps can now run on that platform.
I was asked to review it back in 2005. After using the product for a couple of weeks, I declined. I couldn’t give it a fair review, because it was too limited in capability coming from RS.
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I took a look at LiveCode a while ago as a FileMaker replacement when I did some work with that. I opted for Xojo over it.
Ring looks interesting.
I’ve also been learning Vala
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If you are mainly producing database driven apps / database front ends and can afford to not do it on the cheap, I suggest you take a look at Omnis Studio.
I used Omnis products in a previous job for 18 years and found it to be the most productive tool for this kind of app.
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I tried LiveCode in the past and trying to make a simple datagrid with it was like building an entire car. Also it was verbose, procedural and scripted and finding syntax and semantic errors (and writing the correct choices of words) wasn’t simple as writing and compiling a modern code. I spent more time consulting the manuals than producing something. Their concept of windows/views was weird too. So I chose Xojo, that I also thought had a very primitive tooling for tables/datagrids, but it was “workable”. Not sure how they are today, but their pricing and model is not interesting. Looks like renting the compiler by year, seems like next year the compiler you paid will be disabled until you renew. Xojo model of perpetual use of all past releases until that one you paid seems the ideal one.
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Vala is very cool with very C#-like syntax … combined with GTK, they should make for a great combo for x-platform development. Beef is another language that has adopted a C#-like syntax as well but feels like a blend of C++ and C#. It’s compiled vs being a CLI-based language, as such it’s geared for performance( game development). 
Instead of writing Gala there could be also Java. Gala is only a very small project and nobody knows how long it will stay. It is a two man show which is there only as a university project until now. With Swing and flatly you can write fast applications which can run on ALLLLLL platforms. Gala can run on platforms where GTK is available. GTK looks on Mac like an Alien.
A Compiler for HyperCard was planned (back in 93 or so), but I forget if it ever saw the lights. Someone knows ?
LiveCode just recently (Mar 18th 2022) received enough funding to commence on the Script Compiler Project.
For the bargain price of $499 on top of the annual pro licence cost. Laughable.
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Yes that can be fun especially when answering from mobile. But okay. For me writing in such languages including LiveCode or Xojo isn’t worth of the time investing in developing the project. So I believe that there is a much faster and more reliable way to rite applications for professional use in less complex languages.
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Speaking of potentially simpler languages (that also happen to be free). I just submitted a bug to the Ring Language Google Group (they don’t have a forum). I was surprised when the creator of the language, Mahmoud Fayed, wrote me personally thanking me for finding the bug and he added me to their list of testers. He fixed the bug the day after I submitted it. Essentially the bug was concerning string interpolation within a Class method not being read by the function call, but the string concatenation implementation would be read correctly.
# 04/11/2022 testing string interpolation from class method
pet1 = new Animal {
name = "Nikki"
gender = "she"
age = 9
introduce()
human_years()
}
class Animal
name gender age breed
def introduce
# string interpolation is not read
print("My pet's name is #{name} and #{gender} is #{age} years old\n");
def human_years
human_age = age * 7
# string concatentation is
put name+ " is " +human_age+ " years old in human years." + nl
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That’s certainly responsive! You don’t get that at Xojo. The last bug I filed, verified by an MVP in minutes is still unresolved after about a year.
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Indeed. I have the same positive experience with B4X. It of course helps to be able to be so responsive if you don’t have a mountain of bugs piling up for a decade as Xojo has.
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B4j is not comparable with Xojo. B4J is an implementation of Java technology, the most reliable technology we have in this market. Highly optimized code and flaming new technology with Supports until 2030 without any problem. JavaFX (B4J relies on it;B4I and B4A are using parts of it) will also be supported until then at least. So it is a professional grade language with a simply working infrastructure.
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B4X support is very responsive. Creating mobile apps with B4A and B4i is like night and day compared to Xojo.
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Only a year ?
Its not nearly mature enough to get fixed yet 
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